{recipe} Sausages & Orzo

In light of COVID-19 its a bit hard to share outfits on the blog so I thought I would share some of my favorite things to cook!  I'm by no means a food blogger so these won't be full on professional recipes, but I hope they will still be helpful!

We only buy our meat on sale, so when we can get something for $1.99 a pound or less we pounce! This means we eat a lot of chicken, pork and sausages.

First up, I'll share one of our favorite easy meals: suasages and orzo!

Instead of just cooking the sausages whole and serving over rice I started to take them out of their casings and break them into pieces.  I like orzo because it cooks quick and you can flavor it with pretty much anything you like. To finish it off I usually use onions and peppers but sometimes we'll opt for roasted broccoli if we don't have the other items on hand.

I'll try to get Christian to take some in-progress photos next time we make this, but I wanted to get a blog post up since I haven't in a while so these will have to do! 

Sausage & Orzo with Peppers and Onions

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25-30 minutes
Servings: 4+ depending on your appetite

Ingredients:

• 4 Italian Sausage Links (hot or sweet)
• 1 cup Orzo
• 1 Onion (any kind)
• 3-4 Small Sweet Peppers (or more if you want)
• optional: bouillon

Supplies:

• Large Skillet (I use: Rachael Ray Hard Porcelain Enamel Nonstick 12.5-In Skillet in Marine Blue)
• Small Pot (for orzo)

Instructions:

1. Cut up onion and peppers into small dices
2. Remove sausage from casing and break up into smaller pieces, place into a bowl
3. Pre-cook onions and peppers and place to the side
4. Boil some water in a small pot and cook the orzo according to box (I add chicken flavored Better than Bouillon to the water to add a little extra flavor)
5. Heat pan on medium high and cook sausages until browned and mostly cooked through, breaking them up a little more.
6. Add onions and peppers and continue to cook on a lower heat
7. Once orzo has cooked add it to the skillet and mix together

Optional: You can add any other seasoning you like. Occasionally I'll add minced garlic and some random herbs but I usually keep this super simple and don't add anything. There is already a lot of flavor in the sausages so I find it doesn't need much else.

Broccoli Option: Roast broccoli in 425 degree oven with olive oil, salt and pepper until browned  (we like ours REALLY dark)

Here are some examples where I just chopped up sausages. This was how I started making this dish, then I realized you get more bang - or bites - for your buck by breaking up the sausages into smaller pieces.

How to Freeze Peppers & Onions

Before all this virus stuff got really crazy Christian and I bought a little more than our usual amount of onions and sweet peppers. Normally I just buy what we need for a week or two so they don't go bad.  Since we got our extra freezer I decided to start freezing them so we would have them ready at the drop of a hat and would last longer.

The process is pretty simple:

1. Cut onions and peppers to your desired shapes (I did small chunks as well as thin slices)
2. Place on a cookie tray and flash freeze for about an hour until fully frozen
3. Move into plastic bags or reusable containers - I used old Talenti ice cream jars that we cleaned since they're plastic and have a nice twist on cover.
4. Mark the storage container with the date you froze them on