An Earth-friendly twist on your favorite childhood sandwich
Who cares if it's a little messy...
Howdy planet-saving partners, and welcome back to Cool Beans! In a lot of plant-based cookbooks, veggies get top billing, but in the upcoming The Yearlong Pantry, writer and recipe developer Erin Alderson gives nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes the marquee. And when we asked her to share a recipe she keeps in heavy rotation, she pointed us to her lentil sloppy Joes, which she’s been making On Repeat for more than a decade.
“One of the large influences in the book is the food I grew up with,” says Alderson, who was raised in central Illinois. Her take on the campfire classic gives good ol’ legumes the ground-meat treatment, swathing them in a rich, tangy, spicy tomato sauce.
Why I love it
“I’m a very big fan of the messy sandwich, because the experience of eating it is always fun. I particularly like this version of the recipe, because it balances this rich tomato-lentil base that’s heavy on spice with a fresh slaw of vegetables. This is my favorite way to cook: having something that’s really robust in flavor or richness paired with something that’s more fresh.
What I’ve changed
“I’m always tweaking it. I add a lot of flavorful ingredients like Worcestershire sauce—I use either Annie’s or The Wizard’s vegan sauce—and balsamic vinegar and some spices. And I’m usually playing with the levels to which I add them, to manipulate the flavor.
Check out Erin’s full recipe for lentil sloppy joes.
“As for the slaw, it depends on the time of year. It’s labeled ‘spring slaw’ in the book, but I’d use it for fall too because it features cool-weather beets and carrots. In the summer, I sometimes leave it off, especially when I’m camping. And I sometimes just use a simple cabbage slaw.”
What else I’m into right now
Dehydrating food. As my garden has gotten bigger I’ve been relying on the dehydrator more, and it’s usually at this time of year. Because you can toss stuff in it and then use it later. So I’ve been dehydrating my own peppers—a lot of chiles right now. It’s also great for things you’ve already made and you can turn into powders, like I make my own kimchi powder. Whether from the refrigerator or my garden, I can dehydrate stuff and give it a second life.
Milling grains. I’m also doing a lot of my own flour milling. There’s a farmer near me I can buy grains from in bulk, and I mill them myself. This is one of the things I’m a big advocate of: In the local food movement people get really on board for produce—they love their farmers markets and know they can get produce locally. But across the country there are also farmers focusing on these pantry ingredients, and once you start thinking about everything you can get locally, there’s a lot.
Fermenting. One of the other things I’m learning about is fermentation in general, and there’s a book I’ve been absolutely loving recently called Jang, with the subtitle The Soul of Korean Cooking. It’s a look into the different kinds of base-level fermentation that Korean cuisine uses. They have a product similar to miso, but the fermentation process is completely different, so the end result is completely different, but it’s still fermented soybeans.