Kitchen Experiments: Super Slow Sloppies

This whole being more domestic thing is working out for me pretty okay, I think.

I tried out another of the recipes I get delivered to my inbox last night, this time for slow cooker sloppy joes.

I altered the measurements a bunch, because our slow cooker isn’t very big, and also because I didn’t want to use three pounds of hamburger. What if I didn’t like the results? What if I want to make a sheepherder’s pie later this week? We’re pretty poor lately, and I don’t have much ground beef in the freezer.

Here’s the original recipe:

3lb lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion (I used vidalia)
3 minced garlic cloves

Brown above ingredients over medium high heat, making sure meat gets separated. Drain fat.

1 1/4 cup ketchup
1 red bell pepper
5 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp vinegar
3 tbsp prepared mustard
2 tsp chili powder

Combine the above ingredients in a slow cooker, and then stir in beef. Cover & cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.

Ta-da. It was simple. And re-reading the recipe, I realise I still managed to screw it up. I used dry mustard, not prepared. Oops. And I only used 1 lb of beef, but I used between 2/3 and the full amount of sauce ingredients (it was my original intention to use this as a sauce for pasta, so I thought it would be saucier that way. All that really happened is more moisture was absorbed into the beef. And I’m pretty sure I added more brown sugar than was intended, so Mr B was right when he thought it was too sweet. I liked it though.)

I cooked up some rice, and dished the sloppy beef mix over that, since I like rice way more than I like bread. And there you have it.

I forgot to take pictures while I was making this, so I took one this morning of the leftovers. It looks like wet cat food on rice. But it’s delicious, I promise.