ZESTY ITALIAN CASSEROLE

This is one of those recipes that is so incredibly bad for you that you just know it’s going to taste good! The other nice thing about this one is that you don’t have to remember to thaw it ahead of time – it cooks from frozen!

ZESTY ITALIAN CASSEROLE
8-10 servings

2 lb. ground Italian turkey sausage
¼ cup chopped onion
¼ cup Italian seasoning
2 cups canned tomato sauce
1-½ cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
½ cup sour cream
2 8 oz. cans crescent rolls or enough whole wheat dough to make one loaf of bread
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

Brown ground turkey sausage and onions. Drain excess fat. Stir in tomato sauce and seasoning. Remove from heat and spoon into ungreased 9x13 baking dish. Combine mozzarella cheese and sour cream. Spoon over meat sauce. Separate crescent rolls and place rectangles over cheese or spread bread dough across top of casserole. Melt butter and combine with Parmesan cheese. Spread over dough. Cover and freeze.

To serve, place into 325 degree oven WHILE FROZEN. Bake 1½ to 2 hours or until done and bread or roll dough is brown. Check often. If bread dough becomes too brown, cover to finish cooking.

MY TIPS/CHANGES:
1. I used Jimmy Dean Regular sausage and then just added a little extra Italian seasoning.
2. After I brown the sausage, I dump it into a colander in the sink and run hot water over it to rinse off a lot of the grease. Not that it helps much in this recipe because it’s already heart attack on a plate, but I do this whenever I brown meat and it just makes me feel better!
3. The Italian seasoning I buy in a big container from Gordon’s. Much cheaper that way! I buy many of my seasonings at Gordon’s.
4. I only used 1½ cans of crescent rolls. They covered the entire pan and that way I was able to use fewer cans.