Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers are such a traditional meal, everyone seems to have their own recipe for them. Mine is below...I had some leftover Italian sausage in the freezer from when I made meatballs, so I threw it in, and I really liked the added flavor. You'll also notice there's no rice in here, but I just found that the peppers didn't really need the extra filler. The meat was hearty enough. 

Ingredients
4 bell peppers
1 yellow onion, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 roma tomatoes, diced
1 lb. ground turkey
1/2 lb. mild Italian sausage
4 sprigs fresh thyme
Olive oil
Onion powder
Salt and pepper


Sauce:
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
5-7 dashes Tabasco sauce


Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously.
3. While the pot is heating up, cut the stems off of the bell peppers and remove the seeds.

4. Once the water reaches boiling, submerge the peppers into the water for 3 minutes to soften.

5. Drain and remove peppers from pot. Slice the bottom of each pepper with a knife so that liquid can drain from them as they bake. Place the peppers cut-side up in a small baking dish to cool.

6. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. 
7. Dice the onion and saute until translucent.
8. Mince the garlic cloves and add to the onion. Saute for one additional minute.
9. In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground turkey and sausage with a fork.

10. Dice the tomatoes. Add them to the mixing bowl along with the onion and garlic.
11. Dice the thyme leaves and add them to the mixture, along with salt, pepper and onion powder to your liking. Combine the mixture with a large spoon. Set aside.

12. Combine the ketchup, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces.
13. Mix half of the sauce into the meat mixture, reserving the other half.
14. Spoon the meat mixture into the peppers.

*Note: this recipe makes enough filling for 6-8 peppers, depending on how tightly you stuff them. I didn't want to make that many, so I froze half of the meat mixture to use at a later date.
15. Top each pepper with a quarter of the remaining sauce that you reserved.

16. Bake, uncovered, for 50 minutes.