Breakfast Sausages With Bell Peppers.

Your typical Caribbean breakfast is usually laden with ground provisions, dumplings, porridge, curries and roti (depending where in the Caribbean you are) and usually some sort of stewed salted meats (salted cod in most cases), so this recipe will not rank among those traditional type recipes. However, if you’re looking for something with wonderful flavors, brilliant colors and textures, you’ll be quite impressed with this dish. I’ll be using pork (bratwurst) sausages, but you’re free to use any sausage you like (I know some people are into turkey sausages.. just not my thing).

You’ll Need…

4 sausages
2 bell peppers (med)
1 medium onion
3 scallions
1/4 teaspoon Spanish pimentón (smoked hot paprika)
1 teaspoon veg oil
1 clove garlic
3 sprigs thyme
1/4 scotch bonnet pepper (optional)
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Heat the veg oil on a low flame and add the sausages. TIP.. add about 1/2 cup water to the pan so the sausages cook before they start burning on the outside before the inside in cooked or you can also place a lid on the pan. By the time the water burns off, your sausages should be close to being fully cooked. Now turn up the heat to fully ‘brown’ them on the outside. Takes about 20 minutes or so, depending on the thickness of them.

Remove the now cooked sausages and set aside. Then add the garlic (crushed) and onion (chopped) to the same pan and cook on low for about 3 minutes. Then go in with the thyme, black pepper, salt, scotch bonnet and pimentón. Stir well and cook for a minute.

It’s now time to add the chopped bell peppers and scallions to the mix and stir well. The goal is to pick up all the flavors from the bottom of the pan from when we cooked the sausages.

Let it go for about 2-3 minutes so the peppers soften up a bit, but retain a bit of texture. The sausages should be cool by now, so chop into bite sized pieces and add to the pan. Be sure to save any juices which may run off while cutting and add to the pan as well. Stir well, cook another 2 minutes and you’re all done.

This sausage with bell peppers will have a slight kick to it from the scotch bonnet peppers, but you can certainly control that. It goes well with cassava dumplings, ground provisions, roti, coconut bake or even something as simple as toasted bread. So give it a try and enjoy!