Sausage and Peppers Sloppy Joes made with bell peppers, ground pork served on a toasted brioche roll topped with Provolone cheese and ready in under 20 minutes!
It’s time for another sloppy joe recipe in this series, and today we’re combining Ultimate Sloppy Joes with your favorite food-truck-style sausage and peppers!
Sausage and Peppers Sloppy Joes
Sausage and Peppers Sloppy Joes take one of my all-time favorite foods to get at local fairs, food-truck-style sausage and peppers, and mashes it together into the ultimate sloppy joe experience.
In fact we love sausage sloppy joes so much that the BBQ Sausage Sloppy Joes are in our top 3 out of all of them.
This savory, spicy sausage is simmered in a sauce with brown sugar, spices, peppers, and onions. This recipe is a huge fan with kids, and client reviews have included one saying, “We’re huge fans of these, my youngest wants to know if we could have them again the next night!”
Can you use other meat for ground pork sloppy joes?
Sausage and peppers is traditionally made with seasoned pork sausage, so I used a ground pork with spices for these sloppy joes. Also, we wanted to add some variety from all of the ground beef happening in this series.
But if you have ground turkey on hand, that could work, too. But ground pork will give you the full experience! If using ground turkey or chicken just remember the fennel seed is super important to the “sausage flavor.”
If you want a more typical sausage seasoning here’s a great homemade sausage seasoning:
Homemade Sausage Seasoning:
1 1?2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 teaspoons paprika
¾ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
red pepper flakes, optional
Process in a small food processor or coffee grinder for 10 seconds. Mix with 1 pound of ground pork.
WHAT TO SERVE WITH sausage and peppers SLOPPY JOES?
We love serving side dishes with these sloppy joes that you’d classically serve with your favorite burgers including Crispy Sweet Potato Fries, Beer Battered Onion Rings and Loaded Garlic French Fries.
Tips for Sausage and Peppers Sloppy Joes:
- Make sure you cook the pork on medium-high heat until browned.
- If you want some variety in the peppers dice half of them and slice the other half. This may take a bit longer but they’ll look great with the sliced peppers as toppings.
- If you are sensitive to how sweet the sloppy joe sauce is, cut the brown sugar down to 1 tablespoon.
- Don’t let the sauce reduce until dry, stop the cooking when it still looks nice and saucy.
- Sauce will continue to reduce even after you turn off the heat.
- You can stack the provolone cheese and cut it into cubes (like in this Stuffed Cabbage Sloppy Joes).
I’d love to know how it turns out for you so if you do make the recipe pretty please come back and leave a comment letting me know how you enjoyed them.
We put a ton of effort into recipe testing 35 Sloppy Joes for this weekly series! And I want to keep them coming, if you keep going nuts for them! And your top picks are ALL 4 of the original sloppy joes on the site!
- Philly Cheese Steak Sloppy Joes
- Ultimate Sloppy Joes
- Pizza Sloppy Joes
- Bacon Cheeseburger Sloppy Joes
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 1/2 pounds ground pork
- 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 1 red bell pepper diced
- 1 green bell pepper diced
- 2 cups tomato puree
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 6 brioche buns
- 6 slices Provolone cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes optional
Instructions
- In a large heavy bottomed skiller on medium-high heat add olive oil, ground pork fennel seeds, crushed red pepper, salt and black pepper, breaking it up with a potato masher as it cooks, about 5-6 minutes.
- Add the garlic, onion and bell peppers and cook for 4-5 minutes.
- Lower the heat to medium before adding in the tomato puree, brown sugar, cider vinegar and chicken stock, cooking until saucy and reduced (about 5-6 minutes).
- Serve on brioche buns with slice of provolone cheese.
Great recipe, made the sausage too.
Thanks for the 5 star rating, Greg.
This is seriously one flavor filled sloppy Joe recipe!
Thanks, Kellie!
Heck yes to easy sloppy joes. LOVE the flavor in this recipe!
Sloppy Joes just got so much better! This is awesome!
Haha, thanks Rachael!
My sloppy joes loving husband thanks you for this one!! adding to next weeks meal plan!
Yay!! Enjoy!
Ohhh I love this. We’ve made something similar but it wasn’t as sloppy. Absolutely jumping over to this recipe!! Yum!
I hope you enjoy it!