Sensational sloppy Joes

For the moving days I decided that I wanted something quick and easy for people to grab. I decided on the less healthy sloppy Joes with potato chips.
1 pound of bacon (only 4 slices will be used in the dish but you need the grease from the entire pound)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 large onion
2 cans of beef vegetable soup with barley
3 pounds hamburger
ketchup and mustard to taste

Sloppy Joes

I often fry bacon once a week then I eat a couple of pieces a day with my breakfast.  With the desire to save cleaning time (I have too much to pack) I fried the bacon in the same pan that I was going to brown the hamburger in.

Everything is better with bacon

I am not sure what possessed me to do this but it was a fabulous idea.  When the bacon was almost done cooking, I quickly chopped an onion and pulled the minced onions out of the fridge.  There was only about a teaspoon left in the jar.  That was the perfect amount for me.

Sautee' onions and garlic in bacon grease

It just gets better!  I added about 2 pounds of hamburger to the bacon grease.  Once it was browned, I removed most of the hamburger and added another pound of hamburger. I should have just started with a pan one size bigger.  I'm just not used to cooking in these large quantities.

Brown hamburger in bacon grease.

I added two cans of beef vegetable soup with barley.  This isn't a recipe that I made myself.  Growing up my brothers were in a youth organization called DeMolay.  Every year for the county fair they made sloppy Joes.  Not 3 pounds but about 15 pounds per family.  What I did was added bacon and cooking in bacon grease to the recipe.  I am not 100% certain of the recipe.  Most of by recipe books are already packed up.  But this is fairly close.



Beef vegetable with barley soup

I decided since I had freshly fried bacon that I'd tear up a few pieces and add it to the mixture.  After all, everything IS better with bacon.  I did not salt or pepper the mixture.  With the bacon and bacon grease there was plenty of flavor.



Everything IS better with bacon!

I started about with about half cup of ketchup and a tablespoon of mustard.  The only mustard that I had on hand was my horseradish mustard.  It just added another dimension of flavor.  It is times like this when I'm cooking that I wonder if I should try out for "Chopped".  But they usually throw things in the basket the I don't recognize. 

Add ketchup and mustard

I had already packed the bowls, so I decided to mix  everything together in the crock pot that it will be cooked in on Friday.  I will freeze it then wash the crock pot so that it is ready for Friday.  After you taste it, you might want to add more ketchup and mustard to taste.  Remember that as if freezes and then cooks up, the tastes will absorb into the meat.