When I was little, I hated peppers. I could tolerate them chopped really small in spaghetti sauce, but a stuffed pepper? No way. Fortunately, taste buds can change. First it was thin slices on pizza, bits in omelets… and now I’m writing a recipe for roasted peppers.

This is not a vegetarian recipe as I’m (yes, pun intended) hog-wild for Jimmy Dean sausage, especially SAGE. But don’t run off, I’m sure you can substitute just about anything that behaves like sausage.

Preheat the oven to around 385 degrees. Wash the peppers, and with a sharp knife cut the tops off and then cut the stems out so each pepper is a little container with a hat with a hole at the top. Clean out the seeds. Set the peppers into a glass baking pan. They should have some wiggle room but be sitting up straight.

Put a couple pineapple chunks into the bottom of each pepper.

Note: I pulled the sausage out for the photo shoot, it’s still frozen. You’ll want it thawed and soft. For four peppers, I used a little less than half of the sausage–it’ll depend on how many peppers you are cooking and how big they are.

Cut an end off the sausage and squeeze/spoon out sausage into each pepper.

Add another pineapple or two on top of each — you’ll want the peppers to be about 3/4 full–save room to add the couscous later.

Put the tops on the peppers, drizzle with oil enough so they won’t dry out and the bottoms won’t burn. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes or until they look mostly cooked and the tops are a tad brown.

Meanwhile, cook your couscous following the package directions.

When the peppers are done-ish, pull them out, pull the hats off, and spoon in some couscous. You can stir carefully so the sausage and couscous are blended in the pepper. You might add another pineapple on top to peak out of the hat. This’ll keep it from getting dry and adds color.

Option: cover with a sheet of aluminum foil, especially if your oven runs hot. You want the sausage fully cooked but don’t want to burn the peppers. Bake for another 12ish minutes.

Serve over a bed of couscous.