Foodie Friday: Autumnal Sausage Casserole

Update: My mom took my advice and cooked this up with stuffing mix instead of the rice. She said she browned the sausage, onion, and apple and then put it and a box of stuffing mix into the Crock Pot with the amount of water that the stuffing box called for. She said it cooked fast and she had to turn it down after a few hours. And my cooking intuition came through. She said it was delicious.

After reading about the CrockPot Lady making this for her family, I decided that I must try myself. Seeing as I have not made a pledge to use my CrockPot everyday this year, I decided to make it according to the Taste of Home website instead. (With a few tweaks, of course.)

I started by chopping the 1/2 cup of celery, 1 medium green apple, and 1 small yellow onion. I had a smoked sausage link that I substituted for the bulk sausage. I cooked these ingredients through on the stove top in 2 T. of butter.

While I was chopping, I started up the trusty old rice cooker and got 1 1/2 c. uncooked rice going. Once the rice was cooked, I added it to the other ingredients on the stove top.

I then seasoned the mix with cinnamon, all spice, salt and pepper. And put it all in a greased large rectangular glass baking dish. I let it bake for about 20 minutes at 350. (This is really just to make sure that the ingredients are heated through. I would think that you could skip this step if you are in a hurry as they just all came off the stove.)

M and I enjoyed this dish. It is very different for a casserole. M said it reminded him of rice pudding. The original recipe called for raisins and that grossed me out a bit. M thought that they would have been a good addition. You'll have to decided for yourself once you have explored your feelings on raisins in a casserole.

I was thinking that you could also skip the rice and add more of a stuffing mix instead.