Sloppy Joe Air Fryer Stuffed Potatoes

Name: Sloppy Joe Air Fryer Stuffed Potatoes
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ingredients: 4 good-sized Yukon gold potatoes (baked in air fryer or oven, plus olive oil to coat (see note)); 1 tablespoon olive oil; 1 large white or sweet onion (diced small); 1 large bell pepper (any color, diced small); 3 cloves garlic (minced); 1 pound ground beef; 1 can (6 ounces tomato paste); 2 teaspoons coconut sugar (or brown sugar); 1 tablespoon prepared spicy yellow mustard; 1 teaspoon chili powder; ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce; 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar; ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 1 teaspoon sea salt

May 30, 2020 by Beth 32 Comments

GF DF

Here’s an easy no-ketchup sloppy-joe stuffed potatoes recipe. We think it’s the best lip-smacking stuffed air-fryer potatoes — and you’ll never miss the buns in this gluten-free meal.

What is a sloppy joe?

According to Wikipedia, ‘Marilyn Brown, Director of the Consumer Test Kitchen at H.J. Heinz in Pittsburgh, says their research at the Carnegie Library suggests that the sloppy joe’s origins lie with the “loose meat sandwiches” sold in Sioux City, Iowa, in the 1930s and were the creation of a cook named Joe.’

Today, sloppy joe’s are usually made of ground or shredded beef or pork in a tomato sauce.

A from-scratch sloppy joe sauce

One simple way of making sloppy joe’s is by using a lot of ketchup with some mustard and Worcestershire. Not a fan of ketchup? Or out of ketchup? With this recipe where you make your own ketchup-like sauce.

When you play around with a recipe like this, you realize that what you enjoy most about sloppy joe’s is not so much the main ingredients, but the flavors of mustard, sugar, tomato and worcestershire. You can adjust the ingredients to your liking: more or less vinegar, or coconut sugar, or mustard.

Potatoes instead of buns

To make the recipe gluten-free, we opted to put our beef mixture onto potatoes instead of the typical buns. My favorite potato is the Yukon gold, most of which are a little small to scoop out and stuff. So, we opted to fill the split potatoes with the sloppy joe mixture.

This was a win, because you’ll want lots of the delectable air-fried potato with each bite!

Are there vegetarian joes?

This recipe could easily be made vegan using beans instead of beef – and we plan to make it this way soon for Meatless Monday.

Preparation hints:

Roast the potatoes while you are preparing the filling. If you decide to use russets rather than Yukon golds, you may want to add about 1/4 cup of water to your sauce so it doesn’t get too thick.

Once the potatoes are roasted, and as soon as you can handle them without burning your fingers, split each potato almost in half, then spoon the filling on.

Using small-diced onion and bell pepper makes it easier to stuff the potatoes than if you chop them with a larger dice.

You can put the garnishes on the table and let everyone adorn their own.

If you simmer the sauce for longer than the 10 minutes I suggest in the instructions, it will continue to thicken unless you cover it.

If you have a chance to make Sloppy Joe Stuffed Potatoes, please let me know how it went by leaving a comment below, or share on social media!

Enjoy.

Beth

Other recipes you may enjoy

Ground Beef-Stuffed Kabocha Squash

Massaman Curry-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Beef Barley Pumpkin Stew

Beef-Spinach Mini-Meatloaves

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