Serious Eats: Recipes
Sunday Supper: Sloppy Joes
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
I don't know what did it, but this past week I'd been craving a good sloppy Joe. Luckily, I had just the recipe for these tangy-sweet sandwiches.
You see, a couple years ago, I had a similar craving, but I wanted to avoid whatever weirdness might be in those canned mixes. I was thinking aloud about this around a coworker at the time, and the following week, out of nowhere, she dropped off a hand-written recipe on my desk for "Hamburger Goo." I'm not going to lie and say it's faster than opening a can and pouring, but really, all you have to do is dice some onion and chop some celery and you've done the heavy lifting. After that, it's just a matter of browning some ground beef and measuring out some basic pantry staples.
If you're a fan of the canned stuff, this recipe is a pretty close approximation, and you can feel all the better for it knowing exactly what goes into it.
Sloppy Joes
- makes at least 6, maybe more -
Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup diced onion
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons flour, or more
6 sandwich buns
Procedure
1. Brown the beef in a skillet over medium heat; pour off fat.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, vinegar, and mustard. Add this mixture to the beef along with the celery and onion, and ketchup. Stir together to combine.
3. Sprinkle flour over mixture and stir to mix well. If mixture is still not thick enough to your liking, add a bit more flour until it is. Serve on buns.