Is it a hamburger? Is it a Sloppy Joe? Nope, the name is somehow even grosser. In Iowa, they lovingly call their sandwich the "loose meat." If you're an old like me you probably remember this sandwich featured in the hit 90s show "Rosanne." (I never watched a second of that show in my life.) But this sandwich has midwest roots going all the way back to the 1920s where, as legend tells it, a Sioux City tavern owner invented "The Tavern Sandwich" to go along with the already popular Indiana invention The Pork Tenderloin. The most popular and iconic of the loose meats come from the regional fast-food chain: Maid-Rite, founded in 1926 in Muscatine by Fred Angell. How does it differ from a sloppy Joe, you might be asking? Well, there's no tomato sauce so while the meat is loose it isn't entirely sloppy. We'll cover the Sloppy Joe in more detail when we get to North Dakota (I'm sensing a large midwest proclivity towards meat sandwiches) but until then enjoy this Loose Meat delicacy of Iowa. The recipe I used was a Maid-Rite copycat so I'm going to assume this is what I'd get if I'm ever in Iowa.
1lb ground beef
1/4 cup water
1TBL yellow mustard
1TBL granulated sugar
1/2 cup chopped onion
Salt
Pepper
Hamburger Buns
Ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickles for serving.
1. Combine the beef, water, mustard, and sugar in a large skillet. Simmer over medium heat until beef is cooked through while breaking up the clumps of meat with a spoon.
2. Stir in onion, salt, pepper.
3. Serve meat on buns with ketchup, mustard, mayo, and pickles.
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