A Sloppy Success!

The title is quite fitting for this dish that I tried on Sunday. I thought I'd start off with something slightly simple, but that I hadn't actually cooked myself before, thats right, "Sloppy Joes."

Getting messy when you're a kid (and maybe a grown-up too) is a whole lot of fun, so its no wonder that this is certainly a delightful memory of my favorite childhood meals!

The recipe that was used was from:

http://www.allrecipes.com/

and as my mother taught me...I only used it as a skeleton, and a basic structure of what I was going for.

Here is the recipe, and then the adjustments I made:

Actual Recipe ---------------------------------------------> My Rendition of the Recipe

2 pounds lean ground beef <--------------> 1 1/4 ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion <-----------------> 1 whole chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery <--------------------> 1 whole orange pepper
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed tomato soup<-----> We used home made Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup ketchup <-------------------------> we squeezed some in there
1 tablespoon white vinegar <-----------> Red wine Vinegar instead
1/4 cup packed brown sugar <-------------> 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce <--------> 10 shakes of the bottle
1/2 teaspoon salt <----------------------> three sprinkles across the meat
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder <--------------> fresh is best! we minced our own garlic

-----> also for mine add generous cayenne pepper, pinch of chili powder, and some black pepper

Needless to say, I made a few adjustments here and there, but it came out fantastic. Jeremy and I enjoyed ours greatly. Whats best of all was i used all left-over ingredients to make these, so they were virtually free, and free is always nice!

Breaking down the steps:

here's how I made it

Simultaneously I browned the ground beef in our cast iron pan, while working that around i heated some olive oil, when it was completely warmed i added the onions and let them cook a little while stirring them, shortly after that i added the orange peppers that i had diced up.

after adding the peppers i minced our garlic and tossed that into the pot allowing it to cook for about thirty more seconds (the onions were almost translucent at this point) after which i removed from heat and set aside. The beef had to be done in two batches, once it had all been browned i combined the two into a large pot and heated everything together.

At this point we began to add the ingredients to make the delicious sauce we added them in no particular order, and just kept tasting it until we got the flavor we were looking for. When we achieved this, we poured the delicious sloppy joe combination over the top of two pieces of sliced bread, poured a glass of water and enjoyed!

if you have any questions about trying this one yourself please feel free to ask me!

until next time!