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In my experience, fermented food is one aspect of Traditional Diets that is difficult to consistently incorporate into family meals with young children in the home.
Fermented beverages like kombucha aren’t too difficult as they are typically tasty, fizzy and delightful.
Probiotic rich, digestion soothing fermented foods, on the other hand, are a completely different animal for children to accept. The inherently sour and sometimes tart flavors seem to overwhelm their young taste buds and turn them off even in the small, condimental amounts used by Ancestral Societies.
I’ve had better luck over the years getting creative when a brickwall is firmly erected rather than trying to force the issue.
Homemade Sloppy Joe with Probiotic Rich Sauce
There is no doubt that a tasty sloppy joe sandwich is one of the most beloved of all time for children. In our home, I make it with grassfed beef and lacto-fermented ketchup to sneak it into the children’s dinner in an enjoyable way that they don’t mind at all.
The trick to this particular sloppy joes recipe is to add homemade fermented ketchup so that the probiotic rich sauce isn’t actually cooked and therefore retains all the beneficial probiotics and enzymes once served at the dinner table.
Try this homemade sloppy joe recipe if you’ve been encountering obstacles introducing digestion enhancing fermented foods to your family. This is one dish they won’t complain about at all!
Traditional Sloppy Joe Recipe (bun optional)
This traditional sloppy joe recipe using an easily made enzyme rich fermented sauce is a tasty and easy way to get probiotics into your family at the dinner table. Use with or without buns as desired.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef preferably grassfed
- 1 small onion preferably organic
- 1 clove garlic preferably organic
- 2 Tbl butter preferably grassfed
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/2 - 1 cup ketchup preferably homemade or organic
- 1/2 cup frozen peas optional, preferably organic
- 1/4 cup raisins optional, preferably organic
- organic hamburger buns optional
Instructions
Melt butter in frying pan on medium-high heat. Add onion finely chopped and cook until it begins to caramelize (5-10 mins).
Mix in crushed garlic, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly - stir intermittently for 3 minutes to ensure garlic is cooked but not burned.
Add ground beef mixing in as you go to be sure it doesn’t clump in the heat. Stir continuously for 5 minutes to ensure meat mixes evenly with onion and garlic and begins to simmer uniformly across the whole pan.
Add optional peas and reduce heat to medium-low for 5 minutes to finish cooking all meat.
Remove the pan from the heat and let sit for a few minutes to cool slightly. Check with thermometer to ensure temperature is at or below 117 F/ 47 C before adding fermented ketchup.
Stir in ketchup (and raisins if desired) and mix thoroughly. Make sure the pan is off the heat - allow to sit for 5 minutes more while still warm but not hot to mix the flavors.
Serve the sloppy joes immediately over cauliflower rice, sprouted or sourdough buns or alone as desired. Refrigerate leftover sloppy joes after a complete cooldown.
Refrigerate leftovers after a complete cooldown. Reheat gently not exceeding 117 F/ 47 C to preserve enzymes and probiotics in fermented ketchup.
If you’ve tried this recipe using a fermented sloppy joe sauce already, what did you think? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
Avoiding Saggy Breasts Syndrome After Nursing
We eat something similar to this all the time on GAPS. Never thought of adding lacto-fermented ketchup. Great idea!
Obviously without the bun… we call it noodle-less spaghetti =P
You might want to try shirataki noodles too.
Sure, we eat it sometimes with no bun too. You can also mix in some brown rice pasta … keep that in mind after you start reintroducing grains after you’ve healed your gut on GAPS. Brown rice is the first grain to introduce.
Hey Sarah,
I have 6 children. The last 3 of which were raised eating plain yogurts, kraut juice and such from a very young age (first foods sorta thing) and they all LOVE fermented veggies; especially my youngest. Pickled beets are her absolute favorite. So if you start a baby on sour things they are more likely to not just tolerate, but LOVE fermented veggies. Beets are a very easy intro since they are naturally sweet. All of my kids like fermented veggies though.
My husband and I just sit amazed sometimes at the things they will eat. When my mother came to visit (who has a strong sweet tooth) she kept mentioning how everything we ate was so sour (our salad dressing, our smoothies – so I added stevia to her portion). I just laughed. None of us even consider the sourness. Funny how our taste buds can change.
My five children (presently 3 yrs to 10 yrs) also love fermented veggies so much that I usually cannot keep a jar of anything from being consumed the moment it is out of the fridge and placed on the table- sliced broccoli stems, yellow and green string beans, sauerkraut, pickling cukes, beets, zucchini, etc…. They love it all. They also love to drink the brine, and I give brine whenever they seem like they are not as well as usual. Of course they also love kombucha. I have also lacto-fermented beef and eggs, and ketchup and salsa, which are beloved as well. Our first fermentation was sauerkraut- 7 years ago- and they all loved it right away, and whenever I have added something new, they have loved that as well. It is, from my experience, not a given that young children do not enjoy lacto-fermented foods. =)
Dear Sarah,
Could you please recommend a brand of sourdough buns? I use buns from Berlin Natural Bakery but they are not sourdough…
Thanks!!
Great idea! Something I also do to add to the benefit, is add a bit of liver to all ground beef recipes. The kids don’t even notice the flavor and I feel better that they have some organ meat in their diet.
You did an article on how to soak cornmeal in dolomite. You mentioned a follow up on doing your corn bread recipe. I am unsure what to do with the soaked cornmeal once it is wet. I really would love to see how you make cornbread.
Thanks,
Kim.
Glad you mentioned this. I’ve been wanting this recipe too! I just bought some corn to grind, but now I don’t know what to do with it! 🙂
Sorry I should have done that below the soaked corn article. Seeing this new recipe reminded me of how I am trying to wait patiently for this also.
Kim.
I bet you could ground liver into this! Make it even more nutritious 🙂
Ha, no, I have no problem. My kid inhales sauerkraut. She eats anything. She won’t drink raw cow milk though because “i dont like cow milk, it’s spicy!” okay?
Funny how I don’t have kids but love these posts to get my husband to eat, lol.
I just don’t see how this is a “healthy” meal for our children – or anyone. Probiotics is not always a good thing – There are negative side effects to ingesting many of the various types of natural bacteria. In fact most of the negative issues with fermented items can easily be recognised while the heralded benefits of eating these live micro-organisms are still greatly in question.
Secondly, all “live” organisms and their “probiotic” activity are made moot once exposed to heat. So at the end of the day, we’ve gone through all of this work (as easy as it is to make your fermented ketchup) to provide a “healthy meal”, and there are zero benefits to the meal afterall.
The other issue is, our need (desire) to put so many different things into our youngs kids bodies all at once (or anyones). The ketchup alone has 8 different ingredients – a combination that would never be found anywhere in the natural world.
Add those 8 ingredients to the rest of the recipe for sloppy joe which is 7 other ingredients and we now have 15 combined ingredients. Throw in the 3 or four used to make the bread buns, that’s 19. Add another 3 to whatever sidedishes go with this sloppy joe meal and then add 3 or 4 more to desert.
So in one half hour sitting we have put into our childs belly (and ours) almost 30 different ingredients. That is not natural. And if it ain’t natural there is a good chance it might not be healthy. We confuse traditional with wholesome and the healthy and sound. This is misleading.
We wonder why we have so many gastrointestinal issues – and more and more are occuring in our young kids. Too many ingredients at once. They may all blend together wonderfully from a taste perspective – but chemically, so many reactions are going on that the lay person isn’t aware of – and so many things that even the chemist can’t keep up with. And thats before it enters the body. Once it enters the body a whole other set of chemical reactions take place – it’s just not fair to your body’s system to do this.
And yes they have a pill for this, including one you can take prior to eating your 30 ingredient meal – but now you’ve added a slew of other chemicals to join in on the intestinal free for all.
You may suffer nothing after these meals – but as you all know, it’s the longer term effects, and the delayed reactions that we have to be concerned with.
Um… what?
First of all, Sarah did explicitly say NOT to heat this recipe after you add the ketchup, so the live cultures are not damaged.
And second, where on earth is the evidence for anything you’ve just stated? What made you suddenly decide that there’s a limit on the diversity of foods you can consume at once, safely? Yeah, chemical reactions happen when you eat. It’s called digestion.
While your assertion that we should be wary of ANYTHING remotely “unnatural” is ridiculously unsustainable and based on fantasy, I do think that if that’s your chosen approach to life, you might want to stop commenting on blogs.
After all, commenting on blogs is evolutionarily novel, and might cause you to die. You know, in the long term.
Jade, it’s not called digestion – it’s called indigestion. Those “Live” cultures are most likely dead due to other things in the “mix”. Heat is just one of many things that can kill live bacteria – it’s proteins, it’s enzymes. The list is long. You can google for your self the many things way before heat that can denature and degrade bacteria – and many of those things are in many of the food prep items, and food prep methods.
I could also go into a whole diatribe about the multitudes of other non friendly bacteria that can “evolve” in the same jar, but I’ll spare you this fine saturday.
What kind of evidence are you looking for? Evidence that speaks to the number of different chemical occurances that take place in the stomach after many american traditional meals? I could send you a dozen links if you really care to know – I’m assuming it was a rhetorical question in anger (why the anger we don’t know???)
I can however reference you to your local Rite aid or any drugstore near you for hands on evidence – they have a whole entire section dedicated to the “what happens when you combine so many things”.
For the record, so long as you know me (in this cyber type of way), I will always assert what I know to be completey steeped in “proof of chemistry” and wholly sustainable – as in we were sustained on this way of living and eating for seven million years. long before sloppy joes.
If it seems like fantasy to you because you never heard this type of narrative or you are just more familiar with the usual swapping of supposedly healthy snack and meal tips , then that’s fine and so you can continue to read and follow what you wish to read and follow.
My name is Oliver. When you see it you can skip it by and move on to something more pleasing to your sensibilities palate.
BTW, what does having a chosen approach to life have to do with stopping or not stopping posting on blogs – kind of counterintuitive don’t you think…
So can I assume, then, that your answer is “no”? You haven’t provided any evidence.
From your other comments, it seems you might be very dedicated to a raw lifestyle, or something similar. That’s fine. Whatever floats your boat. But to then assert that everything one might eat that doesn’t conform to your beliefs is devoid of nutrients or otherwise harmful, without providing a shred of research – observational or controlled studies – is pretty laughable.
If you will indulge me, however, I am very curious as to what you mean by “heat is just one of many things that can kill live bacteria – it’s proteins, it’s enzymes.” Yes, there are many types of proteins and enzymes in food, including fermented food. What is your point?
Every other comment I have posted has me mentioning my love of burgers, bacon pasta etc. It’s not a matter of things conforming to my beliefs – I don’t speak of dogma, doctrines, cults or religion. I speak soley of chemistry.
I can provide you research, but then would you change your mind? Would you stop eating cooked foods? If you want scientific evidence, studies done by chemists here in america you can go to the website of the American Chemists Society (ACS). They have a search engine – you can type in “Cooked food”. It will then provide you with roughly 7000 tests/studies that show what happens to molecules (nutrients -proteins, vitamins, amino acids etc.) under various heat conditions and treatments.
They will also show you tests that show what new harmful toxins,pathogens, and carcinogens are created when heat is added to the equation. so many ot these things are damaging to our children – last nights air waves was a reminder of that with the all out cancer campaign.
Much of the stuff is heady science speak with graphics that the average lay can’t recognise (western Blots). And secondly, these tests were done, some by the FDA, in that they could warn the public about false claims and false labeling; have you heard of them? No one has – they forgot to tell the public. They also forgot to tell the cereal companies (who have their own chemists). The cereal companies along with the bread companies still list false nutrient values on their products.
If you like, I can show you a way of testing your bread at home to show you that it has zero biologic activity – even your seven grain organic bread.
I am working on putting together a new reference chart for the average mom and pop in that they can see that a test was done on cereals for instance and that in fact the protein was damaged – by way of heat.
I can recommend a strict chemistry book called “Introduction to protein structure” by Carl Branden. That stuff is heady as well but there are parts in it that one can understand such as when they speak of the natural short life of proteins and enzymes etc (2 to 3 weeks). It talks about all of the many things that can degrade proteins and enzymes (which are the bulk of what bacteria is.). Those things include many types of acids. A lot of which we use in our foods. Acetic acid for one is used in many food products – vinegar for one.
Dimethyl sulfoxide is another naturally occuring chemical compound that is used in many of the foods we eat. That has an impact on amino acids. Ammonia, as we learned from pink slime, kills protein (and bacteria – the reason they used it in the first place – E-coli). There are a host of other chemical reactants
There are other natural acids like lemons and high citrus fruits that can degrade proteins. Light can degrade a protein as well. Oxygen can degrade a protein. Other proteins mixing with each other can and will cancel some out.
Salt has an impact, as well as other natural minerals – many of these combinations of minerals and other molecules are never found in the natural world.
I don’t deal in the realm of observational or controlled studies – I have done many writings that speak against “studies”. No two people are alike – and by that very fact no two results can be alike – yet the drug industry chooses to cast a blind eye and a deaf ear to this fact of human biodiversity and continues to administer chemicals to people with all manner of side effects. And as you know, that “list” is growing every year. But so long as they do list them on their labels- they are not liable. That said, Pfizer is being sued more and more each year.
Oliver! Your comments on this blog are always intriguing.
For the record, I understand the complexities of protein structure and what western blots are (gasp! I’ve performed three of them today!). For most other people: enzymes are proteins that have a very specific fold that orients certain amino acids into a position that is able to catalyze a chemical reaction. Proteins (and therefore enzymes) get denatured through heat/freezing/chemical reactions. However, your saliva and stomach produce proteases(chymotrypsin, etc) to degrade such protein. Also the high acidity in the stomach denatures proteins (except rare proteins that survive acidic environments, such as chymotrypsin). In fact, if you don’t cook/freeze food and the food contains some bacteria (homemade yogurt?), I would argue that some bacteria are the only things that could possibly survive your stomach acid (especially e.coli). Also, the structure and folding of a protein is really fickle, they misfold easily and are susceptible to many chemical insults. Our cells have multiple pathways to deal with misfolded proteins, so the occurrence of misfolding is really high.
I guess my point is: enzymes and proteins aren’t stable in culture/buffer/water. They’re not going to survive your saliva or your stomach acid and proteases. I know that if I leave my purified protein out at room temperature, it will be completely misfolded and therefore useless in about ten minutes. My bacterial cultures will be fine. Also, the bacterial cultures that are created through fermenting contain the lipids and proteins you mention.
BRAVO for you Jenza!!!! Where have you been all of my life? No seriously, where have you been all of my posting on blogs life? Will you go on the road with me 🙂
I’m going to steal your term “susceptible to many chemical insults” just to mix up my diatribe a bit. And yes, the nature of protein folding is fickle and the how and why of protein folding in itself is in many ways still a mystery – as advanced as science is.
I am working on an even bolder protein concept as it relates to the food we eat. I don’t know if you know about the miller / urey experiment, where they created amino acids in a lab using simulated conditions if you will, of early earths atmostphere – complete with electrical charge.
I am slowly of the opinion, which I am devloping for my book which hopefully will be out by mid to late winter, that it ain’t even about proteins which are fragile and fickle, but moreso about the amino acids – and get this (just a theory – don’t shoot me down) but it may not even be about these amino acids we eat – that perhaps it’s simply a matter of the body using what Miller’s apprentice and I have termed (independantly of course) Atom Soup. Atoms forming together by the various mechanations of the human body and all organic entities, to make everything we need. The body, like it creates vitamins through the combining of chemical elements, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen etc, so too it creates all our proteins and amino acids – obvioulsy in reverse order, amino acids first.
This is an idea I am playing with right now, as I stay on line and post on various blogs (to annoy folks of course). The book is almost done but I went back to the section on proteins myth and hype, and started working on this, what many so far have said is a cocka mamie idea. Did i spell cocka mamie right???
I would love to pick your brain off line – or at least bounce a few things off you – My email is ollie628 [at]gmail [dot] com It is one of my less important email addresses so I don’t really care if I get bogged with other posters (unless they care to discuss anything).
Excited to make this ketchup!
I really want to try this recipe, but AVG will NOT let me go to your site! Is anyone else having this problem?
I just opened a large organic ketchup that of course is not as good containing the organic sugar as opposed to the maple syrup, but would it be good to take whey I have in fridge and still make it with that?
I haven’t been able to go to the WAPF website at all.. anyone have that problem?
Yes, the WAPF site is having issues right now.
Do you have problems making whey in the summer? I’m also in Florida and it’s too hot in my house to make whey. Doesn’t the temperature need to be around 70F in order to make whey?
yes Andrea they’ve been having problems for a couple weeks.
@Jessie you mean the WAPF website? Yes, it’s having problems right now. My site is ok though.
@Amy I don’t know if this would work. I have not had great results fermenting processed foods before. Making fresh gets the best results.