These family friendly Homemade Sloppy Joes have a perfect balance of sweetness to tanginess and are extremely tasty and satisfying. With a thick from-scratch sauce made the old fashioned way, these sandwiches are perfect as an easy weeknight meal.
Add ground beef and diced onion to a large cold skillet frying pan. Place pan over medium heat and brown meat into crumbles by stirring frequently. See Note #3 below
Add garlic and bell pepper to the pan and continuing cooking for about 3 minutes, or until bell pepper starts to become tender. Stir in 1/2 cup of broth to deglaze pan before adding other ingredients.
To the pan add in Worcestershire, sugar, ketchup, tomato paste, mustard, salt, pepper and cayenne. Stir well.
Str in remaining broth and continue cooking uncovered over medium heat stirring occasionally until meat mixture becomes thick enough to serve on hamburger buns, about 25 minutes.
Notes
Recipe NotesNote #1- Use 90-95% lean ground beef. If ground beef with a higher fat percentage is used, cook over medium heat but drain pan of excess fat before adding bell pepper and garlic. Note #2- Most Sloppy Joe recipes call for water. However, replacing the water with beef broth adds a richness to these sandwiches. Make sure to use a good quality beef broth that is fairly low in sodium.Note #3- Cooking the meat until crumbly and browned will take approximately 10-12 minutes. Also, breaking the meat into crumbles takes a significant amount of stirring and mashing with a spatula. However, a whisk may be used as a shortcut.