It’s funny.
Whenever I suggest having Sloppy Joes for regular dinner, Buzz isn’t interested. Like many people, he’s got memories of very mediocre cafeteria food.
But when Retro Recipe night came up, and it was his turn to look through all our bookmarked recipes, he decided this was the way to go.
Grandma’s Sloppy Joes
(Barbecued Beef Sandwiches)1 lb. ground beef
3/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsps. Grandma’s Unsulphured Molasses
2 tbsps. prepared mustard
1/8 tsp. Tabasco
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup catchupSprinkle beef with salt. Brown beef in skillet, breaking up with fork. Blend together molasses and mustard; stir in remaining ingredients. Add to beef; heat to serving temperature. Serve on toasted hamburger rolls. Makes 4 servings.
Want to get things going Saturday night?
Are you ready to swing?
Are you ready to watch molasses “pep up” Sloppy Joes?
(If the answer to all of these is “no,” then why am I still planning on making these?)
This is only the second time I’ve made Sloppy Joes from scratch, actually. The first was Zesty Joes, another retro version that wasn’t half bad.
Mmmmm. Beef… sprinkled with salt.
Browned beef, doused with goopy sauce.
It’s really fast to warm the sauce — I think Sloppy Joes are about quick cooking as much as they are about hiding questionable ground meat.
This is a terrific Sloppy Joes recipe. Often, I find that they really taste too much like ketchup, but this was more like a barbecue sauce: smoky, sweet, and a slightly spicy. It also wasn’t excessively drippy, and held together nicely in the bun instead of all the sauce soaking into the bread and dribbling all over the plate.
I did not, however, have much urge to swing.
Thanks to Classic Film on Flicker for sharing this swing-tastic molasses classic.
Retro Recipe Attempts 
WOW. I have always loathed sloppy joes for the same reason Buzz did — cafeteria food of awful mystery meat. I didn’t feel like molasses would do anything but something dreadful to the whole thing, so color me surprised it was good!
By: tee+d on August 17, 2015
at 3:56 pm
Interesting–when I saw “Swinger” Sloppy Joes, I thought it would be a recipe from the 70s, complete with key (for a party…yeah, a party!)
Yay! for the recipe turning out edible–so many of these are so bad you wonder who even tested them (or whether or not they had tastebuds).
By: Julia Rosenthal on August 17, 2015
at 7:16 pm
I can’t believe I have never seen your blog before now – I totally love it!!!
By: disneypal on August 20, 2015
at 9:29 pm
Your recipe sounds pretty good. It reminds me when we had sloppy joes in the school cafeteria decades ago, they looked and smelled so good, but they tasted so foul! How was it possible to ruin a fairly simple dish? Plain old barbeque sauce out of bottles would have been far better than the school’s version.
By: Lassie on August 25, 2015
at 1:02 pm
Lord help me for saying this, but I love the Manwich canned stuff. Over the years I’ve tried ”recipes”, including this one the my M-i-L used to use. [still miss your cooking mom!] I’m guessing it was having the canned stuff first, set my taste buds to /the canned setting.
But they just don’t measure up. I’ve used every grade of ground beef types from the cheapo to sirlion…still love my Manwich with 80/20 chuck the bestest!
However, this sauce recipe, over a chuck roast, salted, peppered and seared in a cast iron skillet with a Lg onion, slipped into the crock pot, is outrageous!! Adding a green pepper changes it up, in a great way!
By: Schteveo on August 30, 2015
at 1:17 pm