The Easiest Hot Sausage & Kidney Beans With Rice

This is my go-to, super-easy weeknight dinner. Hot Links, canned kidney beans, onions, peppers, and jar salsa...doesn't get any simpler than that! This recipe allows for mindless "slap it together" nights or nights when you want to take a little more effort and make it *really* yummy!

• Ready In: 35 mins
• Serves: 4

Ingredients

•  cooked rice (for 4)
• 1  tablespoon  vegetable oil
• 1  green bell pepper, deseeded and chopped
• 1  onion, peeled and chopped (yellow or sweet)
• 15  ounces kidney beans, drained
•  hillshire farm  beef hot links (6 sausages)
•  salsa

Directions

1. Get your rice started so that it'll be finished cooking when you are ready to eat.
2. Slice the Hot Links lengthwise and then cut into bite-sized pieces.
3. Peel your onion & de-seed the pepper. Cut the green pepper and onion into 1/2 inch chunks (you could also do strips, if you prefer).
4. Heat your oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add your peppers and onions and cook until they are the desired "done-ness" (I prefer mine well-cooked, so I occasionally pop them in the microwave for a minute or two to speed up the cooking process.).
5. Remove peppers & onions from skillet (place in a bowl until later).
6. Place sausage in skillet and cook until desired "done-ness" (we like ours nearly "blackened" with a bit of crisp on the outside).
7. Drain most of the oil from skillet and then return onions/peppers. Add the can of kidney beans (drained).
8. Continue cooking for several minutes to heat the beans and get some of the sausage flavor in the veggies.
9. To serve: spoon a scoop of cooked rice on each plate/bowl (this is a bowl meal at our house!) Then top with the sausage mixture. A hearty spoonful (or two) of salsa on top finishes it off!
10. This is usually from cabinets/fridge to plate in about 30 minutes. This time-range depends on how well cooked you like the vegetables, if you do any pre-cooking in the microwave, etc.
11. In our house this recipe, as indicated above, serves 2 adults and 2 children (under the age of 3), with one serving leftover. I estimate that to serve *about* four.