Recipe: Baked apples with rice and chicken-sausage stuffing
Thursday, August 30, 2012 at 09:00AM 
Rice-stuffed baked apples are among apple recipes at usapple.org. Baked apple recipes offer numerous options ranging from dessesrt types to those stuffed with bread or rice, sautéd vegetables, dried fruit and nuts to meatier choices such as ham and cheese or bread with savory sausage.
The approach is similar for most recipes: Core the apples, stuff them, and then bake in a shallow bath of apple juice or cider. That means there's lots of room for creativity, or to just try filling apple cups with stuffing made from a favorite family recipe.
My recipe was inspired by two recipes: Sweet Apple Chicken Sausage Fruit and Rice Salad from the chicken sausage maker Al Fresco, and the rice-stuffed apple recipe from the U.S. Apple Association. I wanted the sausage diced instead of sliced in the rice salad, and fell for the lovely presentation of the apple association's baked version. The sweet apple chicken sausage was a flavorful, savory complement to the sweet apples and raisins. As a salad, this mixture would certainly be enhanced by the crunch of slivered almonds used in the Al Fresco recipe.