Our Instant Pot sloppy joes recipe are an easy protein packed meal with 4 ingredients, even your kids will love these. With ground beef, ketchup, mustard and brown sugar it is best served inside slider buns or on garlic bread.
Jump To
- Ingredient Notes
- Can You Make Sloppy Joes with Ground Turkey?
- Do you drain the meat for sloppy joes?
- Can you make sloppy joes with frozen ground beef?
- Instant Pot Sloppy Joes Recipe
- How do you thicken sloppy joes?
- How to Save Leftovers
- Why are sloppy joes called sloppy joes?
- How Long to Cook Sloppy Joes in Pressure Cooker
- Other Instant Pot Recipes You’ll Love
This meal is probably one of the easiest dinners I have made for over ten years for my family. Then when I got my new pot and was creating new Instant Pot recipes it dawned on me that I should try it this way and it was a huge success.
I made this sloppy joes recipe for years on the stovetop. Now it was time to use my new favorite kitchen appliance! You can just use saute or pressure cook to really lock in those flavors. I tweaked it a bit adding bell peppers and a few other ingredients. Figuring out the timing was another step. After a few batches we determined which was absolutely perfect so we could share it with you.
I’d hate to share something with y’all that might have an issue, it has to be perfect. Now if you like spicy you can adjust it for that really easily. My favorite way of adding heat would be some dry Sriracha or red pepper flakes works as well. You can make this one in your Crockpot Express, Ninja Foodi or any other pressure cooker brand you have.
Ingredient Notes
Lean ground beef, make as ground chicken sloppy joes or with turkey if you wish for lower fat. Bell peppers and onions diced are a nice add in for veggies if you wish.
We use olive oil to help brown the meat in the initial step. You could use avocado oil as a substitute if you wanted something different.
Ketchup is the main base of your sauce. I have tried several varieties and Heinz organic is my favorite with the deepest flavor and cleanest taste.
Brown sugar makes it a bit sweet, adjust as you wish. Mustard creates that zing, use yellow vs. dijon. Use chili powder to add a bit of heat.
Worcestershire sauce will give you a deep almost soy sauce type of flavor to the sauce. If I am making Big Mac sloppy joes I will leave whole slices of onions on the side for the top too. Garlic we love, chopped from fresh cloves or from jarred.
As far as the bun you can use hamburger buns, Hawaiian rolls, garlic bread or open faced like our Texas Toast sloppy joes.
Can You Make Sloppy Joes with Ground Turkey?
You can totally use any sort of ground meat you like. There is chicken and turkey that are lower in fat, and spicy sausage is another favorite. I like half beef, half spicy Jimmy dean if I can find it and they are on sale. Adds a ton of flavor, a bit of heat, and even the kids prefer this blend.
Do you drain the meat for sloppy joes?
This is totally up to you. Sloppy joes are an all American favorite meal prepared with ground beef, ketchup, tomato sauce, and a few other common ingredients. These delicious sandwiches are loose in their consistency and aren’t intended to take shape like a normal hamburger. I personally do not drain the grease. I feel it gives it a bit more flavor to leave it in and I use lean meats so there usually isn’t much anyway.
Can you make sloppy joes with frozen ground beef?
It is always best to use fresh or defrosted meat but if you need to know how to cook Instant Pot frozen ground beef to begin with, start with the instructions here and then proceed with the step by step in the recipe card below.
You could use any sort of ground beef you wanted, or a combination of two of them. Chicken or turkey would be the lowest in fat while sausage offers a lot of flavor and can make them spicy. Serve with small buns like sloppy joe sliders or larger sandwiches.
Instant Pot Sloppy Joes Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef, or ground sausage
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil, for sauteing meat
- 2 tbsp brown sugar, more or less depending on desired flavor
- 3 tbsp mustard, more or less depending on desired flavor
- 3/4 cup ketchup, more or less depending on desired flavor
Instructions
- Put pot on saute function. Add oil and once it is hot If you want to add 1/2 cup add diced onions, bell peppers and 1 tgsp minced garlic you can start by sauteing for about 2 minutes to soften them slightly. If you don't want to add these extras you should skip to step 2.
- Add ground beef and cook until outsides are no longer pink (if there is a noticeable amount of grease in your pot, drain that off)
- Add all other ingredients in the list inside the pot to make the sauce and stir together. Taste to see if you feel like it needs to be sweeter with more sugar or have more tang with more mustard. (you can also double the sauce ingredients if you want it really wet)
- Leave on saute and allow to bubble, stirring consistently so it doesn't burn for about 3-5 minutes to deepen the flavors.
- Put on buns and serve.
Video
Notes
How to Make Spicy
If you want some heat to this you can either swap the ground beef for HOT Jimmy dean ground sausage or add 1/4-1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes or dry Sriracha into the sauce.Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
How do you thicken sloppy joes?
You always want it nice and thick with the sauce. I didn’t find a need to do anything extra for this one but if you wanted a different texture you could add more tomato paste and a bit less sauce. You can thicken sloppy joes with simple ingredients like a slurry of cornstarch and water. Typically you can have this meal ready in approximately 30 minutes total.
In a small bowl just whisk together a few tbsp. of cornstarch and water. Set your pot to saute, and add the cornstarch and water mixture. Stir, allow to bubble, and it will get thicker. As it sits in the pot and cools it will thicken more as well.
How to Save Leftovers
If you have leftovers they save quite well. Wait until the mixture cools off completely and then transfer it to a plastic container or freezer bag. Seal the container or baggie tightly so as little air as possible gets trapped inside.
Keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. When you reheat it I would just go ahead and use your microwave for about 1 minute. Stir halfway thru and you can even add some shredded cheese to the top the last 15 seconds to melt. Serve this over rice instead of inside a bun to change things up, or just alone.
Why are sloppy joes called sloppy joes?
According to stories, a cook named Joe at Floyd Angell’s cafe in Sioux City Iowa added tomato sauce to his loose meat sandwiches and the term sloppy joe sandwich was created. The rest as they say is history! Today there are TONS of varieties and ways to make these popular sandwiches. You can add just about anything to them really!
How Long to Cook Sloppy Joes in Pressure Cooker
10 minutes is the real cook time but that doesn’t account for the time it takes to reach pressure and start to count down. I use a wooden spoon almost always as to not scratch my non stick pot. This recipe is really great because it is super easy and there’s tons of flavor when it’s done.
This is how I start cooking almost all of my Instant Pot ground beef recipes: You need to add olive oil into your pot and set it to saute. I add my ground beef and onions now. If you’re including bell peppers now is a good time to add those too. You want your veggies to soften and outside of your meat to no longer be pink. It doesn’t need to be completely cooked through, just browned on the outside.
Stir occasionally throughout this step and turn your pressure cooker off once this stage is complete.
Now you’re going to add all your other ingredients and pressure cook them all together. Lock the lid and close your steam valve for this step. Cooking time for this stage is just 5 minutes on high pressure followed by a quick release.
Once you remove the lid, stir and you can serve from here! I always unplug my pot when done because even though it is done cooking it remains on warm and can begin to burn the bottom if you don’t.
Other Instant Pot Recipes You’ll Love
Serving sloppy joes are typically served on hamburger buns. Use your imagination though! We love this recipe incorporating noodles too we called Instant Pot sloppy joe casserole, totally fun dish. You could even serve it over chips and call them sloppy joe nachos! Other pressure cooker recipes you’ll love:
You can go further to add a cornbread topping to this with our sloppy joe casserole recipe. Instant Pot lasagna soup is easy to make and a family fave. This is just one of our favorite Instant Pot kids recipes. You can find a lot more on that post to enjoy with your family.
Just made sloppy Joe’s. So so good. The only thing I would change cooking on l Iow heat instead of high heat. Mine started to burn but I did drain the turkey fat from the turkey meat. But overall the be8thst.
Yes there may not have been enough liquid as a barrier on the bottom. having a non stick pot will help with this in the future. Glad it was a hit
Easiest and tastiest sloppy joes.
We did a blind taste test and our grandchildren like Instant Pot Sloppy Joes much better than the canned version!
Family favorite.
I made this exactly as the instructions said, however my entire family says that it is really bland. Could I have done something wrong time make this dish have such a lack of flavor.
Depends on whether they think they want it sweeter, hotter or more zing. You can easily adjust to your family’s preference. More zing = more mustard, sweet add more brown sugar and Srirach will add heat.
I have only used my Instant Pot for the past month so you can for sure say I am a beginner! I tried the sloppy joe recipe and kept getting the burn error. I tossed my sloppy joe mix in a bowl, cleaned my instant pot and threw in another easy meal and it did fine….. the hubby and kids really wanted the sloppy joes so I tried placing it back in the pot with a cup of tomato juice added and I am still getting the error! Any help would be much appreciated!
Hmmm, did you deglaze the pot after sauteeing the ground beef? That is a must. I would also HIGHLY suggest getting the non stick ceramic pot vs. the one it came with. It will almost entirely eliminate the burn message showing up. Most of the time it is false and not really burning but the sensor thinks it is. With the non stick there is an added barrier and doesn’t trigger it, game changer. Link near top of page for the one I have.
@The Typical Mom, Yeah, I’ve made this several times and always get the burn error no matter what I do. I will consider getting the ceramic pot and try it again though because the recipe is great.