Pepper, Sausage, & Onion Pizzadillas

I love pizza, but sometimes it's just way too much work and prep to go through making the dough, giving it enough time to do its thing, and heating the oven up to a billion degrees to help ensure a delicious chewy and bubbly crust. I mean. Sometimes convenience just wins. My boyfriend would live off take out pizza if I let him, but these pizzadillas inspired from Budget Bytes help keep us both happy. He gets gooey, melty, cheesy, meaty goodness, and I get to dip things in sauce. Everyone wins. Especially pizza.

I love Italian sausage because it's like a cheat for great flavour wherever it goes (one of the many things I've learned from the Budget Bytes blog). I usually do break it up out of the casings and use it more like ground meat - I find it helps distribute the flavour a little nicer rather than cooking the sausage as-is and slicing it into medallions, but if that's more your thing I certainly won't judge. If you can find casing-free Italian sausage that is just left as ground meat, even better! I usually buy a large club pack and freeze it at home in bags of four links. That way it's easy to just grab a bag from the freezer and not have to use a whole package at once.

Pepper, Sausage, & Onion Pizzadillas
Author: adapted from Budget Bytes
Serves: 3-4 pizzadillas
Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

• 2 links Italian sausage (I used mild since I prefer to tailor my spiciness)
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, deseeded and diced
• 1/2 package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• dash red pepper flakes, to taste (optional)
• 3-4 ten inch whole wheat tortillas
• 1 cup Thick & Rich Pizza sauce recipe from Budget Bytes, for dipping (or store bought pizza/marinara sauce)

Directions
Push links of Italian sausage out of their casing into a small frying pan and fry until brown, breaking up the sausage into small pieces. Add green bell pepper, red onion, and optional red pepper flakes and saute until onion is softened. In a small mixing bowl, combine softened cream cheese and shredded cheese. Add meat mixtures and stir well to combine. Add 2-3 heaping tablespoons of mixture to one half of a tortilla shell, and dry fry in a saucepan on medium-low heat until browned on both sides. Remove from pan, slice into quarters, and serve with dipping sauce.

Step-by-Step Photos

Push the sausage links out of their casing and fry in a small pan, breaking up the meat into small pieces. Once the sausage is mostly cooked, add the red pepper flakes, onion, and green bell pepper. Saute until the onion is soft and the bell pepper is bright green.

Add the meat mixture to the softened cream cheese and shredded mozzarella. If your cheese isn't entirely softened yet, the warm meat mixture will definitely help that out. Use a wooden spoon (maybe even the same one you sauteed with? Rebel.) to mix together well.

Spoon a bit of the mixture onto an opened tortilla, leaving room around the border of the tortilla for frying. Fold the tortilla over and gently press to make it stick together.

I've found the best way to fry any type of quesadilla is low-and-slow. That gives time for all of the insides to get all melty, which is especially important if you are grabbing a bowl of leftover quesadilla filling from the fridge. Move the pizzadilla around on the pan frequently to ensure it doesn't stick, and carefully flip it over when sufficiently browned on one side.

Remove the pizzadilla from the pan when finished and transfer to a cutting board to slice into appropriately-sized wedges. Whether that's quarters, thirds, or halves is up to you.

Serve with pizza sauce or marinara sauce for dipping.