Try these sausage-stuffed baked apples for a hearty winter breakfast
Jan. 20—A cold weather day needs a strong warm breakfast start. This is no time for cereal with cold milk poured over it. In summer, yogurt and fruit really appeals, but less so when the wind is rattling your house. Even toast cools off too much to fortify us for scraping ice off windshields.
Here's a grand warm way to start the day suggested by my niece Sarah who pondered aloud how a baked apple stuffed with breakfast sausage would taste. This line of thinking was inspired by a breakfast I like very much: slices of apples sauteed next to a link or patty or two of sausage eaten hot off the pan.
We considered whether there ought to be bread crumbs mixed with the sausage, and whether or not cheese was a good idea. But there is only just so much room in a cored apple so we concluded that we'd chop some onion finely and mix it with the sausage, then we'd stuff that into the cavity.
Do you want some apple coring advice? Don't use an apple corer which is a straight tube that whizzes through the apple, making a hole in the bottom while missing some seeds and the tough little curved lining to the seed case. Instead, get out your trusty melon baller, use the small end, and dig in at the stem until you can see the star shape holding the seeds, and scoop it all out.
This savory take on baked apple is definitely not dessert.
And yes, it means getting up early enough in the morning to do this, or it means prepping it all before bed and then tossing it into the oven before you even take a shower and get dressed. Or maybe even baking them the day before and heating them quickly in the microwave or toaster oven the next morning.
Or, heck, how about weekend brunch?
Sausage Stuffed Baked Apple
Makes as many servings as you have apples.
1 apple, per person
1 1/2 tablespoons of bulk breakfast sausage, per person
A tiny bit of onion, 1 teaspoon or less, per person
Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Core the apples, and place in a baking pan.
Mix together the sausage and onion. Stuff each apple with sausage using your thumb to push it into the core.
Spread a little extra sausage, if you have it, over the top of the apple.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until the apple bursts open and the sausage on top is browned.
