Sheet pan dinners are easily one of my favorite types of recipes. They’re super easy and pretty darn hard to screw up. This recipe for sheet pan Italian sausage and pepper hoagies is a super flavorful, easy meal that pleases even the pickiest of eaters.
Cooking the Italian Sausage and Peppers
To start, you’re going to want to cook the Italian sausages alone for 20 minutes on a good nonstick cookie sheet sprayed with cooking oil. These are the baking sheets we have and they have worked really well the last few years. After that, flip the sausages over and add the peppers and onions to the cookie sheet. You’ll want to toss these with a bit of olive oil as well as Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. You’ll then proceed to roast these until just barely softened. At this point, the sausages should reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees too. The reason we don’t want the peppers totally softened is that they will cook more when we broil the hoagies at the end of the recipe. If you get them too soft now, they’ll be mushy later on.
Side note: we recently got an inner-oven thermometer to tell us when our meats are fully cooked and I LOVE it. This is the one we got. I really like it because you can take the one monitor with you and it will alarm when the probe in the oven reaches your designated temperature.
Assembling the Hoagies
While the Italian sausages and peppers are roasting, you’ll prepare your garlic bread hoagie rolls. To do this, you’ll melt some butter and mix in some garlic, Italian seasoning, and pepper. I didn’t add salt at this point because we used salted butter. Once you finish making the butter mixture, you’ll use a basting brush to brush it over both sides of the inside of your hoagies. These are the silicone basting brushes we have. They come in super handy. We actually have two of them because we use them so often.
When the sausages and peppers are done, you’ll switch the oven to broil and then just very lightly toast the hoagies for about 1-2 minutes. You only want them to be just barely golden brown because you’ll continue toasting them once you add the sausages, peppers and cheese. You don’t want them to burn before the cheese melts.
When they’re just barely toasted, pull them out and add one sausage and a scoop of peppers to each roll. Then, top this with a tablespoon or two of marinara sauce. You can use more or less depending on how much sauce you prefer. You’ll then top each hoagie with a slice of provolone cheese. I cut mine in half to ensure I covered all of the toppings with cheese. After you assemble each hoagie, you’ll broil them again to melt the cheese for another minute or two.
Sheet Pan Italian Sausage and Pepper Hoagies
Equipment
- 2 non-stick baking sheets
- cooking spray
- silicone basting brush
- tongs
Ingredients
- 5 Italian sausages
- 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch strips
- 1 green bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch strips
- 1/2 large onion, cut into 1/2 inch strips
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp Italian seasoning, divided
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 4 tbsp salted butter, melted
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 5 hoagie rolls
- marinara sauce, to taste I recommend 1-2 tbsp per hoagie.
- 5 slices provolone cheese, cut in half
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray two non-stick cookie sheets with cooking spray.
- Place sausages on one of the cookie sheets. Bake for 20 minutes.
- Using tongs, flip sausages over. Add peppers and onions to the cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle peppers and onions with salt and pepper and half of the Italian seasoning. Toss so that all peppers and onions are coated with olive oil and seasoning. Bake 20-25 minutes or until just softened and sausages reach 160°F internally.
- Meanwhile, combine butter, remaining Italian seasoning, garlic and pepper in a small bowl.
- Open up the hoagie rolls lengthwise, ensuring that they don't fully come apart. Using a basting brush, preferably a silicone one, brush the butter mixture over the inside of each hoagie. Arrange the hoagies on the second baking sheet.
- When sausages are finished, switch the oven to the broil setting. Broil the buttered hoagie rolls until just lightly toasted and slightly golden brown, about 1-2 minutes. Don't let them get more toasted than this, or they'll burn at the end of the recipe.
- Using tongs, assemble the hoagies with one sausage each and a couple scoops of peppers and onions. Cover each with 1-2 tbsp marinara. You can use more or less sauce depending on your preference. Then arrange the cheese on each hoagie lengthwise so that all of the toppings are covered. Broil until the cheese melts, 1-2 minutes.
- Serve and enjoy!
Other Ideas and Sides
How easy is that?! This is a super simple filling recipe that can be adapted for everyone! For a meatless alternative, you could use Beyond sausages. For picky eaters, you could omit the peppers. Or if you have little eaters, you could chop up the sausages and just serve them alongside the peppers with garlic bread on the side, which is what we did for our toddler. If you are having this for a dinner and want more of a a complete meal, you could serve the hoagies with salad or a pasta of your choice! One of my dishes that would complement these hoagies really well is my Four Cheese Baked Gnocchi which tastes similar to mac and cheese.
I hope you all enjoy this recipe as much as we did! Think it’s a keeper? Let others know they should try it too by commenting and leaving a rating down below! Want to see more yummy recipes posted each Friday? Subscribe below and you’ll be notified every time I post. You can also feel free to check out some of my other recipes down below or on my recipes page here. Please feel free to follow me on instagram and pinterest too! Thanks everyone. See you again next week!
My wife and I tried this tonight and it was delicious !! Many ways to improvise too!! Can’t wait to try this again
Thanks so much for your feedback! I’m glad you enjoyed them!
These Italian sausage Hoagies were very, very good! We changed the recipe up just a bit by using pepper jack cheese and spicy sausage, although that is the nice thing about this recipe, you can change it up to meet everyone in the family’s likes and dislikes, and it makes it that much better. You must try this recipe. You will love it and it will soon become one of your family’s faves!
Thank you so much for the feedback! I’m glad you were able to put your own spin on the recipe and made it your own!