Behind the Recipes
We examined every aspect of this family favorite to produce sandwiches with tender, moist meat in a tangy, not-too-sweet sauce. (We even made them a little less sloppy.)
By
Published Apr. 3, 2019.
My Goals and Discoveries
Moist, tender beef
Skipping the usual browning step and treating the ground beef with baking soda yields juicy, tender meat.
Filling that stays put
Using a potato masher to break down the beef to a fine, uniform texture and thickening the sauce with cornstarch delivers a cohesive mixture that stays put on a bun.
Good balance of sweetness and tang
Sweet ketchup is brought into line with savory tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce. Red wine vinegar, red pepper flakes, paprika, and garlic contribute complexity.
Subtle aromatics
Limiting the aromatics to just onion and treating it with baking soda so it fully softens creates a rich, luxurious texture.
When my kids were little, making Sloppy Joes was a win-win situation. They loved eating them, and I loved sneaking bites off their plates. Eating a full portion of the filling, however, was off the table, since it was one‑dimensional and cloyingly sweet.
That said, those few bites were such a guilty pleasure that I’ve often wondered if I could give the sandwich an overhaul so that it could satisfy adults and kids alike. After all, the filling couldn’t be any easier to make: Just sauté some chopped onion (and sometimes celery, carrot, and bell pepper) in a skillet before adding ground beef to brown, and then finish with a ketchup-based sauce. And who knows? Maybe techniques that we normally apply to highbrow foods would come in handy here, too.
The Meat of the Matter
It’s no wonder that the sauce for Sloppy Joe filling is often candy‑sweet, since it contains anywhere from 1/2cup to 1cup of ketchup (and sometimes brown sugar, too). But the sweet sauce isn’t the only problem: The ground beef typically turns out pebbly and dry once cooked. Before working toward a recipe for a less saccharine sauce, I had a question about how to treat the beef: Should I skip the browning step, which I suspected caused the undesirable texture? To find out, I mixed up a rudimentary sauce in a skillet before adding a pound of 85 percent lean ground beef to simmer. Once the meat had lost its pink color, I loaded some of the filling onto a bun and dug in.
Why Use These for Sloppy Joes?
Baking soda helps keep the ground beef moist and tender, and incorporating baking soda into the finely chopped onion causes the onion to soften rapidly so it nearly melts into the sauce.
Cornstarch thickens the sauce and binds up any fat, creating a silky-smooth, cohesive texture.
A potato masher breaks the ground beef into fine, uniform pieces that will (mostly) stay put on the bun instead of tumbling out.
The meat in this batch, while not particularly moist, was at least relatively tender—and given the bold sauce, I didn’t miss any of the beefiness that I’d sacrificed by skipping browning. (What’s more, this easy recipe had just gotten even easier.) But I didn’t stop there: The test kitchen has found that mixing a solution of baking soda and water into ground beef raises the pH of the meat, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively. Sure enough, just 1/2teaspoon of baking soda tossed with 1 tablespoon of water made the beef juicier and more tender.
We experimented with a variety of tomato products and sweeteners, ultimately landing on a combination of ketchup, tomato paste, and brown sugar.
So tender, in fact, that the aromatics I had been experimenting with now seemed obtrusive. Finely chopped onion was a must (it’s one of the defining elements of a Sloppy Joe), but the celery, carrot, and bell pepper made the sandwiches taste too vegetal and added a distracting crunch. And yet, even after I’d eliminated all but the onion, the texture of the filling was still compromised, as the total cooking time was so short that the onion bits never had time to fully soften. The fix? Baking soda once again. Just 1/8teaspoon altered the onion’s pH, causing it to rapidly break down so it nearly melted into the sauce.
Keep the Ketchup
Speaking of the sauce, I knew that ketchup’s primary contribution was intense sweetness, so I experimented with replacing it with a less-sugary tomato product—sauce, puree, crushed, or paste—that I lightly sweetened myself with honey, molasses, corn syrup, or brown sugar. But there’s a good reason ketchup is such a phenomenally popular condiment: It’s packed with umami, bright with acidity, and well seasoned with salt. There was simply no replacing it. The key was to use ketchup only as an accent and to anchor the sauce with tomato paste. Just 1/3cup of ketchup (along with 2teaspoons of brown sugar for its molasses‑y notes) was brought into line by 1/4cup of savory tomato paste. Another umami heavy hitter, Worcestershire sauce, also kept the ketchup’s sweetness in check. Finally, to give the sauce more personality, I layered in red pepper flakes for heat, minced garlic for zing, red wine vinegar for extra tang, and paprika for earthy depth.
Balancing Act
Most Sloppy Joe recipes call for lots of ketchup—1/2 cup to 1 cup—which makes the sandwiches overly sweet. We drop the ketchup to just 1/3 cup and balance it out with generous amounts of two umami-rich ingredients: 1/4cup of earthy tomato paste and 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce (a real umami powerhouse since some of its ingredients are fermented and it contains anchovies).
Tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce transform our Sloppy Joes from cloying to savory-sweet.
Solutions with Staying Power
The beef was moist and tender, and the multidimensional sauce was downright irresistible. But just one thing was still bugging me: The filling was still a little too sloppy. Don’t get me wrong—I like the messy nature of this dish. But if everything tumbles out on the first bite, the sandwich is difficult to enjoy.
We use a potato masher to break the beef up into fine particles that stay put on a bun.
Up to this point, I had been breaking up the beef into random-size clumps with a wooden spoon as the sauce bubbled around it. I wondered if the filling would stay put on the bun better if I eliminated the larger pieces of beef. To find out, I used a potato masher to break up the beef in the pan until it achieved a fine, uniform texture. I also stirred in a cornstarch slurry. In addition to acting as a thickener, the cornstarch would hold any separated fat in the sauce, creating a cohesive, silky texture. I marveled at how these small changes markedly improved the filling. Now what went on the bun, (mostly) stayed on the bun.
Now that I have a recipe for just-sloppy-enough Sloppy Joes with tender, moist meat and a lightly sweetened sauce, I’ll certainly be needing my own full portion.
Classic Sloppy Joes for Two
We examined every aspect of this family favorite to produce sandwiches with tender, moist meat in a tangy, not-too-sweet sauce. (We even made them a little less sloppy.)
Get the Recipe
