The Sloppy Joe You Remember—Only Quicker, Juicier, and Better

Many years ago, as I sat cross-legged on the floor of my living room, I was introduced to one of the great American classics—the sloppy Joe—by way of the 1995 movie It Takes Two. Starring the Olsen twins and Kirstie Alley, it was *the* movie I begged my parents to rent each time we visited Blockbuster. Sure, the plot—a classic rom-com revolving around the twins trying to get their caregivers together—is charming. But as a child, what really intrigued me were the scenes of summer camp by a lake. I have vivid memories of one of the twins trying sloppy Joes for the first time: her initial disgust upon seeing the gloopy sandwich, followed by the sheer delight of biting into a burger bun heaped with sweet, tangy, tomato-y meat sauce.

It wasn’t until years later that I finally tried a sloppy Joe. It was good, but definitely not as delicious as I had imagined it to be. I was put off by the sandwich’s excessive sweetness and the unpleasantly greasy coating in my mouth. In a recent New Yorker restaurant review, Helen Rosner described the sloppy Joe as “an unsung icon of Americana cooking” that “has become an avatar of the horrible school lunch, a cliché that tends to go along with hairnets, greasy aprons, and other elements of canteen grotesquerie.” 

But then I had a kid. And in my bid to get my son to eat something—anything!—other than breakfast cereal, applesauce, and toast, I decided to give the sloppy Joe another go. This time, I’d make it myself, and it would not be gloopy, greasy, or cloyingly sweet.

Where Did Sloppy Joes Come From, Anyway?

As is the case with many classic and nostalgic recipes, there are numerous variations of sloppy Joes. Some recipes call for green bell peppers; this is the kind my husband grew up eating at his Midwestern summer camp by the Great Lakes. (This iteration did not fly with our editorial director, Daniel, who didn’t think it tasted enough like the sloppy Joes he recalled fondly from his own childhood.) In his book The Cuban Sandwich: A History of Layers, Andrew T. Huse suggests that the bartender José “Sloppy Joe” Abeal, who lived in Havana in the 1920s, invented the sandwich when he began serving picadillo (a Cuban hash of ground meat) or ropa vieja (a Cuban beef stew) between bread. Another rumor claims sloppy Joes are a riff on Iowa loose meat sandwiches. It’s unclear how the sloppy Joe rose to fame, but it did, becoming a staple of cafeterias and summer camps across the United States.

My Take on the Sloppy Joe: Nostalgia, but Better

When I set about to develop a recipe for sloppy Joes, I wanted to keep the essential flavor profile and key ingredients—ground beef and a sweet, tangy tomato sauce—but make it better than what people remember. My recipe takes a page from Daniel’s basic ragù recipe: I brown half the ground beef over high heat, allowing for the Maillard reaction, a series of chemical reactions that occur when heat transforms sugars and proteins in your food, producing complex new flavors and aromas. Browning the meat well gives the sauce a deeply savory flavor but can also dry out the meat. Browning just half the ground beef strikes a balance, allowing you to get those satisfying roasted flavors while leaving the other half of the meat nice and tender. They come together, creating the perfect bite.

The sauce is nicely thick, thanks to a slurry of cornstarch, and gets its tomato-y flavor from a mixture of tomato or marinara sauce and ketchup. When choosing a ketchup brand, I recommend Heinz (and no, I am not paid by the brand). While developing this recipe, I experimented with several different ketchup brands, and Heinz was the only brand that consistently delivered the sweet-tart tomato flavor so key to classic sloppy Joes.

While ketchup is sweet, this recipe also includes brown sugar—the ingredient’s molasses brings depth and complements the sharpness and tang from Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce. My version also gets a savory oomph from a quarter teaspoon of MSG. It’s an optional ingredient, but one that really helps round out the sauce. The resulting sauce is probably nothing like the cafeteria version you grew up with—but hits all the same nostalgic notes. 

Did my kid eat it? Oh, you bet he did. And something tells me yours will, too.

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