Oh January, how I love you! After 5 fast-paced months, good old sleepy, relaxing January shows up, and I have very little to do. I love to really take advantage of it by getting double workouts in every day (well, 5 days a week), and go freezer diving for the dinner centerpieces. What do I find in that freezer? A lot of healthier cuts of meat that my well-intentioned self buys if I go to Costco hungry, and then they sit in the freezer waiting to become something.
One and a quarter pounds of ground bison. I buy it because it’s a better choice meat, but I’m just not naturally a fan. I put the frozen brick on the counter, thinking about potential destinies for it and it hit me – Sloppy Joes! Sloppy Joes have so much flavor going on that the protein is really just a delivery system. Sloppy Bison had entirely the wrong ring to it, so Buffalo Joes it is!
In my opinion, Ree Drummond makes the finest Sloppy Joes in the land, so I used them as a jumping off point. Here they are if you’ve never tried them: Ree’s Sloppy Joes. These are in her book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier.

Jen’s Buffalo Joes
1 ¼ pounds ground bison
Brown the bison. There’s so little fat that there’s no need to even try to drain it.
1 green pepper, diced
½ red onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
¾ cup ketchup
1 cup (about ½ can) beer or beef broth (I save the craft beer for sipping and use cheap yellow cooking beer here, but you do you. I keep a case of it in the outside fridge to add a glug to chili, mac and cheese, brat and potato cheese soup…)
1 ½ Tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 glugs Worcestershire
3 glugs Tabasco
Salt and pepper, to taste
Add, cover, and let it simmer on medium low for about 10 minutes to soften the vegetables and marry all the flavors. Then uncover and let it bubble away until most of the liquid has evaporated. Taste for seasoning and adjust the salt as needed.

4 kaiser rolls
Butter
Butter the rolls and toast. Spoon the yummy meat on top, and enjoy!
IF you’re going low-carb, Google cloud bread and use that for buns. Or use several layers of Boston, butter lettuce, or iceberg on each side. Or grilled or roasted portobellos, but you’ll need a fork then. Or roasted red peppers. Or just eat it with a fork.
For sides, all you need are some vegetables and dip or some apple and orange slices. I love to save the little tasting glasses from festivals because they are always the perfect size for a little crudité accompaniment.

I am lucky to find bison meat here almost all the time. We grew to like its flavor, actually, and often we will make hamburgers with it
Sloppy Joe’s – can you believe I’ve never had them???? I know! which cave do I call home?
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Oh my gosh! Sloppy Joes are the best! You’ve got to go make them yesterday! Especially if you already love bison!
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yesterday???? gosh I am SO LATE!!!!! 😉
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Hey.Jennifer thanku for liking my original s its took me year’s to scan buy everything not eazy just to give fans what they want to see worldwide for free from me even tho I get no fun from doing this hard work takes year’s scanning screen still shot s reels slides original photograph s I only keep Legacy s Alive took year’s how are you fort id drop by on your page good page you have created
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Hey Mark! I’m glad you like it! Happy weekend to you!
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It’s your fault:
I’m in that “eat down the freezer so we can defrost it” phase at the moment, too. Amazing what gets squirreled away in there.
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That commercial is hilarious! Is yours filled with over-buying at Costco, or those weird portions of things like when a recipe calls increments you can’t purchase in, like 1/4 pound of ground pork? Happy freezer diving, my friend!
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Household of two, so it’s me and dad and Costco doesn’t usually make sense for us. In our freezer it’s a combination of weird portions of ingredients, single portions of soup that I decided to freeze rather than finish (guilty conscience freezing), fish and game, and the end of whatever animal dad bought from the butcher, usually a quarter beef or hog. I think I’ve got all the venison gone — I’ve decided not to serve any of that, at least in the short term, till the chronic wasting disease thing resolves itself.
That jingle (Give me love, give me Lone Star, give me Texas) was on TV non-stop the month I moved to San Antonio ni 1987. Will always stay with me.
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Oh no! I hate it when you have no choice but to toss something. Especially venison. The soups have to be nice lazy surprises, though.
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They are, but I’m still figuring out how to cook post-stroke. Dad has never liked eating leftovers and my mother was his dedicated short order cook. I can’t live that way (I work, and I’m not willing to eat every meal in restaurants), so I try to cook ahead. Since his stroke he’s become more insistent, which means he dosn’t want to eat ends of things, but I also now eat almost every meal with him, so I don’t have a chance to eat the stuff he doesn’t want, either. I’m trying to learn how to make smaller batches of soup 🙂
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Oh, that’s hard. The “cooking for 2” books so frequently call for small amounts of a number of ingredients. 1/8 of a cabbage. That always makes me raise an eyebrow. You’d have to make cabbage dishes for 8 days straight at that right. Never mind that that’s not the only ingredient you have an excess of. Someone just just sent me a pressure cooker for 2 book. I’ll message you about it *IF* they agree that 8 days of cabbage is less than delightful.
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Yeah, most of the cooking for two things I’ve read don’t really fit our situation. Definitely interested in any ideas you have. I haven’t bought a hot pot yet but I’d be willing to if I felt like it would substantially lighten my load.
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Sounds like my kind of sammie. 😋🌿
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Just made these the other day. Using Buffalo or Bison gives it such a deep and rich flavor!
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Sounds great. They don’t sell bison here though
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Mumjd, Use the link to Ree’s original then. It’s ground beef!
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[…] via Jen’s Buffalo Joes – as in the meat, not the sauce 😉 — Jennifer Guerrero […]
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Thank you so much, OhioCook!
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Sloppy bison fits them totally if you ever meet one up close and personal. There’s an animal park where you drive through and the animals are used to people feeding them out the car windows so they come right up. The bison will stick their head right into the window and drool all over if you have the window open far enough for them to get their big smelly head inside. Otherwise they lick the window leaving a sloppy mess of slobber behind so either way they’re sloppy!
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That’s hilarious – and gross! We spent a week in Yellowstone a few years back, and got stuck in our car waiting for bison crossing en masse. I loved watching the little red dogs play. So cute!
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This recipe will work really well with ground ostrich or kudu ( a kind of deer) which we have here in South Africa!
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Oh, that’s too neat! I’ve only tried an ostrich burger once.
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i m food lover too
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We’ll get along just fine! 😀
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Boy, I haven’t seen Lone Star for a long time! Brings back memories. Great joes!
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Well, thank you, Mimi! I love cooking with Lone Star. I do Pabst once in awhile when I’m missing Wisconsin and want Cheeseland’s yellow beer. 😀
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Haha you fooled me! I thought it was going to be the sauce! Buffalo meat is so delicious but dry. This makes it perfect!
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This was so delicious that I went to Costco and bought more! Haha! Thanks Diane!
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Because Haaaaaaam m Ham amam am hamham, Great thing thanks a lot ////////////////////
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[…] Sloppy Joes! My recipe calls for 1 1/4 pounds of ground bison. Ground turkey was on sale, so I grabbed 1 1/2 pounds! <I PR’d my deadlift at 105 pounds today, so I was pretty hungry! WooHoo> Sloppy Toms? Messy Gobblers? For veggie dip, just mix 2 Tablespoons of ranch powder with Greek yogurt (high protein stuff! The low protein has thickeners in it.) or sour cream. There was 475 grams of produce in the sloppy Joes divided by 4 plates = 119 grams plus my 385 grams of fresh veggies and fruit = 504 grams towards the daily total! Woo hoo! Here’s my Sloppy Joe recipe. https://jenniferguerrero.com/2019/01/28/jens-buffalo-joes-as-in-the-meat-not-the-sauce/ […]
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