Thai Inspired Sloppy Subs
Some of you guys might remember “Bro Week” from a few years back, where I made an effort to cook really simple recipes for a whole week, while maintaining my unique style and still using mostly homemade and fresh ingredients. Well my sister is a junior in college this year and has a kitchen in her apartment for the first time, so I decided to do another week of easy recipes geared towards her and other college students who want a break from the caf and aren’t in the mood for takeout. I know in reality, Jello shots is probably the only recipe of mine that will be happening in that kitchen, but I’d like to think that maybe Joanna, or other college students might benefit from this week of recipes.
For the first college week recipe, I have a sloppy sub that is influenced by a Thai dish that features ground meat in a light chile-basil sauce. The slow cooker was perfect for this dish, as I was able to let it do it’s thing for 4 hours only stirring it twice through the process. I may be wrong, but I think tastes have changed a little in the 10 years since I was in college, and more and more students are into a little more adventurous cuisines like Thai, but still maybe can’t get any near campus, so I thought that this would be a fun and easy way to satisfy that craving.
I do have some recipes this week that don’t even require chopping, but this one needs you to pull out that cutting board.
Mix the meats and veggies in the slow cooker.
Stir in the seasonings and turn it on.
Stir it once or twice in the middle of the 4 hours cooking time, then at the very end add the basil.
Cuke, bread, and lettuce finish the sandwich.
This filling would also be great with rice, but its a lot more fun in a sandwich
The fresh cucumber and crunchy lettuce is a perfect contrast with the soft and savory meat. Make this one night soon and your roomies will love you!
Thai Sloppy Subs
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 pound ground turkey
- 1 red pepper
- 1 white onion
- 1 overflowing cup chopped green beans these come frozen if you want to make it easier
- 2 tablespoons sriracha
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sugar steal a few packets from the caf
- 1/4 cup Thai chile-garlic paste
- 1 package or bunch fresh basil
- sub rolls
- cucumber
- lettuce
Instructions
prep
- chop the onion, green beans, and pepper into similarly sized planks – about 1.5 inch long. Drop them into the bowl of your slow cooker. While you are chopping, you might as well do the basil now too. Remove the stems and stack about 10 basil leaves. Roll up the basil tightly (you college kids should have some experience with rolling things…) and chop it the short way to form ribbons of basil. this is called "chiffonade" if you wanna be fancy about it. repeat with the next 10 leaves until you end up with a nice 1/2 to 3/4 cup full of the chopped basil. Also chop the cucumber into thin rounds shred the lettuce the best you can.
slow cooking
- Add the meats and everything EXCEPT the basil, lettuce, cucumber, and bread(duh) to the slow cooker and add a pinch or 2 of salt. Stir the meat well to break it up and turn the slow cooker on low. After 2 hours, give it a good stir. Then 2 hours later (total of 4 hours, turn the setting to warm and stir in the basil. you can let it sit like this so that your roomies can all make their own sandwiches as they get home from class. To build the sandwich, load the bread with some cuke and lettuce, and then spoon in a nice helping of the meat.
10/10 would make again!!! Very pleased with the outcome.
The only addition I made was a squirt or two of lime juice to give it just a little acid. I did add a little more soy sauce and Sriracha throughout the cooking to spice it up a bit.