Episode 022 Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

Intro: Sloppy Joe, Sloppy, sloppy Joe. Now welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: I hope you know what recipe we’re talking about today. We are keeping it casual and super easy with a sloppy Joe sandwich. I grew up in the eighties and nineties in Iowa, and so this was kind of a common dinner item, I guess a weeknight dinner item. They may have also been known to you as taverns or made right sandwiches, or maybe even manwitch. 

Now, if you’re like, what in the heck is a sloppy Joe? It is basically a ground beef sandwich with a little onion, and a little garlic that has this sweet, tangy, salty, savory sauce that coats all of the ground beef, pile it on top of a bun, and there you go. I do like pickles on mine too, though. So that’s a great addition. 

A couple of tips when you’re making your sloppy Joe sandwiches at home. You want to use leaner ground beef, so I like to use an 85/15. It just has a little bit less fat than an 80/20 when you’re cooking your ground beef in a skillet and it’s cooking in its own juice and fat. Keeping it a little less greasy is a good thing.

Another tip is that you want to have a little bit of a heartier bun when you’re eating sloppy joes. Since the sauce coats the ground beef, it can tend to make your bun soggy. So this is a good time to go for something a little bit heartier like a Kaiser or a potato roll. Those are all my tips. There’s not much to it. 

Sloppy Joes Recipe: So let’s get into this recipe for sloppy Joe sandwiches. You are going to start by adding one and a half pounds of ground beef to a large skillet over medium-high heat. You’ll cook the ground beef while you’re crumbling it until it’s completely cooked through, which will take about seven minutes.

Then you’re going to want to drain off any fat from the cooked beef, removing the beef from the pan as well, so you’re left with an empty skillet. Now in that skillet, you’re going to add, if you need a little bit of oil, add a little bit of oil and add one cup of yellow onion that is finally diced, and three garlic cloves that are minced. You’re going to saute that until the onions are pretty translucent, which is gonna be about five minutes. Then add the beef back to the onions and stir everything to combine it together. Finally, over low heat, you’re going to add two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, three tablespoons of brown sugar, one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of mustard, half a heaping cup of ketchup, one teaspoon of kosher salt, and then any black pepper to taste however you like it.

Go ahead and stir that all together so that the sauce coats everything and that’s it. You’re ready to have Sloppy Joe’s. All you do to serve this is pile it high on top of buns and that’s it. Now, as I said before, I do like pickles on top of mine, but that is totally optional.

When you are serving Sloppy Joe sandwiches, you definitely have to keep the side dishes casual. We’re talking tater tots or potato chips, maybe some raw veggies or fruit. It’s like dinner casual, clean out the fridge of side dish night. 

That’s it for today’s episode. Of course, I will link the full printable recipe to homemade sloppy Joe’s right in the show notes so you can find it when you’re ready to make them for dinner. 

If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you rate and review this podcast in your preferred podcast player. That will just help other people find Let’s Make Dinner. 

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode makes your dinner time a little easier year.