Sausage Stuffed Banana Peppers

Servings 3 – 4

8 banana peppers
1 lb. jimmy dean hot sausage or your favorite sausage
1⁄2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 cup Ritz butter flavored cracker, finely crushed
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1⁄8 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons melted butter (optional)
1 pinch parsley
1⁄2-1 lb. mozzarella cheese, shredded
1⁄2-1 cup olive oil

Clean peppers by careful slicing a T into pepper being careful not to cut the cap off. Slice down the length of pepper but leave enough at the bottom so that pepper is not cut to the very end. Remove all seeds. If you don’t like your peppers too hot you can soak the cleaned peppers in cold water for an hour and this will lessen the heat of the pepper (not necessary for the sweeter variety.
Brown your sausage with the minced garlic, pepper & parsley.

While sausage is cooking, crush the Ritz crackers into a fine crumbs. Add parmesan cheese to cracker mix and combine well.
Remove cooked sausage and chop finely in blender so it appears more like ground sausage. Place ground sausage in bowl. Add crushed Ritz crackers and parmesan cheese and mix well. Add 1-2 Tbsp. of melted butter to mix so help make the stuffing moist if it appears to dry but not wet.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spoon stuffing into peppers. Fill generously from top to bottom of pepper.
Depending what type of dish or dishes you use to bake the peppers, I usually use 2 casserole dishes and pour the olive oil into the bottom of the pans so there is about a ¼- ½” of olive oil in pans. Lay peppers in baking dishes. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Pull peppers out and generously spread shredded mozzarella cheese over peppers. Bake for 5-10 minutes so cheese is melted well.

Cool slightly and serve.

From: Food.com