Sloppy Joegis

written by

posted on

July 22, 2025

Sloppy Joegis (Bulgogi Sloppy Joes)

A Family Dinner Favorite

In my largeish family of 7 siblings, Thursday night is sacred. Over the past decade, most of us have managed to relocate and settle within 45 minutes of each other—a fact that thrills my amazing Dutch Mother. Every Thursday, we gather around a big table, and everyone brings a dish to share. It has given me a great opportunity to try out new recipes—especially when it comes to creative fusion dishes.

One of my go-to contributions are these Sloppy Joegis—a mashup of classic American sloppy joes and the bold, sweet-salty flavors of Korean bulgogi. They are quick, easy, inexpensive, and wildly flavorful, and best of all—they make fantastic leftovers.

The first step is to get your quick pickles marinating. These tangy, spicy quick pickles add the perfect contrast to the rich beef filling.

You will thinly slice one small cucumber - regular cucumber works best for a crisp pickle. Then slice half a red onion into thin pieces. Place your cucumbers and onions in a flat bottom dish, and set aside.

Next, in a small saucepan mix ½ cup of rice vinegar, ½ cup of water, 2 teaspoons sriracha sauce, 1 ½ tablespoons honey, and bring to a slow boil over medium heat until everything has dissolved and mixed nicely. Next, remove from heat, and once it has cooled slightly, pour over top of your onions and cucumbers and set aside. They will pickle while you prepare the rest of the meal.

The second step is the Bulgogi-inspired beef filling. It is savory, slightly sweet and full of umami, adding depth & complexity for your taste buds. This bulgogi-style beef is the heart of the sandwich.

Add about a ½ tablespoon of oil to a cast iron skillet and heat to medium high. Stir in 1 pound of ground beef, and cook for about 5 minutes, until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat, and discard the grease. With the beef still in the skillet, place it back on the stove at medium heat adding in: ⅔ cup reduced sodium soy sauce, ⅔ cup brown sugar, 4 green onions (both the white and green parts) thinly sliced, 2-½ teaspoons sesame oil, 1-½ tablespoons sriracha, 1 garlic clove grated, and a 1” piece of grated ginger. Stir occasionally until sauce thickens, about 10 minutes.

Now you get to assemble your Sloppy Joegis.

Grab your favorite toasted buns (brioche, potato rolls, or even Hawaiian rolls are all amazing), and build your sandwich: Spoon a generous portion of bulgogi onto your bottom bun, smother it with your pickled cucumbers and onions, and cap it with your top bun.

This recipe makes about 6 Sloppy Joegies.

I hope you enjoy this unique fusion dish, and maybe it will find its way into one of your favorite family food traditions.

Short of Turkeys and Beef

For the first time in many years, we’ll be short of turkeys for Thanksgiving. Consistent with our policy of full transparency, here is why. And we’ve been short of beef now for some time. The underlying theme of this explanation is to inform you completely about why and what we’re doing about it. Unlike many businesses, we don’t call up other outfits to supplement ours when we’re short. We figure out how to produce more and until then, simply run behind. Because of that, when we explore new markets, we can’t adjust our inventory instantaneously.We’ve had a couple of incredibly exciting market developments this year. We’ve always tried to experiment with new opportunities when markets request product. You never know which ones will be long term, short term, positive, or negative. Over the years, we’ve given away turkeys when we overproduced due to assuming a certain market opportunity would come through; that’s not financially viable. As a result, we’re pretty careful about expansion. Three years ago, a large corporation in Virginia asked us to supply turkeys and Christmas hams to their 300 employees. We had no idea they would hang with us this long, but here they are, happy and showing unbelievable loyalty. We’ve been reluctant to count on them simply because these kinds of things normally don’t last. But isn’t it exciting and even exhilarating that a big company is buying our kind of turkeys and hams for their employees? The other thing that developed—and these things develop slowly—was Azure Standard asked us to supply them with 1,000 turkeys as a trial to see if their customer base would like them. By the time that deal was formalized, we were too late to order more turkeys and did not have the full number for them, but we we did the best we could. Some of you who are Azure Standard customers will no doubt see our turkeys pop up on their sales platform. When an engine going somewhere wants to hook to us, we always try to at least collaborate in an experiment. That’s where we are; if all are happy, this could be an extremely positive strategic client for us in the future. In the same way, we’ve been contacted by a new internet marketing outfit wanting some of our beef. We’ve agreed to let them have five in 2027. We’re hoping ongoing discussions will lead them to carry our poultry and pork as well—right now they’re only beef. None of this is about building an empire. It is about collaborating with the cutting edge of authentic food and circumventing Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma. Innovation comes in many ways. Polyface perhaps leads the world in the production element. But processing, marketing, and distribution are also undergoing innovation and staying relevant is a daily objective. That some of the most creative significant players in the integrity food movement are asking us to play with them is wonderful. They could just handle industrial organic meat poultry, which doesn’t see pasture and doesn’t enjoy the happiness context of Polyface livestock. But they’re talking to us, and that’s awesome. All innovation carries a ragged edge as it develops, refines, and hopefully becomes efficient over time. Thank you for indulging us the freedom to explore these new venues and to collaborate with some of the best players in the good food movement. As you can imagine, growing and experimenting create their own sore muscles. Being short is not fun for either of us, but be assured it’s not because our animals are sick or we’re getting tired of being farmers. You can laugh at that. It’s because, true to our history, we are committed to putting food worth eating on plates held by friends. We count you as friends; that’s why we’re taking you on this little explanation behind the curtain. Hang in there and thank you, thank you for your loyalty and patronage.