Hold on - I need a break in the post to tell you a backstory: she was originally supposed to bring a dish-to-pass and asked if I felt like making anything, she didn't care what. I remembered a recipe that a friend gave me years ago for Green Chile Frittata and I thought that'd be a great buffet thing for her to take to work, but I questioned the recipe because it says it takes 3 pounds of cheese! 3 pounds? Hmmm, I worried that wasn't right - can anything that fits in a 13x9 cake pan take 3 pounds of cheese? So a few days ago I made a tester run of the frittata and halved the amount of cheese just to see if that was going to taste right - and it does. It is a delicious casserole and I was confident about sending it into work with her. Then she tells me that she doesn't need the frittata anymore, she needs sloppy joes instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Back to the sloppy's...Cathy told me once that they put grape jelly in their sloppy joe sauce - yep, you read that right, grape jelly! I don't have her recipe but I googled to see if anyone else makes it like that and there are lots of recipes to pick from...I know, weird - right? I combined a few recipes to come up with this one, and fortunately this sauce turned out so good (otherwise I planned to make a store run for Manwich!). I had Dave try it and he said it tasted just like his mom used to make, I take that as a big compliment (Shirl was a great cook!) and it's now a keeper recipe. I'm never using Manwich again, these are SO much better!
Pssst: don't tell my sissy but it's really easy to make homemade sloppy joes - I might have made it sound like I slaved away all day on it but it comes together very quickly ;)
I used 6 pounds of burger so needed a lot of sauce - I made 6 cups and used almost all of it - here is what I will do next time for a smaller batch (if you want 6 pounds worth just triple these amounts!).
Joes:
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- garlic salt
Put the beef and onions in a large skillet and sprinkle with garlic salt, cook over medium heat until the meat is no longer pink. Drain it really well then wipe out the pan - greasy sloppy joes are gross.
To make them sloppy:
- 1 can condensed tomato soup, undiluted
- 1 cup ketchup
- 3 Tablespoons grape jelly
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
- 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
- 1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
Mix the sauce ingredients together in a big bowl and taste it - I added a few more dashes of this and that to get it how I wanted. If you like it sweeter add more jelly or brown sugar, more tangy add additional vinegar or mustard. Play with it. Once it tastes good to you, add it to the drained ground beef and cook until it gets hot (or put it in a slow cooker on low for 4 hours).
For Jen to take to work I put it in a big ziplock baggie (I had a little worry that the bag was going to break open it was so heavy!) and then she transferred the mixture to a crock pot once she got to work. Easier than trying to carry a full crockpot in from the car!
PS: I'll post the frittata recipe soon - the sloppy joes were a hit but they have no idea how good the frittata was that they missed out on! :)
One year ago: s'more pie
Two years ago: mashed cauliflower
One year ago: s'more pie
Two years ago: mashed cauliflower
I am one of those experimented upon people who works with Jenny. I haven't had a Sloppy Joe in years, but this is going in my regular dinner rotation. So. Freaking. Good. And your blog is now on my interwebs speed dial.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the cheesecake this week was phenomenal too! So, thanks for making all of Jenny's bring to work foods. :)