A Sloppy Joe is a sandwich that’s easy to love. There’s something comforting about its casual messiness, and the saucy flavor seems to always hit the spot. These Korean Beef Sloppy Joes have all those enticing features – a messy but comforting bite, a sweet and savory flavor that’s hard to step away from – but they do it in a way that’s a little more elevated. They’re grown up Sloppy Joes, if you will. With an Asian twist.

While your traditional Sloppy Joe relies mostly on ketchup for its sweet and tangy flavor, this mixture also includes ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sriracha. The ketchup brings the sweetness but there’s also nuttiness from the sesame, umami and saltiness from the soy, and some zing and zip from the ginger, vinegar, and sriracha. In other words, there’s a lot more layers of flavor than your basic tomato-based Sloppy Joe.

Want more good news? That delicious beef mixture is also great served over rice or spooned into lettuce cups and it only takes you fifteen minutes to throw together. I like to make a big batch of this and then use it in different ways the next few nights. Have a messy, sloppy sandwich the first night, a rice bowl the next, and some healthy lettuce wraps to finish it off!