Fiery Chipotle Rice and Sausage

Morita chiles are red, fully mature Chipotles. This gives them a unique, medium – hot smokey flavor which is popular in many Southwestern dishes. These can be added to sauces (including Mole) to add smokey flavor and maintain the red color of the sauces. These peppers are about 2-4 inches in length, 1 inch in width, and have a deep brick reddish brown color. The word Chipotle translated to smoked chile. Consider the Chipotle a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hottest). Scoville heat units 7,000-25,000.

Suggested Use:
Use Morita in enchilada sauces, chili, stews, barbecue ribs, and corn bread. Their smoky quality combines well with poultry, meats and fall squash.

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Ingredients:

1 pound sweet turkey Italian sausage (about 5 links)
1 tsp.olive oil
cooking spray
1 (16 oz.) package frozen pepper stir-fry with yellow, green, and red peppers and onions, thawed (such as Birds Eye)
1 cup uncooked converted rice
3/4 cup thinly sliced celery
1 tsp. dried thyme
3/4 tsp. sugar
1 (14-1/2 oz.) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
1 (10-1/2 oz.) can beef broth
1 to 2 drained canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced

Instructions:

Remove the casings from the sausage and tear into small pieces. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook for about 7 minutes or until browned. Stir to crumble even more, then remove the sausage from the pan and drain.

Add the pepper stir-fry mix and the remaining ingredients to the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil and cover. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sausage. Cover the pan and let it stand for about 10 minutes.

Note:

Store the remaining chipotles in an airtight container and freeze for later use.

Yields 6 servings.

Recipe from “Cooking Light Magazine” March 2001.