Beneke’s Hideaway Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs

This recipe is courtesy of our friends in northern Minnesota. We had never heard of this sloppy joe recipe until we met them. These sloppy joes have a “secret” ingredient that you may have never thought of putting in a sloppy joe!

Beneke’s Hideaway Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs

Prep Time: 1 40

Cook Time: 22

Servings: Meatballs

I went through a Midwestern meatball kick one day, the reason being was that I wanted to make a slew of meatballs to bring to a friend's for happy hour and get their feedback on my new recipes. Since sloppy joes are delicious and I happen to have three different recipes up my sleeve provided by my husband, friends, and the one I regularly make, I decided to do a sloppy joe stuffed meatball-off as a part of the meatballs for this happy hour. Making all of these meatballs served two purposes – one was to test out some new recipes and the other is my favorite, just simply to feed people.

This particular recipe comes from our friends up in Outing Minnesota. They have an annual party to celebrate his birthday and they make this particular sloppy joe recipe. It’s an interesting recipe that I had never heard of before I met them. It uses Campbell’s Chicken Gumbo soup as one of the “secret” ingredients. The other thing that goes in this sloppy joe recipe is Heinz Chili sauce – which honestly I had no idea they made before making these sloppy joes. This recipe makes awesome stuffed meatballs that I hope you enjoy as much as we did.

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Ingredients

Meatballs

1 lb ground beef
1 cup breadcrumbs.
1 tbs Montreal Steak seasoning
2 eggs
pepper to taste

Beneke’s Hideaway Sloppy Joes

2 lbs ground beef
1/2 Onion diced
1 can Campbell’s Chicken Gumbo Soup
1 bottle Heinz Chili Sauce
1 tbs brown sugar
Chili powder to taste

Instructions

For the sloppy joes brown the hamburger and onions and then drain the grease – this takes about 10 mins
Add the beef and onions back to the pan and add the rest of the sloppy joe ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Take the sloppy joe mixture and spoon it into the silicon molds and put in the freezer. Depending on your freezer and how warm the mixture is, it will have to be in there for about 4 hours minimum.
Once your sloppy joe mixture is frozen and you’re ready to make your meatballs, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
In a bowl combine ground meat, breadcrumbs, Montreal seasoning, eggs and season to taste with pepper.
Take a good scoop of the meat mixture and flatten it in your hand. Take two of the frozen sloppy joe pucks and place them in the middle of the meat mixture. Wrap the meat around the frozen sloppy joe pucks and roll it into the shape of a ball.
Place your meatballs on a greased baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 22 min

Beneke's Hideaway Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs ingredients in a mixing bowl with frozen sloppy joe pucks next to it

These meatballs are a pretty simple base because I really wanted the sloppy joe filling to stand out. It seems a little weird to stuff ground beef with ground beef but these are really delicious. I figured if I kept the meat mixture lightly seasoned you would be able to taste the sloppy joe filling a little better.

Beneke's Hideaway Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs raw on a tin foil lined baking sheet

Since these are sloppy joe meatballs I wanted to make sure there was a lot of filling in each one. That’s why I decided to use two of the half circle frozen sloppy joe pucks instead of just one. This also makes it so the meatballs turn out rather large. I didn’t realize how big they were going to be when I bought the Hawaiian slider buns! We served these meatballs to our friends using the buns pictured so I know that they work – sloppy joes are supposed to be messy right? Since these are a little bit of a larger meatball you can always get a larger bun to serve them on.

This particular sloppy joe recipe also makes quite a bit of the filling for these meatballs. I’ll be honest, I didn’t use all the sloppy joe mixture for the filling. Instead I decided to save some of it to add to the bottom of the bun for serving to make these meatballs live up to their sloppy name. You can always freeze all of it depending on how many molds you have and use them at later time when you make more meatballs.

Beneke's Hideaway Sloppy Joe ingredients in separate bowls

This recipe is an interesting one. I would have never thought to put condensed Chicken Gumbo Soup in a meatball but it works! Also the Heinz Chili sauce gives the stuffing a nice little tang and it totally provides the same familiar flavor of typical sloppy joes. The onions in the meat also give the filling for these meatballs a nice flavor. After I cooked the beef and let it drain, I also let the meat cool off quite a bit before I add it to the molds.

Beneke's Hideaway Sloppy Joe filling in a pan after cooking

If we were making this sloppy joe recipe just to eat as a sandwich – like normal people – I would add everything back to the pan to mix the sloppy joe sauce ingredients together and heat everything through. In this case I did add all of my ingredients back to a warm pan, mostly to help mix everything together. I didn’t want everything to get really warm or even close to hot because I was going to be throwing this into the freezer.

Like I mentioned earlier I went on a Midwestern meatball kick one day so I was making two other sloppy joe recipes that day and was limited on silicon molds so I was trying to get everything frozen as quickly as possible. Since we’re using the sloppy joes for a filling you really don’t have to heat this up on the stove like you normally would.

Beneke's Hideaway Sloppy Joe filling in silicon molds to freeze for stuffing the meatballs

I had a ton of fun making all my midwestern meatballs over two days. I also really liked this recipe for a sloppy joe filling. The nice thing about it is it makes a lot of filling which you can use to top the meatballs or just as an alternative to the meatballs themselves. You can also always double the meatball mixture recipe so you make 22 instead of 11 meatballs depending on who you are feeding.

These are such a great meatball to bring to any potluck. You can add them to a crock pot and keep them warm and bring some buns and folks will be set to go! I know that this is something that I’ll be making to share with our friends at their annual party this year. If you’re interested I do have two other sloppy joe stuffed meatball recipes that you can check out – one that is my go-to recipe and one that my husband swears by. If you make all three you can have your own sloppy joe-off meatball party.