Kiss the Cook: Don’t throw away extra tomatoes … stuff ’em
For those that enjoy gardening and ripe summer tomatoes, there comes a time when you could have more tomatoes on hand than you know what to do with.
You can always make and can more tomato sauce or make fresh salsa, but if you would rather find another reason to enjoy those ripe tomatoes besides eating ‘mater sandwiches every day, then I have a recipe for you!
I was given some tomatoes from a friend and really wanted to look at creating my own recipe from scratch. Below is the clean, simple stuffed tomato recipe that came from multiple batches.
Every batch was good, but the combination of sweet sausage, pepperoni, cheese and herbs was delicious!
You can easily modify this and use a different meat or go meatless and use mushrooms in place of the sausage and pepperoni. Next time you have a bunch of fresh tomatoes on hand, try this recipe and enjoy!
Italian Stuffed Tomatoes
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Ready in: 1 hr
Servings: 6
Ingredients:
6 medium tomatoes
Salt to taste
½ lb. Sweet Italian sausage (ground)
1 tbs. fresh oregano (chopped)
12 slices pepperoni
12 ¼-inch slices of fresh mozzarella cheese
½ tsp. Italian seasoning
½ cup dry Jasmine rice
Dried Basil
2 cups tomato sauce
Directions:
1. Cook your Jasmine rice per package instructions or bring 1 cup of water to boil, add your rice, lower heat and simmer, covered for 12-15 minutes or until water is absorbed.
2. While your rice is cooking, cook you ground sausage in a frying pan until brown
3. Combine cooked rice, sausage, oregano and Italian seasoning in a large bowl, mix well
4. Cut a circle into the top of each tomato, remove the core and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds, place into a baking dish, sprinkle some salt inside each tomato to taste
5.Preheat your oven to 350 degree F
6. Add one tablespoon of rice mixture to each tomato, add a slice of pepperoni, slice of mozzarella cheese, another slice of pepperoni and then fill the tomatoes with the remaining mixture. Add 2 cups of tomato sauce to the baking dish around the tomatoes.
7. Baked for 30 minutes at 350 F, uncovered, in the last 10 minutes add a slice of mozzarella cheese to the top of each tomato. Remove, plate, sprinkle the top with dried basil and enjoy!
n Do you have a great recipe you would like to share? Please send it to me for testing and possible publishing. Feedback and comments can be sent to bear@ptd.net.