Vegetarian Sloppy Joes
As you may have read, my daughter is a vegetarian. The one thing she misses is Sloppy Joes. Often pre-made sauces contain high fructose corn syrup and other questionable ingredients. Some contain beef broth or flavorings. Of course, Sloppy Joes are made with ground beef. So, I was on the hunt for a vegetarian version for her. Now, to be honest, this is technically Pesco-Vegetarian. It wasn’t until after I added the Worcestershire sauce that I remembered it had anchovies in it. But we’ll keep that our little secret and I’ll work on a replacement for it before she gets the recipe.
Since I finally had an Awesome Sloppy Joe sauce, it was time to tweak it for a vegetarian. The hardest part is the ground beef replacement. We don’t do soy as it is a hormone disrupter that really messed up our hormones. My daughter has to be careful with some other ingredients, too. Three of those are in this recipe, but she will just make sure not to have this very often so she doesn’t set off the reaction. Yeah, between her and I, cooking is a real challenge. But I digress.
Adjusting the Recipe
I followed the recipe for the Awesome Sloppy Joes I made a couple weeks ago. The first adjustment was the Beefy Crumbles. This is the product I used:
Next, since the Beefy Crumbles come in an 11-ounce bag I needed to make only half the amount of sauce. I used the Excel Recipe Form that I posted on December 10th. Once I put in the original recipe, I was able to put .5 in the multiplier box and it halved the recipe immediately. That was easy…
Making the Vegetarian Sloppy Joes
Making the Sloppy Joes was similar to the beef version. I sautéed the green bell pepper, onion, and garlic in some butter. Then I added the Beefy Crumbles.
Then I added the pre-measured sauce ingredients.
Stir, bring to a boil and allow to simmer about 20 minutes. The sauce will have thickened due to evaporation during that time. It will look like this:
Generally, Sloppy Joes are served on bun. We had a few pieces of leftover Italian bread from a fondue dish on Christmas eve, so my daughter used that. I try to stay away from bread. If I’m going to have flour, I’d much rather had a cookie or cake. So I had mine on a bed of spinach with veggies on the side.
The Recipe
As I said earlier, I modified the standard Awesome Sloppy Joes recipe. Since the Excel spreadsheet I created for you has all the formulas embedded, as soon as I put in the multiplier of .5, all the measurements calculated for me. SO simple!!
Enjoy!!