Veggieful Sloppy Joe’s – Options for Vegan and Gluten-Free
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I have mentioned in previous posts that some of Adam’s favorite meals I cook are those I remember from my childhood. This is one of them. I made it one evening fairly early on in our relationship. I was missing my family, and wanted something warm and comforting to eat. When I made this dish, I cooked for both of us, but I was unsure if Adam would enjoy (or even eat) the meal. To my surprise, he did enjoy it and TVP Sloppy Joe’s have made it into our cooler weather cooking rotation ever since.
TVP Reconstituted
These Sloppy Joe’s are made with TVP (textured vegetable protein), sometimes called soy crumbles. When I was a child, my mother belonged to a bulk health food buying club – specialty health food wasn’t quite as easy to come by in the grocery store then as it is now. I’m not sure what she was thinking when she placed the order, but one afternoon we ended up with a 25-pound box of TVP. To put that in perspective, TVP is a dehydrated ingredient, this recipe uses just ⅓ pound and makes four generous servings!
Veggies prepped for cooking
As a child, that box seemed bottomless – I thought we would never reach the end of it (in fact my sister and I had a little party after the last meal made with that TVP). Now, as an adult, it is an ingredient I crave when I am missing home.
I also add in a good dose of vegetables to this recipe. If you chop them up even smaller than I do and they almost disappear into the sauce. If you have a picky eater who tries to avoid their veggies, this might be a good way of sneaking them in! The recipe my mother used for TVP Sloppy Joe’s is lost to the ages, so for this recipe, I started with Domestically Creative’s Sloppy Joe recipe, and then switched the protein, jammed in a lot more veggies, and made minor adjustments to the sauce.
There are three critical parts to the Sloppy Joe’s from my childhood – sloppy joe mix, buttered rolls, and sauerkraut – leave out one component and you have a boring meal. Add them all together and you get a delicious, crave-worthy dinner. It might sound like a strange mix, but please don’t skip the magic ingredients – the buttered rolls and sauerkraut are what make this dish so delicious.
I use gluten-free rolls, but any thick slice of bread or roll will work (Adam who is not gluten-free loves to use thick slices of soft bread baked with everything bagel topping). This is not the place for a thin piece of sandwich bread, a pita, or flat-bread – you need something thick to soak up all the delicious sauce from this meal. And since the sloppy joe mix is made without meat and filled with veggies, I never feel guilty when putting a little extra butter on my bread or roll. And you shouldn’t either, you need the fat to help cut through the tang of the other ingredients.
Veggieful Sloppy Joe’s
Ingredients
- 2 cups TVP plus 1 Tbsp Vegetable Better than Bullion or 1 vegetable bullion cube and 2 cups boiling water
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 small onions, finely diced
- 2 large carrots, finely diced
- 1 bell pepper, finely diced
- 2 celery stalks, finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 15 oz can tomato sauce
- 5 Tbsp tomato paste
- 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- 3 Tbsp worcestershire sauce (use vegan worcestershire sauce for the vegan option)
- 1 Tbsp yellow mustard
- 1½ tsp onion salt
- ½ tsp paprika
- ½ tsp black pepper
- Sauerkraut (cold or room temperature, not heated)
- Buns/thick slices of bread (gluten-free based on your diet)
- Butter spread of your choice (dairy or vegan)
Instructions
- Place the dried TVP and bullion in a heat proof bowl and pour the boiling water on top. (I use my tea kettle to heat the water.) Give a quick stir to evenly distribute the bullion, and then cover the bowl with a plate or lid to keep the heat and steam inside.
- In a large pan, use the olive oil to saute the onion, carrot, bell pepper and celery. Once they begin to soften, add the garlic and cook another 2-3 minutes.
- While the veggies are cooking, mix the tomato sauce through the black pepper in a bowl.
- Add the reconstituted TVP (all of the water should be absorbed) to the vegetables in the pan. Stir in the tomato sauce mixture and 1 cup water.
- Cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring periodically to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom.
- When you are getting close to the end of your simmer time, toast your bread/buns and spread them with a generous layer of butter. Spoon the sloppy joe mix on top of the buttered bread and then pile on about half as much sauerkraut as you used sloppy joe mix. Serve immediately and enjoy!
