# Italian Sausage & Peppers

Italian Sausage & Peppers — a easy recipe with 5 main ingredients, ready in about 30 min and serving 4. Check which of its ingredients are on sale at grocery stores near you.

- **Time:** 30 min
- **Serves:** 4
- **Difficulty:** easy
- **Tags:** dinner, pork, quick, italian, gluten-free
- **Source:** https://savingrecipes.com/recipes/sausage-peppers

## Ingredients

- 1.5 lb Italian sausage
- 3 bell peppers
- 2 onions
- 4 hoagie rolls (optional)
- Garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil _(pantry staple)_
- Salt & pepper _(pantry staple)_

## Instructions

1. Brown sausages in an oiled skillet; remove.
2. Sauté sliced peppers, onions, and garlic until soft and sweet, 10 min.
3. Slice sausage, return to the pan to finish. Serve on rolls or over rice.

## Tips

- Brown the sausages whole and slice them afterwards. Slicing first means more surface area drying out and losing juices.
- Give the peppers and onions the full 10 minutes. They need time to collapse and sweeten — 5 minutes leaves them crunchy and raw-tasting in a dish that should be soft and jammy.
- Deglaze with a splash of water or wine after the sausage comes out. The browned residue in that pan is flavour you'd otherwise leave behind.

## Substitutions

- **Italian sausage:** Sweet or hot, both traditional. Chicken or turkey sausage is leaner, so add a little oil. Vegetarian sausages work if browned harder than seems necessary.
- **Bell peppers:** Any colour; red and yellow are sweeter. Cubanelle peppers are the traditional choice and milder.
- **Hoagie rolls:** Already optional — serve over polenta, pasta, rice, or on its own.
- **Garlic:** Add it late, in the last minute with the peppers. Early garlic in a 10-minute sauté burns.

## Storage & reheating

Keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes 3 months — a good freezer dish, since the peppers are already soft so texture loss doesn't matter. Reheat in a pan or covered in the oven.

## Common questions

### Should I boil the sausages first?

No. Browning them and finishing them among the peppers cooks them through and keeps the flavour in the dish; boiling leaches it into the water.

### Sweet or hot Italian sausage?

Both are traditional — sweet is fennel-forward, hot adds chilli. Using half of each is common and gives more depth than either alone.

### How do I know the sausage is cooked?

160°F internally, or no pink at the centre when sliced. Returning the slices to the pan for a couple of minutes finishes anything underdone.


_Photo: Chuck Falzone — CC BY 2.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sausage_and_peppers.jpg)_