JoePa's Black and Gold Stuffed Banana Pepper Surprise
Joe from Pittsburgh, PA

Ingredients:                                 (Makes 25-40 peppers)
Hot banana peppers
Mild Banana peppers
1 lb of hot sausage
1 cup Romano cheese
1 lb of mild sausage
1-cup Parmesan cheese
1 lb ground beef - 85% lean
2-3 eggs
4 cups Italian bread crumbs hot pepper seeds (optional)
Italian Bread, sliced garlic, minced
1 can Italitan tomato sauce
2 cups water, or as needed

Directions:
 Cut off tops of banana peppers, clean and rinse – set aside to stuff.  Have enough to use all the meat you have prepared.

Mix in big enough bowl or dish,  1lb of hot sausage and ½ lb of ground meat.

Add in 1 or 2 eggs, ½ cup of Romano and ½ cup of parmesan cheese, add a pinch of minced garlic and a pinch of parsley flakes (small handful), 2 c. of Ital. Bread crumbs, add water 1c. Or as needed to keep mixture moist. MIX CONTENTS WELL.

Stuff hot sausage/meat mixture into hot peppers. Put into glass baking dish and cover with Italian tomato sauce. Cover dish with aluminum foil while cooking.

Preheat oven 350 degrees. Cook peppers for 1 hour at 350.

For mild peppers do the same mixture as above except use 1lb of mild sausage and ½ lb beef and stuff into mild peppers. It should be the remaining ingredients left on your counter top.

SERVE HOT WITH ITALIAN BREAD.

 SURPRISE
The Surprise comes in when people are eating them. Cook the hot banana peppers together with the mild banana peppers, only you know which are hot and which are mild.

TIPS:
 You can use the pepper seeds out of the peppers you cleaned in your mix.

Don’t be afraid to increase or decrease mix ingredients, you are trying to get the meat to a nice consistency to be able to stuff it into the peppers without any hassles.

Cut off the tips of each pepper and then pinch the bottom, your goal here is to allow air to escape while stuffing-if you don’t do this your pepper will probably crack. *This is especially helpful when stuffing smaller peppers.

You can use a jar of ready-to-go –sauce if you are in a big hurry. It’s OK to freeze the peppers that you don’t want to cook right away. You’ll have to use at a later date.