We know we said the next project would be Bone Broth Ramen with Crispy Chashu Medallions, but we hit a low energy / mental health rut for a couple of days. Ping ponging this idea back and forth was a nice bit of stimulation to get out of it.
This one can be thought of in a couple of different ways.
Did we take the concept of putting chili in a baked potato
and substitute Sloppy Joes for the chili, while taking the concept of baked potatoes a
little further?
Or maybe we took the concept of Sloppy Joes and put it on
open-faced sandwiches, where melting potatoes are used in place of bread…?
In short: Yes.
Let’s start with the Lamb Sloppy Joes
We are swearing off of beef, for medical reasons, and trying
other forms of red meat (lamb and bison most recently). In this case, we are
working with ground lamb. The flavors of lamb, especially when ground, are different from and not
as overt as beef so it works best as an augmentative medium for other flavors,
as you must step carefully in the seasoning department if you want the meat’s
flavors to outshine anything else in the dish.
We looked at a few different Sloppy Joe recipes to see what
people were putting in theirs. Some used tomato paste, while others used tomato
sauce. They were all generally a balance of sweet and savory ingredients.
Looking at the amounts of the other ingredients involved, we guesstimated how
thick the consistency of the final product would be. After a quick look at the ingredients
on hand, we decided we did not want to go to the store: this meant our
tomato-based thickening agent for our sloppy joes was the Sauce made previously
(we have used it for pizza and spaghetti, so far). We were simply going to add a
few more ingredients to steer more toward Sloppy Joes than meaty spaghetti
sauce (or chili, in another direction).
Rosemary and coriander to go with the lamb… not nearly as important as the sweetening and thickening properties of molasses: that was the important ingredient that took the Sauce in the direction of Sloppy Joes.
Melting Potatoes. Yes.
The basic concept of melting potatoes is to cut potatoes (Yukon Gold, Red, whatevs: just think about texture when you choose and know that waxy potatoes work best) into 25.4mm or 1-inch thick slices. Toss the potato slices in the oil + seasoning mixture of your choice. Lay the slices out in a baking dish as a single layer, with a small amount of space in between them (6mm, or about ¼ inch). Bake or roast the baking dish full of primordial potato amazingness at high temperature (230 – 260 C or 450 - 500 F). We find the best way to do it is to roast, so all we have to do is flip them once when the Mallaird Reaction on the easily seen top of the potato slices are visibly to our liking. Once they have been roasted or baked to your preference (we aim for slightly chewy but crunchy as a happy medium on the GBD spectrum for ours, so: ~15 minutes per side), add broth to the baking dish full of potatoes (enough to fill the spaces between) and leave it in the still hot oven until the broth is mostly gone: typically takes ~15 minutes. What is happening is the potatoes are absorbing the broth, giving them that “melting” texture. Playing with the ingredients can be fun (sweet potatoes with sesame oil, five spice, and sake-broth? Yes, please.).
To summarize the process: bake or roast at high temperature ~25.4mm / 1 inch slices of potato coated in oil and seasonings; 15 minutes, flip, 15 minutes, flip, add broth, 15 minutes = 45 minutes total in the oven.
See the boiling oil?
Pouring the broth in: note the chunks of fresh garlic.
