Peg's Sloppy Joe for a Quck Meal

February 16, 2014

Menu

Peg's Sloppy Joe

Homemade Potato Chips

Frozen sweet corn and canned Mexicorn

Vella Merlot / Henry Weinhard's Root Beer

Recipe

Peg's Sloppy Joe

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This weekend was the first of two in a row when we would be away from home all day Saturday at a Regional Destination Imagination tournament. This Sunday was thus be the first of two where I would prepare a relatively simple meal, one that would not keep me in the kitchen for long. All the stuff that I would have done on Saturday needs to be done on Sunday. I had been thinking of deep frying some chicken but I decided instead to make Sloppy Joe using my Aunt's recipe.

I made a few additions to the recipe: half of a red bell pepper, a few drops of liquid smoke, and a few drops of hot sauce. I omitted the sugar (not intentionally, it was a mistake) yet the sandwich had some sweetness from the ripe bell pepper and I like the color that it adds. It wasn't particularly smoky or spicy, I guess I didn't add enough of these flavorings, but I'd rather do that than have too much.

To make a suitable accompaniment for Sloppy Joes I got my jar of peanut oil out of the freezer, got set up for deep frying, and made some potato chips. I used the same technique as I had previously but I made the potato slices twice as thick, ⅛-inch. (You can slice foods quickly using a mandolin but I apparently don't have enough experience to do this. The slices were not uniformly thick.) Just as last time the chips came out great. They seemed to take longer to cook than I remember, which makes sense for the thicker potato slices I was cooking. They had more fresh potato flavor than store-bought chips, I could control the amount of salt, and they were irresistible: there are no leftovers.