What a simple, fast-food-at-home meal! My family loves it when I make these organic sloppy joes for dinner, and they're even better (and better for you) when you serve with some yummy traditional sauerkraut or other fermented vegetables. I used my friend Megan's Mom's recipe (thanks Jo!), only I made it with organic ingredients. It was so easy! You may already have an easy sloppy joe recipe, but just in case, here's a good one:
Organic Sloppy Joes
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef (I used ground beef with heart for extra nutrition – no taste difference, honest!)
- 1 onion, organic if possible, chopped small
- 2-3 cloves minced garlic, optional
- 1 organic green pepper, chopped small, or use different colored peppers if you'd like (you may want to omit this if you have picky kids)
- 1 cup organic ketchup, to avoid high fructose corn syrup and chemical preservatives
- 1 Tablespoon prepared mustard, I don't always buy this one organic, the ingredient label is very very short
- 1 Tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon maple syrup, organic cane sugar, or other natural sweetener
- 1/2-2 teaspoons chili powder (amount depends on your family's preference) for a little spicy kick. 🙂
- Optional (Meg says it's good this way, but kids don't like it): 1/4 teaspoon cloves
Instructions
Brown the meat with the onion until meat is no longer pink. When it's almost done, throw in the optional green peppers. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until heated through.
Serve with homemade hamburger buns or sprouted flour buns. If you buy some at the store, try to find organic, or at least some without high fructose corn syrup or trans fats.
To make it even more yummy, spread butter on the insides of the bun and broil face up for a few minutes until golden. This gives it a delicious toasted top. Kent also likes his with pickles and cheese. Note: our family loves these so much that I am now cooking 3# of burger when I make it!
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Gabrielle says
You don’t happen to have plans to standardize these recipes do you? I’d really like to print ones like this one out so I can put it in my binder of go-to recipes but I can’t because there’s no real formatting to it. Please consider it. Almost every blog now has some plugin or something for it.
Kelly the Kitchen Kop says
Hi Gabrielle,
Yes I’m slowly fixing all my recipes, I’ll try to get to this one soon then comment again so you know it’s done. Once I get it fixed up, you’ll be able to use the “print friendly” button above.
Thanks!
Kelly
KitchenKop says
Okay Gabrielle, it’s all set, now just click “print friendly” at the bottom of the post and it’ll print easily for you!
Kelly
Gabrielle says
Thank you SO much! I got it saved so I can print it for my binder. And I like that method because I’m able to crop it to all fit on one page without having to play with it in photoshop or something. This is one of our old favorites and it’s the recipe that helped me start using ground beef heart. I use it 1/3 heart to 2/3 ground beef and no one can tell. Least of all me! I pre-brown the beef and put it in the freezer so I can just scoop out what I need. Between that and using a TB of dehydrated minced onions instead of fresh this recipe takes less than 10 minutes from freezer to plate and everyone eats it every time without fail. I never told you thank you for making this so this is me thanking you big time. 😀
KitchenKop says
This makes me happy, I’m glad it works out so well for you, it’s still a favorite around here as well! 🙂
Kel
Cori says
Just made these and loved them! Put it on sourdough and topped them with sauerkraut!! Delicious 🙂
KitchenKop says
Thanks for the great feedback, I want some your way!
Kelly
Beth says
I used your sloppy joe recipe for ‘sloppy cornbread muffins’ and it worked great. Now they’re in the freezer for a fast lunch or kid-friendly dinner (or snack!).
Kim says
My recipe is the me but with a little CINNAMON. Kids love it. It doesn’t have thebp different taste that cloves do.
%kelly the kitchen kop% via Facebook says
Cant wait to try love SJs
Peggy Grigowski says
Thank you Ms. Kelly!
I tried your Sloppy Joe recipe and my husband (who is not an organic fan) loved it. I thought it had such flavor and just a perfect kick. Even my little four year old cousin enjoyed (he usually only eats organic as do I) but just had to let you know the Sloppy Joe recipe is a BIG hit in our home and it
Erica says
I make my sloppy joes with kethup and mustard also. I’ve never added cloves or AVC to it though haha 🙂 We mix it up every once in a while and use lentils in stead of beef. It’s a nice change and tastes just as good!
Robin Plan says
This sounds wonderful. I would suggest using only 100% grass-fed beef because of health and taste reasons.
I will try this Sloopy Joe recipe this week.
Robin
Bamboo says
Thanks, Kelly. This will be soooo much better than when I just dumped some tomato sauce in with the cooked ground beef (I always cook ground beef with onion if I can), plopped it on the bread and said ta-da, sloppy joes! I can’t wait to try it.
Beth