Sloppy Joes
I bet y’all where like “OH NO THIS MOTHERFUCKER SAID HE WAS GONNA START BLOGGING AGAIN AND THEN HE FORGOT!” Well slow the fuck down brochachos, I’m letting this content slowly drip out so I don’t overwhelm you with my cooking prowess and proclivity for swearing.
Plus, y’all are like Dre and you best not fucking forget about him.
But wait. Time for two truths and a lie:
- I have had 25 different jobs in the last 28 years.
- I’ve hugged Snoop Dog
- I’m hotter than a Mercedes-Benz with the windows up when the temp goes up to the mid-80s.
The first person to figure it out gets the privilege of letting me write a profanity on their forehead in a sharpie. Dial 1-800-LASERFACE to enter.
But you didn’t come here to listen to me burp (you’d have to have your audio on for that), you came to witness me attempt to make food my kids will eat.
Well, my son had a sleep over at a friends house the other night and the kids mom made sloppy joes. She’s telling me this and I’m fully expecting to be told that my son wouldn’t eat anything and feel guilty about raising such picky little shits and at the same time I’m like “bold move lady this kid has been in your house before”. Anyway I’m about half-way through apologizing to her for my son’s extremely limited food choices and she’s all “nah the little shitbag ate two helpings.”
(It’s cool. Take your time. This was like four weeks ago so its definitely taken me some time to learn how to speak again from the shock I received.)
Anyway, since you know I’m a glutton for punishment (amongst other things), I figure “hey, I’ll see if lightening strikes twice and make this kid some sloppy joes.” Of course the mom then says “Oh yeah this other picky kid was at our house and loved them but then their mom made them not from the packet, and he wouldn’t touch them.”
So, reader, what do you think I did? Went out an bought that motherfucking packet right?
NO YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER!
I looked it up online, read the ingredients and said “Oh I bet I can do that at home.” After doing a bit more research (e.g. reading blogs while my loving partner took care of everything else) I raided the pantry and figured I’d wing it. So one night when it was just he and I together I browned off some ground beef in a real hot pan, putting it in a strainer after to drain the excess fat off, while I sauteed a chopped onion and garlic in a tbsp of said fat. When the veggies were soft I added a spice mixture of clove, allspice, coriander and smoked paprika along with a half a tube of tomato paste. After letting the tomato paste brown I deglazed with a cup of chicken stock, and then added some brown sugar, ketchup, yellow mustard, sriracha, Worcester sauce, and soy sauce. And a Harvard comma. I can’t tell you how much of any of those I put in there, but I just kept tasting it until it tasted “right.”. Then I added the ground beef back in, along with some of the strained fat and juices and cooked it until you could leave a track in the pan by scraping it with a spoon.
I toasted up some buns and put the sloppy joe filling on top of it and called him to dinner.
You know what.
THAT WONDERFUL FUCKING KID ASKED FOR GODDAMN SECONDS.
I’ll also have you note I made it through this ENTIRE POST without making a single goddamn Billy Madison reference.