Sloppy Joes

 

It snowed, sleeted and froze rained yesterday. What is the past tense of freezing rain? Do you say rained freezing rain? I kind of like how colloquial and incorrect froze rained sounds, so I'm sticking with that.  Such vile winter weather called for comfort food and dessert.  I decided on sloppy joes and baked apples because I've been craving each for a little while and it gave me a chance to use my new dutch oven and the new corer I just got.  Yay, new kitchen tools!

I hadn't made sloppy joes in a long time because the recipe I've been using since I was in middle school used tomato sauce as the sauce base.  So that one was out of rotation due to Joel's intolerance.  And then, the Pioneer Woman saved me.  Her brilliant recipe uses ketchup as the base for the sauce.   How come I never thought of this?  Oh right, because I still need to use recipes for the majority of my cooking.  I am getting over the need to measure ingredients exactly though.  Baby steps, baby steps.  So now Joel has been introduced to the wonders of the sloppy joe.  He's coming around to my view that it's one of the most wonderful foods known to man.  He never had them as a child because his father thought they were too messy.  I love the combination of sweet and tangy, although this recipe is slightly heavy on the sweet due to the ketchup.

I follow Ree's recipe pretty closely but make a few changes.  First I cut it in half because I'm not feeding the army that she is. Even with a pound of meat there was enough for me to freeze for another meal for the two of us.  I saute the onion, garlic, and pepper before the meat because that's what my original recipe called for and I don't think the veggies cook enough when you add them after browning the meat.  I also add a tablespoon of tomato paste to the veggies for the last minute or so because it gets nice and caramelized that way and gives a little extra kick to the meat.  Of her optional ingredients I use the earlier mentioned tomato paste and 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce.

As a side I ended up making braised fingerling coins from Epicurious.  We were supposed to have sweet potato fries but all my sweet potatoes had gone bad on me.  I, again, cut the recipe down.  And based on many of the comments used chicken stock instead of water and cut down on the butter.  I think I'd cut even more down on the butter next time because they were really rich.  Really good, but really rich.  And we needed a veggie so frozen corn it was.  Frozen corn is elevated to a whole new level with just the addition of a small pat of butter and salt and pepper before it's microwaved and it's easy so I defend its humble position on my plates.

I'd been craving baked apples for like a month now and was just waiting to get a corer to make them because I never have much luck using a paring knife for hollowing out apples.  I finally got the corer and had some golden delicious apples that aren't good for much besides baking anymore so voila, baked apples.  I mixed 2 tablespoons brown sugar with some chopped almonds, craisins, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and a pinch of ground nutmeg. That got stuffed into each apple and then topped with a pat of butter and baked at 350 F for 45 minutes.  Once out of the oven they each got a hat of vanilla ice cream and were devoured very quickly.  Well at least after Joel had asked for an explanation on how to eat it since he'd never had one before.  Seriously, never had a baked apple!  I'm very happy he's so willing to try new things because who could not like a baked apple?  These could have been a little better though, I don't think golden delicious make for the best flavor.  Still hit the spot though.