Crock Pot BBQ Burger Sliders

Alright alright, I tricked you! I really made sloppy joes and put it on slider buns. (Insert Adam Sandler singing the lunch lady song) In attempts to class things up a little we decided to call these delicious little sandwiches BBQ burgers. Growing up I can not remember a time that my mom made sloppy joes for dinner. I think my only exposure to sloppy joes were in my elementary cafeteria. Fast forward to my adult life- I was eating lunch at my sons school and it was sloppy joe day. When his teacher asked if I was eating, I suddenly lost all appetite and deferred eating. What I did notice was that my uber picky 5 year old was eating the sloppy joes! WHAT!!! I told my husband that our son was actually eating outside of his presumed 3 main food groups (chicken nuggets, peanut butter, and ketchup). My husband said something that made sense, "I loved sloppy joes when I was a kid. Think about it, it is mainly ketchup and ground beef." Seeing as though I did not grow up eating this I made my first mistake while at the store the following week... I bought a can of Manwich. I mean I paid full price for the actual Manwhich, not even the kroger brand. It was horrible and my son did not eat it. Now, if you dont have a picky eater like me then you don't know what it is like to make 2 different meals at night. Before you go all Pediatrician on me, let me explain. Force feeding does not work on this kid. If you try to make him eat something he does not like he will start projectile vomiting EVERYTIME! (Have I mentioned I dont do vomit well?) So the thought of losing to a can of Manwich was not an option.

Sloppy Joes aka BBQ Burgers round 2 was a hit! I read through a bunch of recipes and tweaked/ combined a few and what I found was pure gold. This meal is on our menu at least once a month. I like to call it old school cafeteria night. We usually have Sweet Potato tater tots and BBQ burgers. I started using the slider buns because they are typically only $1 for a pack of 12 at Kroger and like I said- it just looks cute.

The ingredients: serves 6-8
1-1.5 lbs ground beef (ground turkey works well too)
2 cups Ketchup
2 T white vinegar
3T yellow mustard
3T brown sugar
Hamburger buns or slider buns
Frozen Tater tots (we get the Sweet Potato ones so we don't feel too guilty)

If you choose to us the prepared freezer method all you need to do is brown your meat, once cooled add it to the freezer bag with the remaining ingredients.

Obviously you can prepare this without your slowcooker, but when I took the already prepared bag out of the freezer to defrost and threw it in my slowcooker I really think it made it taste better. I cooked it on high for 2-3 hours. Since it is already cooked, you are just warming through.

Here is a little trick for the tater tots. It says cook for 24 min on 425. Well I put my oven on high broil and cook them for 15 min. That's right I saved about 15 min waiting for the oven to preheat and saved on the cooking time. Yup- super LAZY, but that's me!

Bonus idea*** One night I had some leftover meat mix and we made BBQ burger melts. We essentially made a grilled cheese sandwich and put sloppy joe mix on it. It was soooo gooey and soooo yummy!

I hope that you at least give this a try! Yes, you may be regressing to your youth, but who cares! I only made I meal tonight!