How do you make comfort food at home?
We love making dishes with real food ingredients that feel like comfort food. A lot of people think simple food is boring, but this Italian sausage casserole proves that it’s definitely not. It feels like the ultimate comfort food, filling and flavorful. Here are some of the real food “swaps” we made with this recipe:
- Homemade sauce – It’s a creamy, smoky, dairy-free sauce that whips up in 2-3 minutes. Believe me, it’s better than anything you get in a can or box.
- Cauliflower rice – An easy sub for white rice or noodles. Plus, it soaks up all of the sauce and juices from the other ingredients.
Finding Whole30 Italian Sausage
It’s not always easy, but you can find Whole30 compliant Italian sausage in stores and online. Or, you can even make your own by combining some simple Italian seasonings with ground pork. Here are some good options:
- Homemade Italian Sausage Recipe
- Pederson’s Italian Sausage
- Mulay’s Italian Sausage
- Isernio’s Italian Sausage (we buy this at Trader Joe’s and remove the casing)
An easy casserole recipe
If you are thinking that a homemade casserole will be a difficult and time-consuming recipe, you will be surprised with this one. Since the homemade sauce is quick and easy to make, you really just have to chop a few veggies and throw everything together. If you use pre-riced cauliflower, you can even cut out that step and get this in the oven even quicker.
Italian Sausage Casserole (Paleo + Whole30)
Ingredients
- 1.5 lbs Italian sausage links, (about 6-8 large links)
- 6 cups cauliflower rice
- 2 bell peppers, sliced into strips
- 1 tbsp ghee or coconut oil
For the sauce:
- 1 cup water
- 1 lemon, juice of
- 2 cups raw whole cashews
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder, (or sub 1 tbsp garlic oil)
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, (adjust to taste based on desired spice level)
Equipment
- Baking Dish
Instructions
- Make the sauce by placing all of the sauce ingredients in a high powered blender. Blend until smooth and creamy and set aside.
- Preheat oven to 400° Fahrenheit and grease a 9×13 baking dish with ghee.
- Prepare cauliflower rice if needed. Chop bell pepper as noted.
- Place cauli rice and bell pepper in the baking dish and mix. Pour in the sauce and mix again to incorporate evenly.
- Nestle the sausage links into the dish with the veggies.
- Place in the oven to bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the sausage are cooked through.
- Remove and allow to cool at least 5 minutes before serving.
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It’s in the oven now! I tasted the sauce and it was so delicious. Can’t wait to eat this. My sauce was pretty thick though. Is that normal?
Hooray! So happy you love the sauce! It’s definitely a thick sauce when we make it, too. Hope you enjoyed the full meal once it was done baking in the oven. 🙂
Sooooo if I don’t have a blender, could I potentially use plain cashew yogurt? We love sausage and peppers and this seems like an interesting take that I want to try, but I don’t want to buy a blender for it. 🙁
Fair enough. I wouldn’t want to buy a blender for one recipe either. 😉 That said, we haven’t tested the recipe with a cashew (or other non-dairy) yogurt. It would probably work but take on a different flavor since the cashew sauce doesn’t have the same cultured taste as yogurt if that makes sense. If you happen to give it a try, let us know how it goes. We’d love to hear!
I have made this twice now. Absolutely delicious.
So glad you like this recipe Ellen!