If you’re like me, sometimes you don’t want to put the time into making a “real” batch of Sloppy Joes, but you don’t want to do the Manwich thing either. (Well, if you’re really like me, you think Manwich is nasty, but that’s beside the point!) Never fear, there just so happens to be a quick and easy way to whip up a batch of Sloppy Joes, and I like them almost as well as I like the “real” ones.
All you need is hamburger meat, mustard, brown sugar, and ketchup. I don’t have ingredient amounts for you, and that should tell you how easy it is. I am the Queen of wanting exact measurements. Let me show you just how easy it is.
First, you’ll need to brown your hamburger:

Once you have it cooked, drain it and return it to the pan. (I always rinse my meat and my pan to take out as much grease as possible). Now you are going to add as much mustard as you need to cover the meat, and turn it a nice mustardy yellow:

When you have added enough mustard, you’re going to add brown sugar. You’ll need to add as much brown sugar as it takes to cut out the color of the mustard, and make it a nice caramel color:

The final ingredient is the ketchup. This will make give your Sloppy Joes the correct color, and consistency!

I don’t have this “down” quite as well as my mom does, so at this point, I usually have to do a little tweaking to get it just right. After I took this picture, I did a little taste test, and decided my Sloppy Joes needed a little more brown sugar because they weren’t sweet enough. They were perfect after that though!
My best tip for making one-skillet Sloppy Joes is to add things in small amounts, and work up from there. You can always add more if you haven’t gotten it quite right, but you can’t take it back out if you add too much.
Of course, the final step is to spoon it onto a bun and eat it! I added pasta and potato salads to my plate. Yum!