Readers of The Bitten Word cooked every recipe in the September 2013 Bon Appetit magazine. Here's their take on Sloppy Tacos.
Denise: Nice concept and easy to prepare. Liked using my own spices rather than a purchased seasoning packet. Results a bit too sweet; would eliminate the brown sugar if making again.
Pamela: I thought I had brown sugar in my cupboard but found out last minute that I was out, so I substituted with 1/2 as much agave nectar. The filling was still a little sweet for my taste. The lime cilantro sour cream was great though!
Sue: I love Sloppy Joes, sadly I have no love for this version. I prepared this exactly as directed except for adding salt. It's confusing as a taco and my taste testers agreed and were underwhelmed. First of all, it's too sweet, I would omit the brown sugar, the Heinz chili sauce is very sweet. Second, browning the meat, taking it out, adding other ingredients in the pan, putting meat back in the pan and then dumping in a 13x9 pan is just a silly waste of time. Just cook it in one pan, there was no benefit to cooking it in the oven for 40 minutes, there really wasn't a noticeable crust. There are other things I would do differently, but then it's a different recipe. The lime sour cream was the highlight of the dish and I will prepare that again.
Millie: If you like Sloppy Joes you will thoroughly enjoy the Sloppy Tacos and the sour cream with lime zest is outstanding!
Josie: An amazing, light, summery taco which should be on everyone's bbq menu planning. If the taco meat isn't enough to impress you, the addition of the lime sour cream will knock your socks off.
Whitney: Okay, so "sloppy tacos" may not sound completely appetizing...but these tacos are delicious! Imagine that a ground beef taco and a bowl of chili had a baby -- a deliciously flavorful, fun-to-eat baby. That's what these are. Are they glamorous enough for company? No, probably not. Are they yummy enough to make again? Absolutely! These (thankfully) taste nothing like the canned sloppy joes from your school cafeteria. Also, the lime-cilantro sour cream was a huge hit at our house. Two (sloppy) thumbs up!
Sally: Sloppy Tacos turned out great! The ingredients were easy to find, the recipe was simple to follow and the results were delicious, so much so that Sloppy Tacos are my fiance, Joe's (not sloppy) new all-time favorite!
Kirsten: Sloppy Taco Tuesday! I tackled this recipe on a weeknight and it took a little longer than expected. If you're truly in a hurry, I think the 30-40 min in the oven can be skipped. Overall, this recipe was pretty good but not spectacular. The meat had a slightly sweet taste that was very reminiscent of the flavors from a packet (dry seasonings) of sloppy joe mix (much like the title of the recipe implies =). So I'm not sure that the extra work is worth it. You could probably achieve the same result by just using the mix. SoCal must be having some type of citrus shortage because it was impossible to find fresh limes. In fact, I got the last bottle of lime juice from concentrate. Substituting this may be the reason the lime flavor in the cilantro/lime sour cream was so overpowering. Again, to save some time, plain sour cream would suffice. This is a good, family friendly recipe that gives a slight variation to your average tacos.
Jacob Dowd: Single guys are all familiar with the traditional method of making tacos: ground beef, salsa, cheese, maybe lettuce, taco shells and that magic ingredient the taco seasoning packet. This recipe kicks up our once a weeknight staple into a dinner for two or when the guys come over for the game. All the ingredients can be found in the store, the only negative is it takes a bit of time to make it. The bonus in this recipe is the lime sour cream, this is going to become a staple.
Laura: I'm a self-proclaimed taco enthusiast/fiend/junkie, as any good Texas girl is required to be, but have always been indifferent to Sloppy Joe's. (I think it's a texture thing...soggy bread, soggy meat?) I didn't know what to expect when my assignment was a recipe that combined the two, and to be honest I'm still not sure what my feelings are on the finished product. The filling had the texture you'd expect from taco-bound ground beef, but the flavor of traditional Sloppy Joe's (with what I found to be a cloying sweetness). Some comments as we ate the tacos and tried to determine whether or not we were enjoying them: "I don't NOT like them." // "Why wouldn't you just make regular tacos?" // "I probably wouldn't crave this again." And, as we sat there longer and let our dinner settle, "You know, those weren't so bad! They were kind of good?" I will say, the Lime Sour Cream was DELICIOUS, and the leftover taco filling was a tasty salad topping for lunch the next day - perhaps the fresh veggies cancelled out some of the sugar from the bottled chili sauce? Would I make this again? Probably not, but I do have half a bottle of chili sauce left in the fridge, and I hate to let ingredients go to waste...
Get the Sloppy Tacos recipe at Bon Appétit
Head back to the Mains (with meat!) Index