For the third part of the dinner I made on Mother’s Day, we decided to make something for those who may not be into pasta and tomato sauce as much. I had bought some Italian sausage and was intending just to make plain sausage and peppers and have some rice to serve with it on the side. There’s not much different you can really do with sausage and peppers, but I thought it would be much better, cleaner and maybe even healthier if possible if I did the whole thing in the oven. It’s quick, it’s easy and if you use a disposable foil pan, fast clean-up too.

Baked Italian Sausage and Peppers

1 1/2 pounds sweet or hot Italian sausage links (about 6 links)

2 large onions, sliced

1 red bell pepper, sliced

1 yellow bell pepper, sliced

1 orange bell pepper, sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Slice the onions and peppers, seeding the peppers along the way.Place the onions and peppers in the bottom of a large 9 x 13 baking dish. Toss the peppers and onions with the two tablespoons of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Top the vegetables with the Italian sausage links. Prick each sausage several times with a sharp knife or the tines of a fork on the bottom and the top of each link. This will help to release some of their juices to flavor the peppers and onions.

Cover the pan with foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the foil so that the sausages can brown and bake for another 20 minutes. Turn the sausages over to brown on the opposite side and bake for another 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve.

That’s all there is to it. I actually added some extra pepper and onions on top of the sausages when I first put them in the pan to get even more flavor. You could certainly serve these on hoagie rolls as a traditional sandwich if you wanted to go that route. You could even do the same recipe on your grill if you wanted, perhaps getting some grill marks on the sausage before you put them in the pan to cover them. Steaming them for that 20 minutes really helps to release some flavor and then browning them for 40 minutes makes them perfect and crisp, just the way I like it. Everyone loved them and there were no leftovers at all and they were taken so fast I never got a picture of them!

I still have a couple of recipes leftover from the Mother’s Day meal that I will post tomorrow. Work kind of slowed me down this week so I didn’t get to post as often as I would like,  but tomorrow we will have the wilted spinach salad with warm bacon vinaigrette and the tomato and mozzarella. Very simple and easy recipes for both of them. I am also working on the meals for next week so I hope to get to them as well. Keep checking back and see what we come up with. Until next time, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!