Italian sausages cooked until tender in tomato sauce with peppers and onions on hoagie rolls to create the best Italian sausage sandwiches ever!

This is a great slow cooker recipe! Sausage and pepper sandwiches with a rich tomato sauce on a sandwich roll. You can make these in the summer when you don’t want to heat up the kitchen, or it’s a fantastic weeknight meal that comes together easily once you get home in the evening after a busy day.

Ingredients:

Italian sausage links- you can use spicy Italian sausages or mild Italian sausage for this recipe.
A large jar of pre-made pasta sauce – We like to use a brand that does not have a lot of olive oil in the sauce. The sausages let out a lot of fat and if the sauce already has oil in it, the recipe becomes too oily.
A can of tomato paste
Sweet bell peppers – green bell peppers, red peppers, orange peppers, garden sweet Italian peppers and yellow peppers work well in this recipe
Sweet Onion – You can use any onion including red onion in this recipe
Fresh garlic
Dried oregano or Italian seasoning
Hoagie buns- You could also use french bread, rolls, or hot dog buns – You can also serve this with pasta instead!
Optional: Red pepper flakes for extra spice

View the FULL RECIPE for Italian Sausage Sandwiches recipe below

Instructions

In a crock pot mix together all of the sauce ingredients.
Then add the garlic, peppers, and onions and stir until coated with the sauce.
Nestle the sausages into the crockpot and spoon some of the sauce and peppers and onions over the sausages so that they are covered. If you want to reduce the fat content of the sausages you can boil them for about3 minutes in water before placing them into the crockpot with the sauce.
Cook on low for 10 hours. The casing of the sausages should be very soft and the peppers and onions should be broken down and almost a part of the sauce.
Serve on hoagie buns or over pasta or rice.

Notes

This recipe is extremely flexible. You can halve or double the recipe very easily!

How to serve

We like to serve these sausages in a hoagie roll like a hot sausage sandwich. You can serve the sandwiches as is or with a little mozzarella cheese or parmesan cheese on top.

The sausage help to create a delicious tomato sauce that tastes great over pasta, or rice, or you can scoop it up with Italian bread.

Store any leftover sausages and sauce in an airtight container. It will keep in the fridge for up to a week. Or you can freeze leftovers in a freezer-safe ziplock bag and they will last up to 6 months in the freezer.

How to use the leftover red sauce:

If the sausages are gone but you still have extra sauce, it makes a fantastic pasta sauce with penne or rigatoni for another easy weeknight dinner.

Or you could use it as the sauce on a homemade pizza. It adds so much flavor!

My personal favorite way to use it is to pour the extra sauce into a large saucepan or cast iron skillet that is heated to medium heat. Crack in a few eggs to poach in the sauce. Season the eggs with salt and black pepper. Once the eggs are cooked to your desired doneness, serve them with some of the sauce and a piece or two of crusty bread. This is an easy recipe that is a delicious way to use your leftovers!

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