Sloppy Joes Buns are the weeknight hack for easy meals later
Sloppy joe buns are a meal you can fit in your hand, made with the best soft, easy to make, easy to work with yeast dough then filled with savory ground beef spiced up with the nostalgic flavors of your childhood.
Like my krautburgers, these buns feed a crowd, leaving you with plenty of freezable sandwiches for hungry teens or an easy freezer meal for days you are too tired to cook.
| Active time | Total time | Yield | Difficulty |
| 30 min | 2 hr 25 min | 24 rolls | Medium |
With a busy family, I’m always looking for ways to make dinner easier, and meal-in-one breads like this one are always a win. I can make a batch, freeze what we don’t eat and reheat things on a night we’re on the go.
The nice thing about these buns is that all the traditional mess of the sloppy joe is contained inside the bread itself, making these buns portable. I suppose you could call them un-sloppy joes. Regardless, the dough is feathery soft, easy to work, and the filling is a big warm hug with a touch of melty cheese because why not?!
Why you’ll want these sloppy joe buns in your dinner rotation
- Bake once, eat many times: This recipe makes 24 buns, making several meals worth of a savory, satisfying main dish. Add a salad and you’re set for dinner. These buns freeze wonderfully.
- Like convenience foods, but no trash: The idea of Hot Pockets, that you can have a simple meal right in your hand is great, but the ingredients of said Hot Pocket is an eerie list of preservatives and chemistry. Our homemade sloppy joe buns are made with real ingredients and zero trash. Any time you can choose that for your family is a good day. Making your own convenience foods is an easy way to keep yourself from eating ultra processed garbage foods.
- Less mess: Sloppy joes are always going to be messy to eat, but at least when the chaos is contained inside the bun, they won’t be as drippy all over the place. When you have kids, this is also a nice thing. It’s also good if you have a dog like mine, who spends dinner time being the Roomba under the table in hopes something will fall.
Great places to take your sloppy joe buns
Because these buns are less messy, they become infinitely portable.
- The park
- Picnics
- Parties: anytime you need to feed a crowd!
- Ballgame: My kids tell me it’s only legal to eat hot dogs at a ballgame, but I would happily pack one of these and eat it instead!
- Backyard BBQ
- Potlucks
- Tailgating
- Shoot, I’d pack up the meat in a thermos, add some cheese on top and go sans bun if I needed to pack a lunch and wasn’t close to a microwave!
Everybody loves meat pies, so sloppy joe buns aren’t that weird
My Dad, the uncontested King of Sloppy Joes would be glad to know that he is not alone in the world amongst people who love saucy meat wrapped up in bread. All around the world, there are plenty of examples of a filling in a bun. For example:
- Cornish pasties: UK. Meat and vegetables in a rich pastry crust. Paul Hollywood’s recipe is my personal favorite. Try it if you think you hate the idea of the pasty–it will be the best meal you’ve had in a really long time even if your pastry needs practice.
- Empanadas: Latin and South America’s meat pie.
- Bao: China’s steamed buns filled with delicious BBQ pork.
- Krautburger/Runza/Bierock: Check out my Krautburger recipe for more on these incredible meat and cabbage buns from my home state of Nebraska via the Volga Germans.
- Sausage rolls: UK/Canada: uncased sausage baked in puff pastry crust.
- Kibbeh: Middle East: some versions have ground meat encased with a bulgur wheat crust.
- Pirozhki: Russian meat pies sometimes filled with boiled eggs in addition to ground beef and onions.
Ingredients for Sloppy Joe Buns
The best dough for filled buns
- Warm water
- Yeast: instant or active dry
- Granulated sugar
- Milk
- Butter
- Eggs
- Salt
- All purpose flour
Finishing the buns
- Egg: for egg wash
- Sesame seeds, poppy seeds , Everything Bagel seasoning or a combination of any or all of these
- Cheese (Jack or Cheddar are best, but use what you have)
Sloppy Joe filling
- Bacon fat or olive oil
- Ground beef: 85/15 or 80/20 is best
- Onion, diced
- Bell pepper, any color, diced
- Garlic
- Salt
- Pepper
- Tomato paste: better than ketchup here so that the filling doesn’t get too watery (see question below)
- Mustard: good old yellow mustard
- Paprika (optional)
- Allspice (optional)
- Cloves(optional)
- Brown sugar
Equipment needed
- 1/2 sheet pans x2
- parchment
- rolling pin
- Bench scraper : makes for easy dividing of the dough into balls
No, you can skip the paprika, allspice, and cloves, but this is my personal favorite combination since it supports the flavors of the tomato. My Dad adds nothing but salt and pepper and magically manages to have the best sloppy joes period. If there’s another spice combination you prefer, you can do that instead too. A chopped up serrano or jalepeno is a nice addition if you like things spicy.
Most sloppy joe recipes use ketchup in the sauce. However, and this is not intuitive, but if your filling is too sloppy, it will make the bread soggy. If your bread gets too soggy, it will never bake properly. Tomato paste gives you all the tomato flavor of ketchup, but gives you more wiggle room in how saucy you make your meat. By adding just a touch of water to the filling, you’ll get the right consistency without having to cook down the sauce for forever. So tomato paste saves you time and let’s you control the moisture better than ketchup.
How to make sloppy joe buns
- Make the dough: Dissolve the yeast in the water with a pinch of the sugar. Melt the butter, then add the milk so that everything is warm. Dump the yeast water, milk and the rest of the dough ingredients into a stand mixer. Mix with the dough hook until you have a soft, elastic dough that forms around the hook. It may seem sticky now, but almost all of that stick will go away as the dough rises. Cover the dough to rest while you make the filling.
- Make the filling: Brown onions and the pepper in the bacon fat. Add in the garlic and the tomato paste, stirring everything until the paste looks a little thicker and duller in color. Add in the spices and the ground beef. Brown the beef until the pink disappears. Add in the mustard, salt and pepper and just enough water so that the meat doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Simmer the beef for a few minutes just to blend all the flavors. Set aside the filling to cool.
- Prep the dough for filling: Divide the dough into 24 pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball and place it on a lightly floured surface. Cover the buns with a kitchen towel to rest for about 10 minutes.
- Fill the buns: Line 2 sheet trays with parchment . Working with 2 pieces of dough at a time, roll out the dough into flat circles about 5″ across. When one piece of dough seems to resist rolling out, move to the other piece. In the time it takes for you to roll out the second piece, the first piece will have rested enough to roll out further. Lay one of the dough circles in your hand, and then sprinkle the center with a couple tablespoons of shredded cheese. Cover the cheese with 1/3 cup of the meat filling.
- Seal the buns: Draw the edges of the dough around the meat filling, pinching it in the middle well. This dough is extremely forgiving and will just about seal itself, but do make sure that you see no filling. Turn the bun over and rotate the bun in your hand a few times to round out the edges. Place the buns on the baking sheets and cover them for 30 minutes to finish rising.
- Bake the buns: Beat the egg for the egg wash with about 1 teaspoon of water. Paint the egg wash on the buns and then top them with sesame seeds (or poppy seeds /Everything Bagel). If you’d like, you can scatter some cheese on top as well. Bake for 25 minutes.
Can I make the dough and filling ahead of time?
You can both make the filling and the dough ahead of time. Cover each in the fridge for up to 3 days.
From there, you can roll out cold dough and fill away fairly quickly. If you’re working with cold dough, simply cover the finished sloppy joe buns and let them rise for about 50 minutes before baking to allow the dough to warm up a little bit since it will be colder than the room temperature dough in the recipe.
How to store sloppy joe buns
Store baked sloppy joe buns covered with foil in the fridge for up to a week. Try to avoid placing them in an airtight container as they will get condensation on them inside the container, making the dough a bit soggy and making them stick to each other.
For longer storage, freeze them on a sheet tray first, and then pop them into plastic bags. Remove as much air as possible when you do so. To warm them back up, cover them with foil and bake in a 325 oven until they’re warmed through in the center.
Tips for making un-sloppy joes
- Work ahead: If your filling, dough, or both are made ahead of time, you can knock these buns out in almost no time. Bonus: cold filling and cold dough are a little easier to work with if you’re not as adept at handling yeast dough.
- Use a measuring cup for filling: Use a measuring cup to scoop the filling into a neat mound on top of the dough. This will help you work neatly and quickly.
- Watch your moisture: Again, I prefer tomato paste over ketchup since ketchup can make the filling too wet, which can waterlog the dough, making it impossible to bake properly. Do pay attention to your filling as it’s cooking, adding a little bit of water to keep the meat from burning or sticking and just to add a little bit of moisture. If your meat is floating, it’s too wet!
- Don’t skip the egg wash: As I tell my students, “Only skip the egg wash if you want ugly bread, and we don’t make ugly bread.” The egg wash will give you shiny tops and help the seeds stick to the bread.
What should you serve with sloppy joe buns?
Condiments
- Ketchup
- Mustard
- Fry sauce
- Queso
- Ranch
Sides
- Coleslaw
- Potato salad
- Cucumber salad (thinly sliced cucumbers, shallot, dill, salt and pepper, white wine vinegar, pinch of sugar)
- Carrot salad
- Roasted cauliflower
- Tater tots or other crispy potato
Sloppy Joes Buns
- Total Time: 2 hours 25 minutes
- Yield: 24 buns 1x
Description
If you could wrap up your childhood favorite in a cheesy, portable, less messy package in the softest yeast dough that’s actually easy to work with, would you try? When you do, you’ll have 24 little hand-held beefy saucy meals you can pop in the freezer for one of the best freezer meals yet.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast or active dry
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 cup whole milk (236 mL)
- 1/4 cup butter (57 g)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (450 g)
Filling
- 1 tablespoon of bacon fat or olive oil
- 2 pounds ground beef: 80/20 or 85/15
- 1 small yellow onion, diced
- 1 bell pepper, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup tomato paste
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 2 Tablespoons yellow mustard
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
Egg wash
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon water
- Sesame seeds, poppy seeds , or Everything Bagel seasoning
Instructions
Make the dough
- Measure out the sugar, then sprinkle a pinch of it into a small bowl with the warm water and yeast. Stir to dissolve, then set aside for about 5 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
Mix yeast and water with pinch of sugar - Heat the milk in a small pan until you see bubbles at the edges. Cut up the 4 tablespoons of butter, then stir it into the hot milk to melt along with the rest of the sugar. When the butter is melted, crack in the eggs and beat them until you get a smooth mixture.
- Mix the flour and the salt in a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer, and then make a well in the center. Pour the milk/butter mixture into the well, then the yeast mixture.
Mix rest of dough ingredients with flour and salt - Stir the ingredients with a wooden spoon to make a shaggy dough.
- For kneading, by machine, switch to the dough hook on a stand mixer and let the mixer run on low speed until you get a smooth, sticky, elastic dough, about 5 minutes To knead by hand: turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and use a bench scraper to slap the dough down, then bring the edges towards the center. Repeat this motion for 10 minutes, until you have a smooth, elastic dough. Resist the urge to add more flour. This should be a soft dough, and most of the stickiness will go away after the dough has risen.
Elastic dough after kneading - Cover the dough with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for 1 hour. Meanwhile, make the filling.
Make the sloppy joe filling
- In a large skillet or dutch oven , melt the bacon fat over medium heat.
- Add the ground beef and allow to brown for a couple minutes, and then use a spatula to break up the meat. Add in 1 teaspoon of salt, and continue cooking until the meat is no longer pink.
- Remove the beef to a plate or bowl with a slotted spoon.
- Add in the onion and pepper stirring until the onion is soft and translucent.
- Add in the garlic and tomato paste, stirring until the tomato paste looks a little thicker and duller. Add in the paprika, pepper, allspice and cloves. Stir constantly for about 30 seconds to toast the spices.
- Return the meat to the pan along with the mustard, sugar and the remaining teaspoon of salt. Stir everything well and then add 1-2 tablespoons of water—just enough to keep the meat from sticking.
- Cover the pan and cook for no more than 2-3 minutes. Taste the filling at this point. Sprinkle a tiny bit more water if the filling seems dry, but there should be no floating sauce around the meat or it the sauce will make the dough soggy. Ideally the filling should look moist but not wet.
Add in the paprika, pepper, allspice and cloves. Stir constantly for about 30 seconds to toast the spices. 
Stir everything well and then add 1-2 tablespoons of water—just enough to keep the meat from sticking.Assemble the buns
- Preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C).
- Place parchment on 2 sheet trays.
- Divide the now soft and puffy dough into 24 pieces. Cover the dough to keep it from drying out as you work.
- Roll each piece into a little ball and set aside on a work surface. Keep them in order. By the time you finish rolling the last ball, the first ball will be ready to make into a filled bun.
- On a floured surface, roll a piece of dough into a circle about 4 1/2″-5” across. It’s best to work with 2 or 3 pieces of dough at a time for speed and also so that if you find the dough resisting rolling out you can move to another piece to give the dough a chance to relax before you roll it out further. Do not pat out the dough as that could lead to thin spots that could split in the oven.
- Hold a dough circle in your hand. If you’re using cheese, add in about 2 tablespoons of cheese on top the dough circle.
- Using a measuring cup, scoop out 1/3 cup of the meat filling into the center of the flattened dough circle.
- Use your hands to pinch the edges of the dough into the center. This dough is very soft and forgiving, so it will pinch together easily.
- Turn the bun over, then turn it over on your work surface. Form your hand into a dome, then turn the bun around clockwise and few times. This will neaten up the edges and make a nice round shape.
- Place the finished bun on one of the prepared sheet trays. Continue filling the buns, covering them with a tea towel or greased plastic wrap as you go. Let all the buns rest and rise for 15 minutes before baking.
- Beat the egg and water and brush all the krautburgers with egg wash. Sprinkle the tops with sesame seeds. If you’re using cheese, you can sprinkle a little more cheese on top of each bun.
- Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown.
Notes
Make ahead and freeze: Assemble your sloppy joe buns, and then freeze the unbaked burgers on a parchment lined baking sheet in one layer. From here, transfer the frozen krautburgers into an airtight plastic bag and pop back into the freezer. You can freeze for up to 3 months.
To warm up the buns: Place frozen buns in a foil pack and heat at 325 until they’re warm in the center. I can’t recommend the microwave as this will toughen the bread.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- + 90 minutes rising time:
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Baking, Sautéing
- Cuisine: American
