I haven’t had meatloaf in years and i’ve been craving some lately. I’ve also somehow never cooked a meatloaf in my life and am wary of wasting my money experimenting with an online recipe and having it come out wrong.
Anyone out there got a recipe they swear by?
I’ve been looking for a good one as well. I will say this, I can’t stand Ketchup on top (cooked, at least), but I have found that Parmesan cheese is pretty good.
Several words of advice:
Most supermarkets sell “meatloaf mix” which is beef/veal/pork ground together. Take advantage of this; don’t just use beef.
Do NOT cook it in a bread loaf pan - unless you wish to have your ML fat-poached. Instead, once you have to mixture ready, drop it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and form it into an inverted boat hull shape.
Clean out the fridge. Whatever bits of leftover…throw it in the mix. Don’t go crazy with sweet stuff like marascino cherries or the like. I like to saute the onions and bell peppers BEFORE baking, but this is up to you.
I agree with the dislike of a ketchup glaze as well. Parm (or other) cheese sprinkled on top is great.
Let the baked loaf rest before cutting unless you like meatloaf porridge.
Mashed taters, sweet peas and a scratch brown gravy and you are in comfort food heaven.
I really like the Pioneer Woman’s meatloaf recipe. It does have a doctored ketchup/BBQ sauce glaze. If you don’t like that, don’t use it. Pioneer Woman Meatloaf Recipe Oh… and I do modify this as suggested above and use a mix of beef and pork. Unfortunately it’s hard to find ground veal around here.
I do have to say that I like the ketchup/BBQ loads better than the meatloaf that I grew up with that had a can of cream of mushroom soup unceremoniously dumped on top before baking.
This is the recipe I use, I like that it has a good amount of veggies cooked in. If you can’t get veal or feel uncomfortable about it, ground chicken works fine.
I do use a loaf pan, and the liquid is mostly juices, not fat, as long as you don’t select fatty meat. Sometimes I save it and use it for gravy. I like the Heinz Chili sauce topping, but you can skip it and replace with whatever.
This one from Cook’s Illustrated is a good one. They also have an all-beef one in one of their most recent issues, with very little use of stretchers, but if I want all-beef and no stretchers, I’ll make a hamburger. For me, meatloaf should have a reasonable amount of bread crumbs/crackers/bread/whatever for the proper texture and flavor. I personally do like to use a mix of meats, but making it from a single meat is fine, too.
I’m pretty basic. Hamburger, egg, tomato sauce, oatmeal, seasonings (usually dry onion soup mix, cheese frequently finds its way in). No ketchup on top. I use a meatloaf pan that has an inner pan the meat goes in, which has drain holes for excess fat to drain to the outer pan.
I’ve never fussed with mixed meats, it’s always been ground beef for me.
Just because I had a little bit of laying around, I discovered by accident that using a bit of chorizo in your meatloaf makes a big (and delicious!) difference.
Silly it looks like ketchup but way better tomato paste, no vinegar, that the problem. Better yet sun dried tomatoes puree with some cilantro or parsley,with onions adds color and taste too. Its good to play with your food just a bit.
My sister makes a surprise meatloaf with cheese baked in the middle, when its rested and you slice it the cheese makes the sauce or gravy, always found this to be really good too.
Sure. Mixing in any kind of fresh sausage will give it an interesting flavor boost. Use anything from chorizo to Italian sausage to breakfast pork sausage, etc. It all works, but I wouldn’t use more than, say, 1/4 the total amount of meat in the recipe (and probably less, depending on the sausage.)
Try using crushed potato chips as the filler. I get a big bag of barbecue flavored chips, tear open a corner to let the air out, smush the hell out of it, and mix the crumbs in with the meat.
This is basically my meatloaf recipe. The little bits of leftover at the bottom of various condiment bottles mixed with a bit of water. I’ll usually throw in an egg if I have it for binder, and breadcrumbs or rice as a bit of filler.
I’ve never put veggies in the meatloaf, though I can see some sauteed onions and peppers being pretty awesome.
If I’ve got a bit of cheese in the fridge I might roll the loaf around it so that the cheese is in the middle.
I just made meatloaf last night. 
Here’s my recipe (from memory)
2 pounds ground chuck
1 pound ground pork
1 pound ground veal
3 eggs
1 sleeve saltine crackers
1 large carrot
1 small zucchini
1 medium onion
1/2 large green bell pepper
3-4 large white button mushrooms
3 cloves of garlic
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
First finely dice the onion, bell pepper and mushrooms almost to the point of mincing them. Using a grater finely shred the carrot and zucchini. Heat a skillet with the olive oil and then dump all of the veggies in… season them with salt and pepper. After they start cooking, mince your garlic and add it to the skillet (it’ll brown if you add it in with everything else), you want it all to be nice and soft and to lose some moisture content. After it’s done cooking, remove it from the heat and set it aside to cool while you crush the sleeve of saltines into fine crumbs… then add the meats, the eggs, the cracker crumbs and the veggies together in a large mixing bowl with the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Now you get your hands dirty. Mix it all up until it’s very thoroughly combined, form into a loaf in a shallow roasting dish and cook in a 350 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes. You can glaze it with whatever you like but it will be moist, delicious with a good layered flavor.
I don’t follow a recipe, so it comes out a bit different every time. Start with egg and white bread crumbs, well soaked, then oregano, salt and lots of pepper, garlic powder, and hamburger. Grated onion, if I have time. I usually make a round flat loaf and bake on a tray. That’s my basic meatball mix, too. I’m not cooking for gourmets here!
For chorizo I’d say about 1/10th worked pretty well.
My father used to also use plain mashed potatoes (boil potatoes & mash) as a filler, and I’ve heard of people using potato flakes, too. They actually work quite well with mashed potatoes as the filler.
I use a pretty basic recipe- ground beef or various meats, egg, tomato sauce (in it, not on top of it), onion, garlic, a binder, etc., but my special thing is to put bacon on top. 3 strips of bacon right on top, before baking- when the bacon is done, it’s done. Then I crumble the bacon and put it in the mashed potatoes.
Beef
Italian Sausage
Eggs
Progresso Italian bread crumbs
Onion
Green Pepper
Glaze: Ketchup, brown sugar, a little mustard
Any advice on gluten-free meatloaf? Meatloaf is my fiance’s favorite thing in the whole world but now he can’t eat gluten and I don’t want to just try making meatloaf with gluten-free bread without hearing first that it’s worth eating.
I made this for President’s Day this year. It was almost as good as my mom’s.
PAT NIXON’S MEATLOAF
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup finely chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 slices white bead
1 cup milk
2 pounds lean ground beef
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
Ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
2 tablespoons tomato puree
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
Grease a 13-by-9-inch baking pan. Melt butter in a saute pan, add garlic and saute until just golden – do not brown. Let cool.
Dice bread and soak it in milk. In a large mixing bowl, mix ground beef by hand with sauteed onions and garlic and bread pieces. Add eggs, salt, pepper, parsley, thyme and marjoram and mix by hand in a circular motion.
Turn this mixture into the prepared baking pan and pat into a loaf shape, leaving at least one inch of space around the edges to allow fat to run off. Brush the top with the tomato puree and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Refrigerate for 1 hour to allow the flavors to penetrate and to firm up the loaf.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake meatloaf on lower shelf of oven for 1 hour, or until meat is cooked through. Pour off accumulated fat several times while baking and after meat is fully cooked. Let stand on wire rack for five minutes before slicing. Makes 6 servings.