Best homemade sloppy joes recipe with brown sugar, tomato sauce, ketchup, ground mustard seed, Worcestershire sauce, and white vinegar. This is a simple recipe to make and a dinner everyone will enjoy.
For more ground meat dinner ideas, you might enjoy Turkey Meatballs, Tamale Pie, or Shepherd's Pie.

This is the best homemade sloppy joe recipe ever.
The mix of tomato sauce, ketchup, white vinegar, brown sugar, and ground mustard seed come together beautifully. Its the perfect mix of sweet and sour.
I can see how this would be great to serve a large crowd. The recipe I've listed here can easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled. Whatever works for your needs.
We made our sloppy joes with ground turkey meat this time, and it was so darn flavorful.

How to Make Sloppy Joes
- Brown your ground beef or turkey with minced yellow onion in dutch oven for 5 minutes.
- In the meantime, mix up sauce including tomato sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, ground mustard seed, brown sugar and salt and pepper.
- Pour sauce over drained meat in dutch oven.
- Simmer for 20 minutes with lid on dutch oven.
- Enjoy!
How to Freeze Sloppy Joes
The good news is this sloppy joe recipe is SO easy to freeze and enjoy later. Simply place the meat mixture in an airtight freezer-safe container. Technically, you can freeze the meat for 3-6 months and it will still be good. However, I think enjoying it before 3 months is probably your best bet.
Tips:
- I used my dutch oven, but you can make this with a deep skillet that has a lid as well.
- The recipe calls for minced onions. Make sure you pay attention to minced - the mixture blends together better with very small onion pieces.
- I made the sloppy joes at lunchtime, then transferred the mixture to a warming crockpot, so it would be ready for the family when they arrived home later. This was a very good decision as the house smelled amazing with the sloppy joes warming all day.
I'm so glad I know how to make homemade sloppy joes now. It is just so much fresher and flavorful than using a sloppy joe spice packet as I used to do.
The good news is that this meal is really easy to pull together in a matter minutes, and is super yummy.
Serving suggestions:
- On top of rice
- With salad greens
- On a hamburger or broche bun
- On sliced sourdough bread
Hope you love these sloppy joes as much as we did!
Recipe

Homemade Sloppy Joes
Best homemade sloppy joes recipe with brown sugar, tomato sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and white vinegar. This is a simple recipe to make and a dinner everyone will enjoy.
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef or ground turkey
- 1 medium yellow onion, finely minced
- 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
- ½ cup ketchup
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp ground mustard
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- ¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
- 8 hamburger or brioche buns
Instructions
-
In a dutch oven, brown the ground meat and minced onions for about 5 minutes. Drain the meat.
-
In the meantime, in a medium bowl, whisk together the tomato sauce, ketchup, brown sugar, ground mustard, white vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper.
-
Pour the sauce over the meat in the dutch oven. Bring to a simmer and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes.
Recipe Notes
Adapted from Culinary Hill
Leave a Reply