The Un-Sloppiest Joe

Have I mentioned how 90’s Radio on Pandora ROCKS?

For years I’ve been craving Sloppy Joes; and the reason why I hadn’t made them before is that MigL doesn’t like them…get this…because they’re messy.  I just about died laughing the first time I heard this.  Seriously?! But you’re taking out all of the fun from eating a Sloppy Joe!  I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but he is the neatest eater I’ve ever met.  I’d bet he’d eat out of a divided plate if I gave him one and it’d have to be a green one, of course, because it’s his favorite color.  Except this one is too lime green and I’m sure he’d prefer one that was more of a hunter green or forest green.

I was raking my brain tonight trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  Lately I’ve been trying to use up the ingredients that I already have in my house to save money as opposed to finding a recipe a few days in advance and going to the grocery store specifically to buy those ingredients on the recipe – not that that’s a bad thing to do, I just some how don’t use up all of the extra ingredients, especially if I overbuy veggies, and then I’m left with an handful of untouched veggies.  OR I’ll buy the ingredients for my recipe and then completely forget that I ever had said recipe.  Poor spoiled veggies; and then I have to look for another recipe to use the ingredients I’ve just bought.

So tonight, I wanted to find a recipe for which I already had my ingredients.  Ground beef, carrots and celery.  What’s a girl to do?  I found recipes but none really caught my eye until I fell upon this Sloppy Joes recipe.  It’s A-mazing.  You should DEFINITELY try this one.  What a lifesaver!  I definitely plan making this one more often!

The reason why I call this the un-sloppiest Joe is that I didn’t have any bread.  What? No bread?  How do you have a Sloppy Joe without bread?  Yes, I know, it’s preposterous and I should probably be banned from the kitchen forevermore for even saying this. 

You see, I ran out of sliced bread yesterday as I sadly cherished the last of the Thanksgiving turkey sandwich I’d had for dinner (leftover turkey sandwiches is probably one of my favorite things about Thanksgiving).  So, because I hadn’t planned ahead, I was left without bread.  In looking at the recipe below, I thought about pairing it with some tortillas and make some sort of taco style Sloppy Joe burritos.  But I nixed that idea almost immediately.  Wait a minute – I have potatoes!  I’d seen a Shepard’s pie recipe in my quest to find tonight’s dinner and thought I could mesh those ideas together.  I figured potatoes are fairly filling and the last I remember eating Sloppy Joes they were pretty filling as well.  So why not pair these two filling foods together?

So off I went, merrily skipping my way through the kitchen.  A little of this, a little of that.  When there were 10 minutes left of cooking, I scrubbed two large potatoes, poked holes in them, wrapped them in Saran wrap and popped them in the microwave for 7 minutes (a great timesaver I’ll always remember from my awesome mother-in-law) – and voila, semi-instant baked potato!  Add some Sloppy Joe mix to your potato and you’ve got a somewhat messy-less dinner!  No messy hands or plops of Joe anywhere!

Sloppy Joes

Yield: 12 servings
Serving size: 1 sandwich
WW PointsPlus: 5

Ingredients
3/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
3/4 pound ground round
2 cups no-salt-added tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
12 (1 1/2-ounce) rolls, split

Directions
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add first 3 ingredients; cook until beef is browned, stirring to crumble. Stir in tomato sauce and next 8 ingredients (tomato sauce through black pepper); reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and cook 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Spoon 1/4 cup beef mixture over bottom half of each bun. Cover with top halves.

Latin Cook’s notes:
I didn’t have any bell peppers, tomato paste or bread and used Ragu sauce instead of the tomato sauce.  It still turned out incredibly amazing.  I’m sure it would turn out equally as great if you chose to use soy crumbles instead of ground beef.  Aww, what the heck – I dare ya!

On a different note, I went to visit a my co-worker in the hospital tonight.  It broke my heart when she told me this afternoon she’d been in the hospital since Friday night with some serious health issues.  I’ve been worried about her for a while – so I ask that you please pray for her and her family.

Pin It