Compared by formula

Sloppy Joes

144 recipes, read so you don't have to.

Every recipe is a different answer to the same few questions. Tell us the sandwich you are after and we will hand you the closest one anyone has published, plus what to change to suit you.

144recipes read
Sloppy Joes, as published.
Sloppy Joe's Bar, Havana (publisher) · Public domain

What kind of sloppy joe do you want?

Your recipe

Closest published recipe

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Ingredients

    Method

      Change your sandwich recipe

      Each one is measured across all 144 recipes and then converted into this recipe's own amounts. Every edit costs something. The cost is on the card.

      Make it thinner

      –

      More braising liquid went with sandwichs that came out thinner, across 615 versions. An open braise evaporates and concentrates; a sealed one does not. That single difference is most of what separates a Dutch oven from a slow cooker.

      Costs you: Nothing else moved that we can measure. We only detect 7 of the 60 changes cooks describe, so read that as unmeasured rather than free.

      measured across many versions · 615 versions

      The complete design space

      Every sandwich recipe we measured

      The five above are the ones we would point you to. This is every recipe we measured, if you would rather look yourself.

      Browse all 144 recipes →

      The same ontology, other dishes

      Others in this family

      These share the mechanisms and the vocabulary you have just read, each one measured the same way against its own set of recipes.

      Beef StewSame family, its own design spaceBeef StroganoffSame family, its own design spaceBolognese SauceSame family, its own design spaceBraised Short RibsSame family, its own design spaceCarnitasSame family, its own design spaceChicken CurrySame family, its own design spaceChiliSame family, its own design spaceGoulashSame family, its own design spaceGround Beef TacosSame family, its own design spaceGumboSame family, its own design spacePot RoastSame family, its own design spacePulled PorkSame family, its own design spaceWhite Chicken ChiliSame family, its own design space
      Honesty

      Where we would be guessing

      The useful half of any measurement is knowing where it stops.

      Comparisons, not scores

      We can say one recipe reads further along an axis than another. We cannot put a number on it, and we do not pretend to.

      Direction, not magnitude

      Where we can name something that measurably changes the result, we can say which way it pushes. We still cannot tell you where your own sloppy joes will land, because that also depends on your kitchen and your equipment. here is what we can tell you when it goes wrong.

      Slow cooker and Pressure cooker rests on fewer recipes

      There are far fewer published slow cooker and pressure cooker recipes to choose between, so that pick is provisional. We say so on the card rather than hiding it.

      Some sites give ratings but no words

      A few publishers load their reviews from somewhere we cannot read. Their star ratings count toward how trusted a recipe is; their comments could not tell us anything about what cooks changed.