RECIPE: One Pot Italian Sausage Lentils and Rice

I was inspired to make this dish after eating the Mexican Lentils and Rice for several years. (I was going to link to that recipe, and I realized that I never posted it! So I will post that another time.) I had some Italian turkey sausage to use up, so I made this and it was delicious! It's very hearty and filling, super easy to cook, and it doesn't take a ton of ingredients or time. (See notes after recipe)

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Italian Sausage Lentils and Rice

Ingredients:

2 tsp. olive oil
5 Italian sausage links (hot or sweet), uncooked
3/4 cup white rice
3/4 cup brown lentils
4 cups beef broth
1/2-1 tsp Italian seasoning (to taste)
1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes, drained
salt and pepper to taste


Directions:

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large pot. Remove the casing from the sausage links, and add the sausage to the skillet. Break up the meat as it cooks.

When the meat is browned, add the rice, lentils, broth, and seasoning. Bring the pot to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low. Leave at low heat for 20 minutes (don’t remove the lid!).

Gently stir in the tomatoes, and heat through until broth is absorbed.


Notes:

I like to use turkey sausage for this (just a taste/texture preference). You can find it with the ground turkey at the grocery store, in packages with five links. I like the hot sausage as opposed to the sweet, but either one works good.

You can make this with brown rice, but I would suggest cooking the rice in beef broth separately and then folding it into the lentils at the end. White rice cooks in the same amount of time as lentils, so it works well for this recipe. The lentils will be mushy if you cook them too long.

Don't stir or open the lid while it's cooking, otherwise the rice will get mushy and gummy.

You can skip the tomatoes, if you like. I used to make it without tomatoes, and then added them on a whim one time, and it was good!