My Portuguese Sloppy Joes

Like every other American kid out there, I've had a sloppy joe. For an easy meal, my mom would through together some hamburger, tomato sauce, and chopped onions and peppers. Sometimes for supper, we would also have chourico and peppers, which is slices of chourice and chopped peppers. My mom decided to combine the two recipes, giving birth to the Portuguese sloppy joe. Instead of just hamburger, the recipe calls for ground chourico and gives the option of putting in chourico slices as well. When I made the dish, I only included the ground chourico. Like the Portuguese soup, I was pleasantly surprised to find how easy making chourico and hamburger sloppy joes are. And yet again making the sloppy joes did take time. I had to patiently wait for hours, as the mixture I created slowly cooked in the crock pot, making sure to stir it every 20 minutes or so, so the filling evenly cooked. After letting the meat mixture cool, my family and I ate it before heading off to see Grease, the play.

Did a guy named Joe invent the sloppy Joe?

According to my research (foodtimeline.org), sloppy joes are not named after a guy named Joe, the sandwich name originates from the fact that 1) it is messy and 2) it is made for all those average Americans out there--also known as average joes. Though food historians believe the inspiration for the dish goes further back than 1934--the first time the recipe was recorded in a cookbook. Filling, meat sandwiches have existed throughout history though; meat sandwiches that resemble the sloppy joe. For example medieval minced meat pies and the English shepherd's pie. Basically, the sloppy joe was an economical way to have a filling meat meal during the great depression, inspired by older chopped meat dishes, that grew popular and found its way into the twenty first century.

A side thought...

By cooking recipes like Portuguese soup and sloppy joes, I have discovered that cooking for myself and others actually isn't as difficult as I though it would be. Of course I am not cooking meals that take hours and hours of focus and dedication and I do not have the pressure of others expecting me to make supper every single night. Before I began cooking for this project, I hardly ever helped my mom make supper or cook meals in general, I stuck to making desserts, my favorite to cook. But after this project, I think I will help out in the kitchen more, learning how to cook real meals because not only did I discover the importance of being able to prepare meals for myself, I also discovered I enjoy cooking meals. Thanks to my independent project, I discovered not only do I enjoy eating, I enjoy cooking too!