What’s for dinner? Ground beef to the rescue!

Comfort food always works. What sounds good tonight? How about a supper meal featuring Sloppy Joes, Southern Burgers or Maid-Rites? All are found in the “meats” section in the kitchen recipe box.

What these entrées have in common is that each has a base of “loose meat” – ground beef that’s been crumbled and sauteed.

 

“There’s nothing complicated about a Sloppy Joe,” says Anna Brones, a food and travel writer who is a regular contributor to the Blue Apron website. “It’s sweet, savory…and sloppy.”

 

“At its most basic, the Joe is a sandwich made with ground beef and a tomato sauce. The Sloppy Joe’s history, however, is a bit more complex.”

“Some attribute the original Sloppy Joe to a café in Sioux City (in northwest Iowa on the Missouri River bordering Nebraska),” Brones said. “It is here, where, many years ago, in 1930 a cook named Joe added tomato sauce to his “loose meat” sandwiches.”

However, four years earlier in 1926, Fred Angell, a butcher in Muscatine, a city in southeastern Iowa on the Mississippi River bordering Illinois, had developed a loose meat ground beef recipe that featured his own distinctive blend of seasonings and spices.

According to Jay Goodvin (shown below), a contributor to Little Village, a news and culture magazine in Iowa, a meat deliveryman tasted Fred Angell’s new creation and exclaimed: “This sandwich is made right!”

 

Fred Angell and his son, Francis Angell, opened the first “Maid-Rite” restaurant in Muscatine in 1926 and began a franchisee network that will celebrate its 100-year anniversary next year. Bradley Burt, the current CEO of Maid-Rite Corporation, said: “Fred Angell was quite a sandwich maker, but not much of a speller.”

“Our select line of seasoned loose meat sandwiches are made from 100% USDA Midwestern fresh ground beef served on a fresh steamed white or wheat bun, with your choice of ketchup, mustard, onion and pickles,” Burt said. (Today, there are 25 Maid-Rite restaurants operating in five Midwestern states.)

 

Goodvin said Iowans also crave loose meat dishes that rival “Maid-Rites,” which are known as “Buckshot Burgers” in Iowa City, as “Taverns” in Sioux City and as “Canteens” in Ottumwa. The latter is the specialty at the iconic Canteen Lunch in the Alley, where the sandwich is wrapped in heavy wax paper and comes with a spoon, so customers can scoop up any droppings of meat that tumble out of the bun.

 

The “Tavern” is shown above and the “Canteen” is below.

This restaurant inspired the creation of The Lanford Lunch Box, the fictional loose meat sandwich shop featured on the “Roseanne” sitcom television show, which aired from 1988-97. (The comedic star of the show Roseanne Barr was once married to actor Tom Arnold, an Ottumwa native.)

 

Perhaps, as others have suggested, the Sloppy Joe sandwich originated at a restaurant in Havana, Cuba, in 1910, owned by Jose Abeal y Otero. He served drinks and chilled seafood, and the ice would melt and muddy the floor, leaving things “sloppy.” Patrons dubbed the restaurant “Sloppy Joe’s,” and the name stuck. There is evidence of a loose beef sandwich being on the original menu, featuring ground beef, capers and onions.

 

One of the frequent diners at Sloppy Joe’s was America’s legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Cuba from 1940 until the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

 

Hemingway relocated to Key West, Fla., where he convinced his friend and bar owner, Joe Russell, to change the name of The Silver Slipper to Sloppy Joe’s Bar and start serving the legendary sandwich.

 

The Key West version of the dish is described as “delicious ground beef in a sweet rich tomato sauce with onions, peppers and spices.”