Waffling Leftovers: Sloppy Joe Filling

Today's waffling leftovers story is a kinda funny one.  Not a success, but, still fun.

(What am I talking about? Go start with my master waffling leftovers post if this concept is new, and then return here).

Leftover Sloppy Joe Filling Transformation.

Will it Waffle: Leftover Sloppy Joe Filling?  Uh, no.

I'm not sure why I thought this would work exactly.  It was salvageable, but certainly not one for the success column.

The Original: Sloppy Joe Filling.

The original was the filling for sloppy joes.

It wasn't as tomato-y or sauce-y as most sloppy joe I've had, but it was still quite tasty.  Ground beef base, chopped green and red bell peppers/onion/garlic, ketchup/brown sugar/cider vinegar, and seasoned with thyme/cumin/paprika.

Very good.  But we had too much leftover.

Leftover Sloppy Joe Filling.

The first day, I reheated some in the toaster oven, and served it traditionally on a bun.  It was fine, no quality degradation.  I had some cold the next day, but that wasn't great.

I was sick of sloppy joes though, so I wanted to have some fun with the remainder.

Into the Waffle Iron ...

So I took a big solid clump, held together by the congealed solid fats, and put it into the waffle iron.  No crusting, no additions.  In my head, I thought it would cook kinda like a burger patty?

Uh ... ooops?

Let's just say, things didn't go as expected.  Partially because I was doing housework while it was cooking, and I left it going far longer than I intended.  I opened the lid to find a bit of a mess.

Because it had no crusting, there was no reason to have any structural integrity, something I kinda forgot about in my glee to waffle anything and everything.  Of course it didn't hold together.  It was also totally dried out.  The best part of the sloppy joes is the sauce and how it soaks into the bun, and this was just a bunch of dry, seasoned ground beef.

Final Product.

Extracting it was impossible.  I started picking at it with chopsticks, eating a few bites directly off the iron.  It didn't taste ... bad exactly.  Yes it was dry, but it was very flavorful still.  The seasoning was still there.  And now it had crispy bits.  Totally not what I was aiming for, but, well, it kinda worked.  I commented to my dining companion that it reminded me a bit of Persian food, and that I thought it would be good over rice with yogurt.  He tried a bite, and admitted that it wasn't bad.  He was about to dig into a plate of indian food (saag paneer and rice), and offered to take it and have it over the rice.  I gladly gave it to him, happy to see it salvaged.