Mystery meat. A secret sauce. Weeknight dinner with the kids. That sounds like a recipe for
Sloppy Joes! Let’s explore the origin of the Joe, and find out why it’s so very sloppy.
When's the last time you ate a sloppy Joe? Have you ever even heard of such a thing?
You have if you're GenX, growing up when parents worked weird hours and you — aged
7 and a half — were responsible for getting dinner ready. Maybe you just need a refresher.
Sloppy Joes, as you can probably tell from these context clues,
aren't the most difficult dish to throw together. Basically,
they consist of ground beef cooked in some kind of tomato sauce and served on a hamburger bun.
The Takeout observes that 1969 saw man land on the moon. Perhaps more importantly, this year
saw the introduction of sloppy Joe mix in a can. That, of course, was the infamous Manwich, whose
name spawned a thousand jokes, most of them not fit to repeat. Still, preparing it was so easy,
even your seven-year-old self could manage it… with a little help from a chair to stand on.
Once a popular suburban staple, sloppy Joes have seemingly retreated as far into the past
as Jell-O salads. But why did they go? And will they come back? These are questions to
which there is no definitive answer, but that won't prevent us from speculating.
A totally scientific and thoroughly comprehensive survey on the subject of sloppy Joe consumption
was performed via Google Chat by the Eat a Sandwich blog. They found that most of
the survey subjects (consisting of five dudes) were vague on when they last consumed the dish.
One respondent thought it might have been the "early '90s"
while another said "college, maybe," and still another theorized that he may have
done so while "randomly drunk at a lake house or something."
When questioned about the reason behind this sandwich's disappearance
from culture, reasons were varied but understandable. For some, it was the name.
"What's a Manwich?"
"Sloppy Joe with Hunt's Manwich sauce!"
Others said that they had moved on to healthier options, and there's also the fact that they don't
really seem like the kind of thing anyone over the age of 13 would voluntarily eat.
It turns out that a lot of people may share those opinions, particularly of health concerns. Sloppy
Joes may have disappeared from school cafeteria menus over the past decade-plus due to former
FLOTUS Michelle Obama's much-needed campaign to reform school lunch programs nationwide. She made
it her mission to ensure that kids would actually get something healthy to eat at school every day,
and the typical elementary school sloppy Joe didn't fit the bill.
While Eat a Sandwich notes that many childhood favorites have been given
grown-up (even gourmet) makeovers — we presume they're talking about grilled
cheese and mac and cheese, both of which got huge in the 20-teens — it
seems that sloppy joes have yet to come in for such treatment. Or have they?
There are a series of gourmet-ish sloppy Joe food trucks making the rounds,
with cities like Yonkers, New York and West Fargo, North Dakota having been host
to these old-school classics made modern. Win? Absolutely,
but… just how many napkins are they serving customers ordering an on-the-go sloppy Joe?
Even though sloppy Joes have yet to be fully elevated to the pantheon of comfort food
classics alongside the likes of mac and cheese and the PB&J, they still have plenty of fans.
If you have yet to experience this often under-appreciated item, why not give it a
try? Sloppy Joes are ridiculously easy to make, and they're not particularly expensive, either.
Skip the canned stuff and make your own tomato-based sauce with spices like paprika
and chili powder. Also? Instead of just reaching for the ground beef, opt for turkey, chicken,
or even pork. You could also use a plant-based ground meat substitute to make vegan sloppy Joes.
Plus, here's some great news: Parents and partners of picky eaters, take note that sloppy
Joes also make a great vehicle for sneaking in some finely-chopped "stealth veggies."
If it's the idea of a soggy bun that kind of ruins the whole sloppy Joe thing for you, there's no
shortage of alternatives here. Sloppy Joe filling can be used to top a baked potato or fries, or
you can serve it on rice or noodles. Prefer to go low-carb? It works well on a bed of lettuce, too.
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