As a child, you couldn't pay me to eat meatloaf. My mother loved green peppers and onions and every bite of her meatloaf was full of both. I wouldn't touch it. I would eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead.
When I became a mom and had to start cooking real dinners every night I figured out how to make meatloaf I liked, and my kids would eat. Below is that recipe. It's included in the little cookbook I published, What's for Dinner, Mom? -- which came out just a few months before Mom died. She had been after me to publish my own cookbook for several years and I'm so glad she got to see that done.
Meatloaf, Baby!
1 lb. ground sirloin 1 large egg
tablespoon Soy sauce 1/4 cup red wine or Sherry
1 cup breadcrumbs tablespoon olive oil
Onion powder Garlic powder
1 Tbsp. Ketchup teaspoon baking powder
One of the keys is to NOT use cheap meat, like ground chuck. Use ground sirloin. Yes, it's a tiny bit more pricey, but it's worth it. One of the criticisms of beef is that animal fat is bad for your heart. I like to buy the leanest ground beef possible, and add some heart-healthy olive oil to my meat mixture.
Another key is if possible, let the beef sit out on the counter and warm up before you start making the meatloaf. I don't know why, but all beef should be room temp before cooking. Makes it more tender.
I like to get a mixing bowl and put my meat in it and leave it under a towel for a while to warm up, then I add my eggs and baking powder first, to be sure those ingredients are in there.
My mother's trick for making meatloaf great is to add in lots of flavorful liquids, until the meat is pretty soggy. You don't want dry meatloaf.
I recently started adding Italian seasoning to my meatloaf. Gives it more flavor.
Once the meat mixture is ready, I just dump it into the pan and form a roughly rectangular shape in the middle of the pan. I then cover the top with either ketchup, or toothpick in some slices of bacon. I bake at 350 for about 30-45 minutes.
Last night I made a version of meatloaf that used that same basic recipe, but improved on it a great deal.
I saw a recipe yesterday for a chicken breast stuffed with bacon and spinach and I thought yum, what a great idea, except I HATE handling raw chicken so we don't eat it that often.
So I made my usual meatloaf recipe, but then I set aside the meat mixture and started in on my filling. I cooked about 5 pieces of bacon in a skillet, then took the pieces out and put them aside. I took about 3 cups of spinach and sauteed it in the bacon grease, and added about 2 tablespoons of butter, lots of garlic and onion powders, and about 2 tablespoons of fresh Parmesan. (I should have chopped up some actual onion, but I was too hungry...) I then chopped up my pieces of bacon and added them back in, stirring everything together. I took half my meat mixture and formed it as I normally would, and put the filling on top. I then took the rest of the meat, formed it into what looked like hamburger patties, and carefully placed it on top of the spinach and bacon and kind of pinched the "burgers" together to form the top layer. The photo below on the right shows the meatloaf before it went into the oven.
I cooked it on 350 for about 40 minutes.
WOW was it delicious! I had some pre-made Bob Evans mashed potatoes and I ate a serving of 'taters, I must confess, but meatloaf just needs mashed 'taters on the side. I have been sick with pneumonia for a while so it was great to eat something that wasn't soup out of a can.
Here's a photo of the cooked meatloaf, and I must confess I had eaten a couple of pieces before I took the photo. I also included a funny photo of fresh spinach. I had left the bowl [piled high] on the back of the stove, forgetting how hot my stove top gets, and the spinach totally wilted. No biggie. I thought it was funny. I will still eat it.
#bestmeatloafever, #stuffedmeatloaf, #spinachandmeatloaf
