Patty Melts and Sloppy Melts

Now, I am a big fan of patty melts, and I have been for a long time.  In fact, I have been a fan so long that I remember when patty melts did not come polluted with caramelized onions, and before people forgot that the proper cheese for a patty melt is swiss.
 

Patty Melt
 

Ingredients, per patty melt

• 1/4 lb ground beef
• 2 slices rye bread
• 2 slices swiss cheese (maybe more)

Form the patties so that they will fit the shape of your bread, season to taste, and then cook as you would cook any hamburger patty, then set aside to rest.
 

Butter one side of each slice of bread, and cover the other side with cheese (this is where you may need more than one slice of cheese, depending on the size and shape of your bread).  Place the burger patty between the slices of bread and grill the entire sandwich on both sides until golden brown.  Extra points for getting the cheese to melt down onto your pan so that it can fry into an extra bit of crispy goodness.
 

So, I made Patty Melts for my son and myself the other day, and then a couple of days later, I was trying to think of something to do with frozen ground beef and I came across the idea of Sloppy Melts.
 

I started by defrosting the beef in a pan.  As the outer layers soften, they can be scrapped away to speed up the process.  I then made the browned ground beef into sloppy joe meat by adding barbeque sauce, mustard and Worcestershire sauce, along with my usual burger spices, salt, pepper, garlic and onion...powdered onion, of course.
 

Then, I did roughly the same thing as above, except that we only had Colby cheese in the house, so I used that.  Rye bread, cheese, sloppy joe mix, cheese, rye bread.  It turned out pretty good.