Cream Cheese Rotel & Sausage Stuffed Peppers

Low-Carb | Gluten-Free

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An easy and low carb dinner - make it ahead of time and just bake before serving!

Cream Cheese Rotel & Sausage Stuffed Peppers

As it gets towards the end of the week I often am scrounging in the freezer to figure out dinner. This was the case the other night, when I was planning dinner for Thursday night after eating dinner Wednesday. What was I going to fix for dinner Thursday? 

Searching through the freezer, I found a quart size bag filled with cream cheese and sausage Rotel dip. Looking at the date, I remembered making a double recipe of this for a potluck and freezing half because it made so much.

About two weeks ago, a friend of ours from church gifted us lots of banana peppers from their garden. The late summer harvest was quite welcome and we both like peppers (my daughter? no so much.) Though most of the banana peppers were a few inches long, there were 5-6 that were much larger and colorful.

I had decided at some point in the last week to stuff these, I just hadn't figured out with what. Looking down at the frozen quart bag of dip, I now knew! And heck, what doesn't taste good with bacon wrapped around it?

Ingredients

5-6 peppers (I used large banana peppers, but poblano or bell would also work fine)

Taco seasoning

10-12 slices of bacon, partially cooked

Filling:

1 lb breakfast sausage, browned

2 - 8 oz packages of cream cheese

1 can of Rotel (drained)

Instructions

1.  Brown sausage in deep skillet and drain. Place sausage back in skillet.

2.  Add in cream cheese and Rotel, stirring frequently until cream cheese has melted and ingredients are incorporated. Set aside.

3.  Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray non-stick spray on a 9x13 glass baking dish. Depending on how large and how many peppers you have, you may need two glass dishes. 

4.  Cut peppers lengthwise and remove seeds. You can leave the stem on. Set peppers in glass dish as shown. Sprinkle with taco seasoning. 

5.  Partially cook bacon, either half way or three-quarters of the way done. This is optional, I just like bacon crisper and wrapping raw bacon around "done" ingredients is not my thing. The bacon just can't be too stiff to wrap and will cook the rest of the way in the oven.

6.  Fill each pepper half with the cream cheese sausage mixture.

7.  Wrap each pepper half with one piece of bacon, using toothpicks to hold it together as necessary.

8.  Bake for 30 minutes or until peppers are baked through. 

If you have those colorful mini pepper on hand, you could make this as an appetizer. I love that you can also make all of this ahead, stick it in the fridge overnight, and then put it in the oven in time for dinner. And, it's a good way to re-purpose leftover sausage cream cheese dip. Enjoy!