Sloppin' it up

I’m a summer person. I love the long days and watching the flowers and trees bloom. I love watching my grandkids swim. I love grilling dinner. I love hot dogs and hamburgers drenched in ketchup and mustard and sticky barbecued ribs.

But I have to grudgingly admit that I’m kind of relieved when dusk comes around a bit earlier and it starts to cool down somewhat at night. It’s fun to watch the neighborhood kids walking to school and home again in the afternoon. And, I must admit that I enjoy winter-styled cooking.

There is little that satisfies me more than cooking a tough (and therefore, inexpensive) cut of meat in my enamel and cast-iron Dutch oven at a very low temperature for such a long time that the meat relents and eventually falls off the bone. Scrumptious.

But today I wasn’t in the mood to braise a meal. Instead, I wanted something simple. Sloppy Joes came to mind.

When I cooked for my family when we were all younger, I would simply brown some ground beef and throw in a can of Manwich. It couldn’t have been simpler, and we all loved it.

I mentioned this to my sister this past weekend, and she was aghast. Why don’t you make it from scratch, she wondered. After all, you write a cooking blog.

So true, so this evening I gave it a whirl, and it was a success.

Homemade Sloppy Joes

1 lb. of ground beef (or ½ lb. of ground beef and ½ lb. of ground turkey)

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

¾ c. ketchup

2 T. water

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp. yellow mustard

½-1 T brown sugar

splash white vinegar

Brown the ground meat until cooked through. Add the onion, and cook until the onions are transparent. Add the minced garlic, and cook for about a minute.

To the meat, add the ketchup, water, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Stir to mix. Add ½ to 1 T. brown sugar, enough to make it a bit sweet. To counteract the sweetness a bit, add just a splash of vinegar.

Cook for 20 minutes, and serve over hamburger buns.

I always eat my sloppy joes with pickles, so I opened up a jar of my homemade dills, and enjoyed the nip in the air as we ate on the patio.