Sloppy Joes

When I was a kid, one of my favorite meals was sloppy joes. It had been a long time since I had last had sloppy joes and I had been craving them for a while. Sloppy joes are basically ground beef cooked with onions, a sweetened tomato sauce and various other seasonings and they are served in buns. After looking at a bunch of recipes the common ingredients in the sauce seem to be ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard and brown sugar. Now a days I like to add vegetables to anything that I can and I wanted to add some to the sloppy joes. I had some celery in the fridge that needed to be used so I decided to go with my three favorite base forming vegetables, onions, carrots and celery. Next up was the bean decision. There seems to be a bit of controversy as to whether beans should be included in sloppy joes or not and I decided to try them both ways and I split the recipe in half and added beans to one and not the other.

From there you have a bit of playing room with the flavours. The sloppy joes would be great just like that but I was thinking of adding some Texmex flavours and a bit of heat with some smokey chipotle chili powder and some ground cumin. That was the plan anyways. I don't use my ketchup very often and as I was digging to the back of my fridge to get it I came across my gochujang (a Korean fermented chili and bean sauce) and I thought that using that in the sloppy joes would be a great idea. So on the spur of the moment I switched from Texmex flavours to Korean flavours.

Of course the sloppy joes were super quick and easy to make. (This meal is easily doable on a weeknight.) The sloppy joe sandwiches were pretty messy, and I really filled those buns with the sloppy joe filling, but they tasted great so the mess was well worth it. I like the way that the gochujang worked in the sloppy joe both with regards to the flavour and to the heat. As for the beans, I enjoyed the version with the beans and I added the second half of the can of beans to the batch without.

Sloppy Joes

(makes 4+ servings)
Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup onion (chopped)
1/2 cup carrot (chopped)
1/2 cup celery (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (chopped)
1/4 cup ketchup
2 cups tomato sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons gochujang (optional or 1 tablespoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon cumin)
1 (19 ounce) can kidney beans (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
4+ hamburger buns

Directions:
1. Brown the ground beef in a large pan and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in the pan.
3. Add the onion, carrot and celery and saute until tender, about 10-15 minutes.
4. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about a minute.
5. Add the ketchup, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard, brown sugar, gochujang, beans, salt and pepper and simmer for a few minutes.

Use leftovers in:
Sloppy Joe Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Similar Recipes:
Texmex Sloppy Joes
Bulgogi Burgers