Daily Favorites: Italian Sausage with Balsamic Peppers and Onions

This is a one-pan dish with three main ingredients, yet super delicious. 

So sausage and peppers is a classic dish. But my take on it has a few things that I like about it. 

First off, here's how the dish is commonly served: 

You've got whole sausage links and it's swimming in a thin sauce. Also, some of the pictures I saw the peppers are in giant pieces. My version addresses all three of these issues. 

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I brought my pan up to medium and gave it a little cooking spray. Get the sausages going in the middle, and the veggies around the outside. I gave the veggies a light drizzle of olive oil, just a few drops, we're watching our calories here. I did cover my pan to help everything cook through quicker.

Flipped the sausages once they were nicely browned on the first side. Gave the veggies a stir. Seasoned them with a little salt, pepper and basil. Once the sausages are deeply browned on both sides, I removed them and sliced them into bite-size slices. Gave the veggies a decent sprinkling of balsamic vinegar, and returned the sausages slices to the pan, tossing everything together. When slicing you'll see if your sausage is cooked through yet, so you'll know if you need to cook them for another minute or two or if they're ready to toss and serve.

Then I plated and dusted with just a bit of parmesan reggiano. 

What works here is that the peppers and onions and sausage are all the same size, so it's easy to assemble delicious bites with all three. The sausage has absorbed flavor on maximum surface area and you're not slicing into a whole link and getting sausage juice on your plate. There's no thin sauce, the baslamic has coated everything nicely without any runniness. 

It tastes so good, you don't even miss the pasta and you don't have to fuss around with a red sauce either. 

These were true pork sausages coming in at 260 cals/link. With the veggies and a drop of oil and a dusting of cheese, I think this plate was right around 600 cals. I just bought some chicken sausages that are 110 a link though they're a bit smaller. But I could have 4 of them for the cals of two pork sausages. Either way, very filling and tasty.