Another day, another pound of ground beef. While looking for things to do with it other than tacos, I thought about the sloppy joe. Now, I’ve never actually made a sloppy joe without a can of Manwich or similar, but today that was going to happen. Then I thought about doing it the over-the-top method – but didn’t want to over fatty the sauce, so I went out and bought another pound of ground beef. Funny how that works.
Of course, I wasn’t the only one who thought about this. Nicole over at OrWhateverYouDo.com had already done it up, so I’m going to do the same. The recipe link above gets you right over to her recipe. I scaled things down to use what I got – but all credit goes to her.
The Prep Table
Since we’re going over the top with it, we’re getting our sauce made first in the dutch oven and it’s going to grab some good smoke.
Ain’t a whole lot to the prep. We combined the celery/onion mix, ketchup, bbq sauce, brown sugar, dry mustard, worcestershire, vinegar and water into the dutch oven. We’re going to get handsy in the ground beef and throw it on a rack and throw it on top of the bowl. We’re going to smoke it up, combine and throw it on a bun. Sounds good – lets do that.
The Process
Got the RecTeq heated up to 225 and in we go!
I love the hour comparison in these photos. You can see the meat’s got to cookin.. we dripped any of that good stuff back into the bowl and we’re going to combine it up.
After the combine, I knew we needed it a little sloppier. I really just went splashing in with that BBQ/Ketchup/Worcestershire/Water/ACV. I’m sure if I followed Nicole’s (Orwhateveryoudo.com) recipe, I wouldn’t have to readjust midway through, but like any stubborn man.. I didn’t. Adapt and overcome.
The Result
If you haven’t already – you have to visit https://www.orwhateveryoudo.com/ – or specifically https://www.orwhateveryoudo.com/2021/08/smoked-over-the-top-sloppy-joes.html . This one was an awesome flavor, and almost better for leftovers!