(Mis)Remembering (and Making) Sloppy Joes

SAM_0890

It constantly amazes me how some foods I remember from my youth absolutely escape my taste memory so when I try them now, they are so at variance with my recollection that it is as if they are some other dish entirely. Perhaps this has happened to you, too. Certain cookies that I recall my grandmother used to buy, for example, that simply don’t match my memory at all when I eat them now; well, we can attribute that to manufacturers’ reformulation. But what about sloppy joes?

I can’t even recall when I last had a sloppy joe. I simply never make them, but for some reason or other, the other day, I had an urge to eat one. I assumed a basic tomato sauce with hamburger in it would be the way to go, but I thought I would check to see if by some chance there was something else I ought to include.

I was certain that I remembered making them from Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls given to me by my mom and dad on my twelfth birthday so I dug the book out and looked them up. The ingredients were ground meat, catsup, tomato soup, and hamburger buns. I thought, “Really? Catsup? Tomato Soup?” So I checked a few other sources where I discovered no mention of tomato soup but that to catsup I ought to add brown sugar and Worcestershire Sauce. Good heavens. I don’t even like catsup that much. I suppose brown sugar provides some sort of sweet and sour effect.

Nowdays, there are upscale, from scratch, versions of sloppy joes, and even vegetarian ones made with lentils. There was even a breakfast sloppy joe with a fried egg on top of the filling. But none of those sounded right. It occurred to me that classic sloppy joes had an ad hoc quality. Fry up some burger, dump in the catsup until it looked right, add a little Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar until it tastes right, and there you go. Drop on burger buns, put a pickle on the side and call everyone to eat. You can make enough for one or a half dozen.

Maybe I only imagined making the sloppy joes from my little kid cook book.

For my sloppy joe experiment, I decided that I would go the catsup route, and add brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce, even though I don’t usually cook (or eat) like that. I made enough for one, and the ingredients below can be multiplied—carefully—to make more. For a pound of ground beef don’t exceed a quarter cup of brown sugar. If you don’t wish to rely on catsup, a scant two cups of pre-prepared tomato sauce with seasonings will work with the pound of beef as long as you cook it down enough to thicken it. Chopped onion, chopped green pepper, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste, and a squirt of catsup, too, should do the trick. Toast the burger rolls to help prevent sogginess even if these are supposed to be sloppy. Not sporting of me, I know, but in my book, this is fork food.

And how did it taste? Well, I guess I am mostly reminded why I don’t make sloppy joes very much, but that doesn’t mean you and yours won’t enjoy them.

Sloppy Joes
 
Ingredients
  • About a quarter of a pound of ground beef per person
  • About a tablespoon of light brown sugar per person
  • Two to three tablespoons of catsup
  • Worcestershire sauce to taste
  • One burger roll per person
Instructions
  1. Brown the ground meat in a frying pan.
  2. Add the brown sugar and mix until it dissolves and the ground meat has a glossy appearance.
  3. Add the catsup, mixing and simmering until it holds the meat together, adding more if necessary.
  4. Season to taste with Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper.
  5. Toast the burger rolls and fill with sloppy joe mixture.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.