Well I’ll be damned. I didn’t even occur to me that it’d be a recent topic. Kinda creepy.
Well, you’re supposed to be all-knowing. 
I bought a packet of something called “Sloppy Joe” which called for a can of tomato paste. It was just OK for filling up the stomach, it tasted too much like bad spaghetti sauce. I’m sticking with good ol’ Manwich.
It’s funny how the SDMB works. More than once have I gone to the SDMB with a question floating around my head, and finding someone had just started a topic about it. Creepy, indeed.
This may be the only place in the world where people unironically object to putting ketchup on french fries, or refer to sloppy joe purists. I love this board.
That’s part of the reason I actually prefer ketchup/chili sauce (or at least tomato sauce cut with ketchup) in this instance. Tomato sauce on its own is just too bolonaise-like for me. There’s something about ketchup/chili sauce that gives it the right tang and consistency for Sloppy Joes.
Ground beef, onion, tomato soup, Heinz chili sauce, ketchup. Brown the beef (lbs) and onion. Put in a can of tomato soup, a bottle of chili sauce and 14 ounces of ketchup. Simmer an hour or so. It’s pretty good. I guess if you like green pepper you can add it, but I don’t.
What’s interesting for me is that it had never even occurred to me, before this thread, that the base of a sloppy joe sauce could be anything other than ketchup. When I was a kid, Mom would make them with just meat and ketchup, and occasionally relish, and I just built from there.
When I was young, I discovered that leftover taco meat and ketchup do not make good sloppy joes.
I make mine with ground beef, onion, ketchup, and brown sugar. I like it more sweet than tomatoey, and I hate Manwich.
I use a variation on the Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I cut down on the spices a bit, and I drop the green peppers because I don’t tolerate them well (they make me burp like a maniac). This isn’t the quickest recipe out there but my lord is it good.
Merged duplicate threads.