…if what they want is GOOD food.

I didn’t eat many sloppy joes growing up. Maybe my parents ate one too many soggy renditions during their own childhood, but for whatever reason this was an item that was rarely seen on the dinner menu at my house.  It turns out that my lack of experience with these saucy, loose meat burgers puts me in a minority among friends who all recount fond memories of eating them on a near weekly basis. For me, sloppy joes have always represented your typical lunch counter fodder: a half simmering pot of reddish-brown mystery meat smashed between a sodden, dissolve-on-contact bun. For them, Mom cracking open a can of Manwich stood out as a true suppertime treat in a lineup of otherwise dismal home-cooked fare.

It wasn’t until I came across a recipe for this iconic American sandwich in a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine that I decided to give sloppy joes another look.  As usual, it looked as though the editors had found a few ways to rid the dish of it’s usual shortcomings and breath new life into an old favorite.  So, with a pound of ground beef sitting in the freezer and few extra homemade buns lying around from my fried chicken sandwiches, I set out to see what I’d been missing all these years.

The results were nothing short of spectacular.  Robust and beefy with a pleasant brightness coming from the addition of tomato puree, these joes were unlike anything I’d tasted in the past.  Gone was the typical grainy, greasy texture, replaced with a consistency that was pleasantly thick, yet saucy enough to blend seamlessly with the tender, pillow-soft bun.

Now to convince my parents to give them a shot.

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