Healthy Vegetable Beef Sloppy Joes Recipe

This hearty, healthy Sloppy Joes recipe gets its sweet tangy flavor from sweet potatoes. It’s a great way to incorporate extra vegetables into your diet, and it’s a great use for leftover sweet potatoes! Cooks in less than 30 minutes when you bake the sweet potatoes ahead of time.

This healthy Sloppy Joes recipe came about because I needed some way to use leftover sweet potatoes.

Most sloppy Joes recipes and canned sloppy Joe sauce have added sugar in them. But this recipe relies on the natural sweetness of baked sweet potatoes to give the messy sandwiches their tangy flavor.

To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of sloppy Joes out of a can, not when it’s so easy to make them from scratch with ingredients you probably already have in your pantry and fridge.

The hearty filling includes a serving of good-for-you veggies. Serve the Sloppy Joes with carrot sticks or air fryer vegetables or homemade fries to meet your daily veggie serving targets.

And when you make them with extra lean ground beef — or even ground turkey or chicken — you can really control the fat and calories. Serve on a whole wheat bun — or one of these bread machine homemade hamburger buns.

If you want fries with that — and who doesn’t? — slice some potatoes into wedges, toss them a little bit of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and roast for 30 minutes or so in a 350-degree oven until browned. If you want to get fancy, add some herbs and spices.

Healthy Sloppy Joes are a quick and easy meal to prepare when you don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen, especially if you bake and prepare the sweet potato ahead of time. (I like to throw an extra one in the oven whenever I make baked sweet potatoes for dinner. Then, I’ll save the extra one in the fridge to use for Sloppy Joes later in the week.)

Jump to Recipe

You can scroll to the end of this post for the full recipe and ingredient list. But you may want to keep reading for more tips on how to this veggie-packed homemade sloppy joe sauce..

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To Make Healthy Sloppy Joes, You Will Need:

• Sweet Potato  – Bake a medium-sized sweet potato ahead of time. Once it’s cooled, remove the skin and mash the sweet potato to use for this recipe.
• Ground Beef  – I recommend using the leanest ground beef you can find for this recipe to reduce the fat content in this recipe. You can also substitute ground turkey breast or ground chicken breast.
• Carrots – I like to use regular sized carrots for this recipe, peeled and diced.
• Onion – Any kind of onion works for this, but I love using a Vidalia onion or another sweet variety.
• Tomato sauce – Used plain, no-sugar-added canned tomato sauce, not marinara sauce or tomato sauce meant to be served over pasta.
• Tomato paste – I like to buy tomato paste in a tube, rather than in a can, so I don’t waste any.
• Mustard – Use plain yellow mustard.
• Worcestershire sauce – Don’t skip this ingredient. The fermented condiment adds a lot of tangy flavor to the recipe.
• Hot sauce – This just adds a little kick to the sloppy Joes sauce, but you can omit it if you don’t like spicy food.
• Salt and pepper – Use fresh ground pepper and salt, to taste.

How to Make Healthy Sloppy Joes

1. Bake the sweet potato ahead of time, remove the skin and mash.
2. To make the sloppy joe sauce, whisk together the mashed sweet potato, tomato sauce, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and hot sauce in a bowl.
3. Cook the beef, carrots and onions in a large skillet until the meat is browned and the vegetables are soft.
4. Add garlic and saute for a minute.
5. Pour the homemade Sloppy Joe sauce over the meat mixture, season with salt and pepper and stir. Simmer until the mixture thickens.
6. Serve the healthy sloppy Joes mixture piled high on toasted hamburger buns.

Substitutions & VARIATIONS

You can substitute a can of condensed tomato soup for the canned tomato sauce in this recipe.

The sweet potatoes add natural sweetness to the Sloppy Joes. If you want to sweeten things up more, add 1-2 Tablespoons of brown sugar to the mix.

You can use ground turkey breast or ground chicken breast instead of ground beef for this recipe. If using chicken or turkey, you may need to use 1 Tablespoon of olive oil to brown the meat.

TIME-SAVING TIP

I like to bake my sweet potatoes ahead of time when making this recipe. Just throw an extra one in the oven when you’re cooking dinner. You can keep the mashed sweet potato in the fridge for a day or two, or freeze the mash to use later in Sloppy Joes.

What to Do with Leftovers

Store leftover Sloppy Joe filling in the refrigerator for up to three days in an airtight container.

Sloppy Joe filling also freezes really well. Divide into single-serve portions for quick heat-and-eat meals..

Or freeze a larger batch of leftovers in a freezer-safe zippered bag. I love using this gadget to hold my Ziploc bags when prepping freezer meals. Once you’ve loaded the leftovers in the bag, lay flat, squeeze out any air and seal. Free flat.

Thaw leftovers in the refrigerator and reheat on the stovetop or microwave.

More Healthy Dinner Recipes

• Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew
• Beef Stroganoff
• Slow Cooker White Chicken Chili

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PIN THIS! Homemade Sloppy Joe Recipe