CincyEats

Every summer I go to Bonnaroo, a music festival, with a group of friends. To make things easier on us, we each take a turn making a meal. This year Steve had just gotten a new toy, a cast iron dutch oven. He seemed really excited about his meal choice and we were all pretty curious.  I watched him as he cut up organic sausages, garlic and peppers. He browned the meat and added everything into to the pot.  Coals were placed on both the top and bottom to give even heating. Luckily there were no bands that I wanted to see, so I got to watch everything. After three hours we removed the lid to find sausage that was so tender we could barely take them out without falling apart.  Everything was soft and succulent. I immediately thought, this recipe is awesome. Very soon after getting home I set about to figuring out how to make it in my kitchen. I have three dutch ovens, but none of them have a flat top or fancy little feet. Luckily, I have a few skills in the kitchen so I wasn’t too worried. After one attempt a favorite dish was born

Italian Sausage Hoagies

1 jar of tomato sauce

2 garlic cloves. minced

2 T fresh basil, minced

2 T fresh oregano, minced

1T fresh parsley, minced

3 bell peppers (I use red, yellow, and orange),  sliced

1 sm- med sweet onion, thinly sliced

4 links  fresh hot Italian pork sausage

4 links fresh regular Italian pork sausage

1. pre heat oven to 275
2. brown sausage in batches (depending on the sausage you might want to use a little olive oil)
3. put all sausage in the bottom of your dutch oven
4. pour in your sauce and add your , garlic, basil, oregano,  parsley and stir
5. then add you onions and pepper. they will not all be submerged in the sauce.
6. cook in the oven for 3 hours with the lid on
7. serve on thick crusty hoagie buns

Now you probably noticed I didn’t put a picture up. Well, not everything that taste good, looks good. If you are creative you might be able to find a couple.  Here are a couple pics of our ingredient to hopefully make you interested.

A few things to note. If you use spicy sausage your sauce will be spicy. I have tried chicken sausage and it works well too.You can also make in a crock pot, but I am not 100% on the cook time yet.  I believe 9 hours on low will work. I would check the temp of your meat to make sure.