I went through a phase in high school where I was constantly asking my beautiful mama to make me sloppy joes for dinner. Mom, forgive me, but those things were gooooodd.
Of course, back then we loved Manwich. Extra sloppy, extra sweet. But then one day, while whisking around Trader Joe’s like a crazy woman on a mission with a small red cart, I stopped to ask myself (and you): why buy an extra can of Mr. Sweet Manwich when you most likely already have all the ingredients you need for a homemade sloppy joe sauce?
Today I’m teaching you how to make a healthy sloppy joe recipe with a legit homemade sloppy joe sauce. It’s perfect for kiddos, and will be a guaranteed hit with the whole family!
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What makes this sloppy joe recipe healthier?
So why are these a lil better for you? Well first off, they’re a bit leaner thanks to lean ground turkey instead of ground beef, but they also are significantly lower in sugar thanks to a homemade sauce made with ketchup and BBQ sauce and no additional sugar added. Did you know Manwich sauce has high fructose corn syrup, sugar, AND xantham gum to give it that iconic sweetness? Well, we’re skipping all of that with a sauce that’s perfectly sweet and spicy (no gums allowed).
Ingredients in the best healthy sloppy joes
As I mentioned, we’re lightening these babies up with lean meat and a lick-the-bowl good sloppy joe sauce that’s much lighter in sugar (but not flavor). Here’s everything you’ll need:
- Olive oil: you’ll need a bit of olive oil to cook down the veggies and meat for the sauce.
- Produce: we’re sauteing a white onion, red bell pepper, and some garlic for the sauce.
- Ground turkey or chicken: I love using ground turkey or ground chicken for the perfect source of lean protein. 94% lean is best.
- For the sauce: that homemade sloppy joe sauce is made from ketchup, low sugar BBQ sauce, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar, yellow mustard, and salt & pepper. Feel free to add a little cayenne pepper if you like spice.
- For serving: do them up however you like! I like to serve these turkey sloppy joes on whole grain hamburger buns with a little shredded pepper jack cheese and jalapeño slices. Yes, you can always use gluten-free hamburger buns if you’d like.
How to make sloppy joes in the slow cooker
This recipe is written for a stovetop version, which takes just 30 minutes to throw together, but you can absolutely make the sloppy joes in your slow cooker for a hands-off approach! Here’s how to do it:
- Add the turkey to a skillet with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and break up the meat as much as you can. I like to use this meat masher. Cook for about 5 minutes.
- Add your browned turkey to your slow cooker with the rest of the ingredients (reduce the water by 1/4 cup) and mix them together well.
- Cook the sloppy joes on high for 2-3 hours or on low for 6 hours.
- Give them a stir and serve them up with your fav toppings!
Our fav ways to serve these sloppy joes
As I mentioned, you can double or even triple the recipe to serve more people! It’s great for game day and for feeding a bunch of kiddos. Here are some more fun ways to serve it up:
- Throw it in Mac and cheese
- Serve it with my favorite cornbread or cornbread waffles
- Eat it by the spoonful or scoop it with chips, or make sloppy joe nachos!
- Or as I prefer, load it up with pepper jack cheese and a few pickled jalapeños
Any way you enjoy this recipe, it’s going to be a winner.
More kid-friendly dinners to try
- Amazing Slow Cooker Turkey Tacos
- One Pan Lightened Up Hamburger Helper
- The Best Healthy Turkey Chili
- Better-For-You Homemade Spaghetti-Os
- Mama’s Veggie-Packed Chicken Meatloaf
Get all of my kid-friendly dinner recipes here!
Good Mood Food Episode 2
I hope you love these healthy sloppy joes! If you make them be sure to leave a comment and a rating so I know how you liked them. Enjoy, xo!
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
30 Minute Healthy Turkey Sloppy Joes with Homemade Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 1 red bell pepper or green bell pepper, finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pound 94% lean ground turkey or chicken
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup ketchup (I use Trader Joe’s Organic Ketchup)
- ¼ cup your favorite BBQ sauce (I used Stubb’s Spicy BBQ sauce, but a sweet one is great too!)
- 1 ½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 ½ teaspoons red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon yellow mustard
- ½ cup filtered water
- Optional: ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper, if you like spice
- For serving
- 4 hamburger buns of choice
- 2-4 ounces shredded pepper jack cheese (about ½-1 cup)
- Optional: Jalapeño slices
Instructions
- In a large skillet, add olive oil and place over medium heat. Add in the garlic, white onion, and bell pepper; saute for 5 minutes or until onion is translucent. Move mixture to the sides of the pan.
- Add ground turkey to the skillet and season with salt and pepper. Break up the meat and cook until no longer pink, 5 to 7 minutes.
- Once turkey is cooked, add the onion and bell pepper mixture back in. Then add in ketchup, BBQ sauce, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard, and water. If you like a little heat, add in cayenne pepper.
- Stir well to combine and bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low and cook for 10 minutes longer until sauce thickens. If sauce looks too thick, add a tablespoon of water.
- Next add cheese on top of meat mixture, cover with a lid, and let the cheese melt for 2 minutes (or until melted). Transfer meat onto hamburger buns and top with jalapeño slices. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by Monique Volz of Ambitious Kitchen // Photography by: Sarah Fennel
This post was originally published on June 22nd, 2017, republished on April 20th, 2024, and republished on October 12th, 2026.
This is the BEST sloppy Joe recipe! I googled turkey sloppy joes and was SO pleased to see you had a recipe! 😍
So happy to hear that! One of our fav dinners 🙂
I absolutely LOVE this recipe. I don’t use the garlic or the exact brand name BBQ sauce or ketchup – I’ve also experimented with different vnegars and it comes out perfectly every time. Thank you so much for sharing it 😁
This one’s great for customizing! Glad you love it!
This is one of our go to recipes for a quick, delicious, and easy meal. Highly recommend!
One of our favs, too! Glad you love it!
a weeknight staple! no notes!
These are so tasty. It’s a quick and easy meal the whole family enjoys. It’s even good without the cheese on top too.
Absolutely! Such a great weeknight meal 🙂
A staple in our household! Packed full of flavor AND easy/quick to cook – say no more. Tastes great on a bun or over a roasted sweet potato. Pairs perfectly with roasted carrots.
Absolutely! Glad they’re a favorite 🙂
SO good, my kids enjoy it and my husband and I love it!!! Love a one pan meal and it truly comes together so quickly
I’m so glad!
This recipe was easy and fast which I always love. The kids really liked it. They are teens and initially had snarky comments about the appearance of sloppy of course. Thank you for making them healthier too.
So happy to hear that! And glad to win the teens over 🙂
I’m having my kitchen cabinets painted this weekend so I needed some meal prep recipes so we didn’t have to rely on carryout all week. This recipe is delicious and was so easy to make! I can’t do a lot of spicy food, so I omitted the jalapenos and pepperjack cheese. But I’d bet it’d be amazing with regular jack cheese and some pickle slices!
My coworker gifted your cookbook to me last year and I’ve gotten so many amazing recipes from it and your website. Haven’t tried a single recipe that wasn’t a huge hit! 🙂
This one’s great for meal prep! So happy to hear that you’re loving my cookbook and website recipes 🙂
This is such a staple in my house for my 2 picky eaters. I love how easy it is to sneak veggies in and quick to make as a full time working mom of 2 young kids. Thank you for sharing!
So happy to hear that! One of our family favs, too 🙂
This was quick, easy and soooo tasty! It’s a keeper for sure.
So glad you enjoyed!
Easy and super tasty!
Glad you enjoyed!
My daughter & son-in-law make your healthy sloppy joes for their family , probably 2 or 3 times a month….I have loved being invited over for them and finally got the recipe.
I like how the ground turkey is not grainy like ground beef, does not dry out or give you that icky surprise bite of some sort of weird “hard” gristle found in hamburger meat.
We do add your referenced idea of chopped carrot & celery to the mix, makes for a nice crunch and a rustic “mirepoix” flavor flair for the adults , { as you said, the kids don’t notice they are getting more veggies!}
Us adults top our Joes with a jalapeño or two, sometimes a red cabbage slaw right on top too, or at least on the side, along with corn on the cob and pickles!!
If we run out of buns someone will always eat the left over sloppy joe meat with a fork, “bowl” style, meat, slaw, corn OFF the cob, jalapeño & cheese!
Love love love this recipe ! I have tasted many different sloppy joes recipes in my lifetime { 65 years old} , have to say this one is my favorite !
Amazing! So happy to hear that this is a favorite in your family 🙂 One of ours, too!
Very good flavor and super easy to pull together quickly. I didn’t have worcestershire, so I subbed tamari (soy sauce). Can be served over rice for a GF option. Also goes great with Trader Joes organic corn chips for scooping.
Great swap! Glad you enjoyed!
I love this recipe, it is my go-to for sloppy joes! The sauce is so flavorful, you won’t go back to the canned sauce.
Homemade is the best! Glad you enjoyed!
I’ve made these so many times. My family loves them! I serve them on Kaiser rolls with a wedge salad on the side. It’s so good and easy to prepare. Thanks so much for sharing this recipe.
Such a great dinner! Glad these are a hit!
This was so good! My husband and I both loved it. Will be making it on a regular basis. Easy to make and healthy too!
So happy to hear that!
Can I use Dijon mustard instead of yellow mustard?
Sure!
I love this healthy recipe. I make it fairly often. I have to watch my added sugar so I use Primal kitchen sugar free ketchup, and instead of Bbq sauce added more ketchup.
Such a great dinner!
I love this recipe and have used it a few times now! Have you ever tried freezing it? If so, does it freeze well?
Yes, this freezes well!
Excellent recipe! I recommend trying it!
Very easy and delicious!
One of our fav dinners, too 🙂
My family loves this recipe! We’ve been making it at least once a month for years and it’s always a hit!
So happy to hear that!
This is delicious. My family loves it! Wondering if it can be frozen?
So happy to hear that! And yes, it will freeze well 🙂
I made this exactly as posted and it is a keeper! My husband claims to only want Turkey on Thanksgiving but, due to heart surgery, needs to limit his beef intake. We both thought they were delicious.
So glad you found this one! Perfect dinner 🙂
Does the nutrition include the bun ?
Yes!
Absolutely the MOST delicious “Sloppy Jo” I’ve seriously ever had, and I’m 47 years young!!😂
But seriously, absolutely incredible!! I followed the recipe to the “T”!! My whole family loved, and our daughter is SUPER picky!! I’ll never make sloppy Joe’s any other way than this for the rest of my life! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe!
Sincerely,
Tena Bird
Love that!! One of our all-time favs for the whole family 🙂
This recipe is so quick and easy and really good!
One of our favs!
Couldn’t make it. For health reasons I must have sodium and cholesterol so I can see if it works or I can adjust it .
I haven’t had sloppy joes since I was a kid! These are wonderful and so easy to make with the convenience of using condiments and other pantry items I already have. I stretch this recipe further and add fiber by cooking a half cup of dried brown lentils and add those to the ground turkey (I also double the sauce ingredients). We love it on whole wheat buns or over baked potatoes. Thanks for the easy, non-fussy recipe!
Great idea to add lentils! Such a fab weeknight meal 🙂
Made this for dinner for my husband and I. Great flavor and I made it following recipe including cayenne pepper, used country Dijon mustard and TJ’s organic Kansas City style BBQ sauce. Delicious flavor and easy to make gluten free for my husband. Will make again!
Love it! Perfect meal 🙂
Another great recipe! I tripled the recipe and even added an additional 2 zucchinis and 16 oz of baby spinach. SO GOOD!!! Will definitely make this again and I’ll add diced mushrooms next time. Thank you, Monique! With your recipes, my last 4 meals have been really tasty!
Love it!! So happy to hear that!
This is a staple in our house as a fast easy meal. We preferred the flavor of ground beef. I serve on my homemade sourdough and my toddler loves it!
Perfect! Glad it’s a favorite 🙂
My kids don’t like Manwich which is communist in my opinion, but I digress. I decided to make this with ground chicken (otherwise followed the recipe exact) and lo and behold, it was a winner! Everyone loved it!
Haha I’m so glad they loved this one instead!
I’ve been making this recipe on repeat for easy work lunch. If I don’t have ground turkey, I will substitute one and a half cups of dry lentils. If I don’t have peppers, I throw in a few handfuls of fresh spinach. Quick and easy!
Amazing! Great swaps!
FINALLY a sloppy joe recipe that everyone in my family likes! We love this one!
So happy to hear that!
As a busy mom to a toddler, this is one of my go-to recipes. Super easy and the whole family loves it!
We have made this recipe multiple times. I do not tweak anything for this recipe because it is perfect! So flavorful, easy to make and a weeknight favorite.
One of our fav weeknight meals, too 🙂 glad you love it!
My first time ever making sloppy joes from scratch and this was bangin’! I increased all of the non-protein ingredients by 1.5 because I used only 3/4 lb of ground turkey and added an almost equal amounts of cooked brown lentils to stretch the recipe a bit and add some fiber. It’s also a fantastic way to use up ketchup, which doesn’t get used very often in our house but it’s always in the fridge. My husband was so surprised when I told him what dinner was, as we both grew up in the 1970’s and the days of canned “manwich” sauce. He loved it with the fresh sliced jalapeños on top. Thanks for a great, easy recipe that I see becoming part of our regular rotation.
WOO! This is the best, Kristy. I am so glad that you are loving this recipe and it turned out great for you! Thanks for coming back and sharing your comment, I appreciate it!
Great Sloppy Joe’s , I omitted salt and used Monkfruit for my needs , delicious 😋
Excellent! Glad these turned out delicious for you 🙂