Dreaming of Sloppy Mac

Dreaming of Sloppy Mac

Taylor, my daughter’s boyfriend, recently out-of-college, told me that he used to room with two buttheads who were always eating his food. So on select weekend nights, Taylor and a good buddy would make a big steaming pot of Sloppy Mac, basically Sloppy Joe mixed in with Mac n' Cheese, maybe about five, six pounds worth, and then eat it all in one sitting so those buttheads wouldn’t get any when they staggered in. When the pot was cleaned, Taylor and good buddy would sit around all night playing video games and feeling sick.

Still, Sloppy Mac seems like a dish that could be good: saucy meat, well-cooked mac, a decent cheese, I mean really, what’s not to like?

So one goal of mine this summer is to get some banged-up tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market, and make my traditional red sauce, which I will then deploy for the purposes of making Sloppy Mac and…Mother-in-Law, extolled by ReneG, urban culinary adventurer, and, again, a dish that sounds like it could be made downright delicious with homemade chili and corn roll tamales (I have almost no clue how to make the latter, but I can probably figure it out).

Any way, with tomatoes busting out all over, that’s what I’m planning to make – though only dreaming of – at the moment.

David "The Future Belongs to the Dreamers" Hammond

dont let me stop you, david, from cooking up a storm, but sloppy mac sounds, to me, like something best left to drunken college students. a major part of the beauty of mac and cheese, i think, is the thick, cheesy gooey texture. if combined with a saucy ground beef dish, all that richness will be dispersed and disappear in a red morass. i enjoy a good sloppy joe as much as the next person but think combining the 2 will equal a whole lot less than the sum of its parts. sincerely, justjoan

justjoan wrote:dont let me stop you, david, from cooking up a storm, but sloppy mac sounds, to me, like something best left to drunken college students. a major part of the beauty of mac and cheese, i think, is the thick, cheesy gooey texture. if combined with a saucy ground beef dish, all that richness will be dispersed and disappear in a red morass. i enjoy a good sloppy joe as much as the next person but think combining the 2 will equal a whole lot less than the sum of its parts. sincerely, justjoan

justjoan,

I don't know how Taylor makes it, but my plan is to swirl the joe into the mac and then bake it, resulting in variegated swirls, kind of like with marble rye bread. In this way, one would have the joe and the mac, separate but together, synergistically sharing their respective flavor values: the goo, the meat, the richness, the spice, a perfectly balanced yin-yang of deliciousness. Or at least that's my dream.

David "justjoan and I are just different" Hammond

david, i think the way to go is to swirl the mac into the joe, not the joe into the mac. don't forget to take pictures. justjoan


"life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering; and it's all over much too soon", woody allen

I don't know about Taylor's Sloppy Mac, but it sounds suspiciously like my famous "Noodlees with Cheese 'n Meat" -- an all-time favorite of my kids since they were small. My youngest is 20 y/o now, but they still love it when I make this for them. It's just elbow macaroni, cooked & seasoned ground beef, tomato sauce and (gulp) Velveeta. You should see the feeding frenzy that takes place. Real comfort food.

One of my housemates in college (now a college professor) made something similar. He'd brown up ground beef, stir in ketchup and tabasco, and mix it all up with the mac and cheese (the stuff from a box of course).

leek wrote:One of my housemates in college (now a college professor) made something similar. He'd brown up ground beef, stir in ketchup and tabasco, and mix it all up with the mac and cheese (the stuff from a box of course).

Another alternative to the "mix it all up" approach would be to layer joe over mac, and then add a layer of mac over joe before baking. That way, each major component would retain its integrity while at the same time mingling nicely with the other.

David "Liking this idea more and more" Hammond

David Hammond wrote:Another alternative to the "mix it all up" approach would be to layer joe over mac, and then add a layer of mac over joe before baking. That way, each major component would retain its integrity while at the same time mingling nicely with the other.

David "Liking this idea more and more" Hammond

David,

That strikes me as somewhat of a non-authentic lasagna preparation. Purists would be outraged! How about a checkerboard pattern instead?

stevez wrote:That strikes me as somewhat of a non-authentic lasagna preparation. Purists would be outraged! How about a checkerboard pattern instead?

Stevez, The Wife has actually made checkerboard Eisenhower-era type sandwiches, so a checkerboard version of Sloppy Mac is not out of the question. It would involve the planned layering, then baking and cooling, followed by slicing longitudinally and some kind of stacking. Elaborate, and it could be done...and something I may save for Version 2.0.

Pigmon, your post about bechamel seems to have disappeared, but The Wife does use a bechamel on her very good Mac and Cheese, so that's definitely the way we'd go.

Current thinking is to sprinkle pickled jalapenos between the meat and cheese layers.

David "On the frontiers of 50's cuisine" Hammond

Mr. Hammond,

As the well known ketchup afficionado as yourself, I am really surprised you want to depart from ketchup as the tomato-ingredient in your sloppy joes.

My family's favored recipe for Sloppy Joes comes from Sophie Leavitt's Penny Pinchers Cookbook purchased by mail after watching her on the Phil Donahue Show in the early 70's while home sick from school.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup each of diced onion, celery and green pepper
4 tablespoons margarine (I skip this)
1 pound ground beef

1 tablespoon each of sugar, flour, vinegar
1 teaspoon wet mustard
1 cup catsup

Fry in the margarine, the onion, pepper, celery and ground beef until beef is cooked and onion is soft. Add salt to taste.

Add sugar, flour, vinegar, wet mustard and catsup.

Simmer 15 minutes, then spoon mixture onto heated buns.

***

This would be the perfect Sloppy Joes to mix into mac n'cheese made with Velveeta.

When you do make your upscale version, then I presume no Velveeta in your Mac n'Cheese. If you are going to make a foreign interpretation (smile), then you may as well go overboard!

As Joan suggestion, please update us with pictures.

Regards,

I have a beloved (and stained!) recipe from the NY Times for Craig Clairborne's beef, cheese and macaroni casserole. It bakes rather than just being a stir on the stove thing, but my husband loves it for its balance of childish comfort food meets, well, meets Craig Clairborne's stamp of approval. Let me know if you'd like me to post the recipe. (and it does contain tomatoes for that quasi lasagne action)

bjt

bjt,

I'd love to see the recipe.

Please note recipe ingredients are not copyrighted, so write them as state. The twist is the instructions are copyrighted. Make enough small changes to how the instructions are stated to call it your own, then state, "the recipe is adapted from Craig ..."

Looking forward to it!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:As the well known ketchup afficionado as yourself, I am really surprised you want to depart from ketchup as the tomato-ingredient in your sloppy joes.

I'm still pondering recipes, so catsup is by no means out of the running. I have some excellent fermented stuff from Bruce that might be good...although that stuff might have too much personality.

As you correctly assess, my goal is to up the ante on ingredients and make a good dish on what I believe is a fundamentally sound foundation of flavors.

bjt wrote:I have a beloved (and stained!) recipe from the NY Times for Craig Clairborne's beef, cheese and macaroni casserole. It bakes rather than just being a stir on the stove thing, but my husband loves it for its balance of childish comfort food meets, well, meets Craig Clairborne's stamp of approval. Let me know if you'd like me to post the recipe. (and it does contain tomatoes for that quasi lasagne action)

bjt

bjt, I'd love to see the recipe, or just an overview, if keying in the whole thing would be too time-consuming.

Though somewhat of a tangent, a magical taste from my childhood is the combination of Ro-Tel tomatoes and Velveta Cheese with some browned sausage and beef. I could eat 5 lbs of that stuff! Anyway, with fresh tomatoes being in such plentiful supply, perhaps the addition of a chili element would elevate the humble Sloppy Mac?

best.
veeral

all right friends, here you go:

Macaroni & Beef Casserole

Adapted from “The New York Times Cookbook” by Craig Clairborne

1 ½ cups elbow macaroni
3 ½ tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
½ cup finely chopped green pepper
1 pound ground chuck
1 tsp each: dried basil, dried oregano
½ cup canned diced tomatoes, drained
3 Tbl flour
2 cups milk
10 ounces Cheddar cheese, cubed
s&p
¼ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
ground red pepper
grated parmesan

1. Heat oven to 450. Boil macaroni in slated water until al dente, drain, rinse with cold water, set aside.
2. Heat 1 ½ Tbl butter in skillet; add onion and green pepper, stir until onion wilts, about 5 minutes. Add meat; cook until meat in no longer red, drain off fat. Add basil, oregano and tomatoes. Cook 3 minutes, set aside.
3. Heat remaining 2 Tbl butter in saucepan; whisk in flour. Add flour stirring rapidly with whisk. Cook, stirring until thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in cheddar cubes. Stir until it melts. Add salt and pepper to taste; add nutmeg and ground pepper.
4. Spoon macaroni into 10 x 7 inch baking dish. Spoon meat mixture over noodles; pour cheese sauce over all. Sprinkle with parmesan. Bake until bubbling throughout, about 25 minutes. Brown under heated broiler if desired.

bjt,

That is one beautiful recipe. I think, though, that I might prefer a tripartite structure: maybe mac-beef-mac. The parm on top is an excellent touch.

Thanks,

Hammond

glad to post it, the nutmeg really adds the height of sopistication to the whole thing I have always browned ours under ther broiler to get that crispy chewy topping. Note: it is not as "wet" at all as sloppy joes so you might want to tinker with tomato/sauce ratio . . .

enjoy!

bjt

bjt wrote:glad to post it, the nutmeg really adds the height of sopistication to the whole thing I have always browned ours under ther broiler to get that crispy chewy topping. Note: it is not as "wet" at all as sloppy joes so you might want to tinker with tomato/sauce ratio . . .

enjoy!

bjt

You raise an interesting point re: the lack of wetness that may result from baking. Perhaps it'd be wise to have a container of jus de Joe on the side to moisten the mound.

Hammond

PS. The nutmeg sounds right, too.

I was having dinner with my daughter's boyfriend, Taylor (the inspiration for this thread) last night, and he reminded me that one key element of his sloppy mac ritual was that he and his good buddy had to eat the whole concoction very quickly so they could get it all down before it started EXPANDING in their bellies, thus rendering them incapable of further gluttony (and thus risking the possibility that the bum roommates might actually get some dinner).

His exact recipe was two pounds of beef, couple cans of Manwich, and two boxes of mac n' cheese. He did not seem terribly excited about my plan to upgrade the ingredients (I guess you like what you know).

Hammond

So here’s how it went down.

I started with about 25 pounds of tomatoes. Youngest Daughter and I skinned and seeded ‘em and made sauce, pretty simple with just onions, garlic, and bay leaf



Then I browned the beef and added special spice, gifted to me by the Spice Lady at the Maxwell Street Market. Added in red/green sweet pepper and Bermuda/white onion.



The Wife did some Mac N’ Cheese with a Béchamel with decent Dublin cheddar. I added some French’s Fried Onions to make it extra fancy.

The result was lush.



Is it so wrong to drink a 20-year-old Bordeaux with such a fine dish?



I dug it.

Incidentally, this is not Chili Mac. Sloppy Mac involves brown sugar and vinegar into the mix, for a sweet, sour, savory, rich mess of goodness.

Hammond wrote:Is it so wrong to drink a 20-year-old Bordeaux with such a fine dish?

You're such a class act!

Maybe you might consider Sloppy Mac as your 'cookie' for the picnic? Bruce advises his cooker has a warming capability.

Lookin' good!

Regards,

David Hammond wrote:I added some French’s Fried Onions to make it extra fancy.

Hammond,

Icing on the cake my friend, icing on the cake. And a damn tasty looking cake at that!

Enjoy,
Gary

David Hammond wrote:Is it so wrong to drink a 20-year-old Bordeaux with such a fine dish?

David, you are being modest. Not just any 20-year-old Bordeaux, but a first-growth! Only the best at Chez Hammond!!! You should contact Corinne Mentelopoulos, the owner of Chateau Margaux. They may be interested including your Sloppy Mac recipe on the website. The inclusion of the French's fried onions makes it almost seem Parisian.

Hope that Chateau Margaux still hung on. 87 wasn't a very long-lived vintage.

BTW, this was a great thread...

I'm curious - the original idea sounds like a version of "Johnny Mazetti" (or sometimes Marzetti) which my Northern Kentucky school cafeteria offered weekly. I have no idea why it is so named; I keep looking for the history of this dish.

The dish I'm thinking of was a staple for most cafeterias and Moms alike (except for recent-immigrant Moms from Argentina) and basically was macaroni in a meaty tomato-based sauce with peppers and onions, covered with Cheddar (if you were lucky) or american cheese (if you weren't) I always thought of it as being mac and cheese with meat sauce.

Mhays wrote:I'm curious - the original idea sounds like a version of "Johnny Mazetti" (or sometimes Marzetti) which my Northern Kentucky school cafeteria offered weekly. I have no idea why it is so named; I keep looking for the history of this dish.

Kitchen Mailbox: Johnny Marzetti immortalized as casserole

What's Johnny Marzetti? Johnny Marzetti is a casserole created in the 1920s by the owner of the Marzetti Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. Who was Johnny Marzetti? According to the "American Century Cookbook" by Jean Anderson, Johnny Marzetti was the brother of the owner of the Marzetti Restaurant.

Casseroles steamrolled into the kitchen in the 1940s and have remained popular staples to this day. The Johnny Marzetti casserole was popular in the mid '50s and early '60s. It consists of meat, pasta and either tomato sauce, soup or juice.

Mhays wrote:I'm curious - the original idea sounds like a version of "Johnny Mazetti" (or sometimes Marzetti) which my Northern Kentucky school cafeteria offered weekly. I have no idea why it is so named; I keep looking for the history of this dish.

The first and last time I had Johnny Mazetti, it was prepared by Tom Mudgett, the great grandson of Herman Webster Mudgett, the murderous H.H. Holmes recently immortalized as the title character in The Devil in the White City. No kidding. The chef was insane. The dish was okay...but it was no Sloppy Mac.

Hammond

I have a question about the meat in sloppy joes. When I cook the ground beef I am unable to get the right texture. I normally 'chop' the meat when it is cooking with a spatula, etc. My beef ends up in smallish hunks of slightly differing sizes and shapes. It tastes OK, but what I want is the nice round consistent texture like you typically see in Mexican picadillo sandwiches. I know there must be some technique or something that produces this kind of fried ground beef. Does anyone know the secret, or even understand what I am trying to say?

Water. Add a little water at the beginning of the cooking process and then keep at it with a fork or spoon to keep the meat loose. It only takes about 1/4 C. of water to every pound of ground beef. After a while the water will cook away and you'll be able to brown the meat as you like.

I saw my Mexican friends do this years ago and then started doing it myself. It really results in that overall "consistant texture" that you want to achieve and great picadillo for tacos, tostadas, burritos, etc.

Great, thanks. I'm going to buy some meat and try it today. I've been trying to get this answer for years. Do you think it matters what you use or how you break down the meat? I was thinking of trying a potato masher instead of the chop-chop routine.

You can also begin by "march chopping" the meat to break up the long strands created by a meat grinder. This is accomplished by taking a chinese cleaver (or two) and simply laying out the meat in a layer and chopping it in both directions.