No particular recipe, but I use a mix of ground beef, pork, and lamb. Some times i make a flat loaf in a pan and top it with a layer of mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese.
I don’t really sweat the veggies, because I do use a little cooking oil, usually peanut oil. I put the A1 sauce on the meatloaf after I’ve drained it, which means that it’s only on the top for about 10-15 minutes. Sometimes I put A! into the mix itself. If I remember to, I use the broiler pan for the meatloaf, as it will help render the fat out of the loaf. I bought one of those meatloaf pans that are advertised on TV, but the thing is designed poorly. The insert has handles, the pan itself doesn’t. If you try lifting the pan out of the oven with the handles, you will only get the insert, the loaf will fall out, and you’ll have a big mess. If the meat loaf is particularly fatty, I might drain it twice, once about halfway through the cooking time, and once about 10 minutes before I think it will be done. Otherwise, it’s just too nasty to eat.
I can’t overemphasize how much of a difference cooking a meatloaf on a raised rack makes. Take a small cake rack that fits inside an oven pan, and cover it with foil. Poke it full of drain holes with something like a knitting needle or pointy chopstick. Grease or Pam the foil. Form the loaf into a rectangle about two inches high, first with hands and then smoothing and shaping with a spatula. Bake it on the rack, in a pan.
No draining, no ‘boiling in oil’, no hassles topping and broiling it, and far less greasiness overall. You might need to make your recipe just a little stickier with (more) egg. But it produces awesome results.
Heh, that would probably work pretty well if you don’t have a broiler pan. I don’t broil my meatloaf, I just bake it in a broiler pan.
The broil is just a finish after you put the glaze on. I bake mine, then put a spicy tomato glaze on and broil it crisp.
Yeah, the old bread loaf pan your mom used was a bad idea then and now. I just form mine into a shape on a cookie sheet. With the lean meats, there isn’t too much fat rendering going on, and you get more of the caramelizing area that you want on meat.
The last time I made meatloaf, I used 1 pound of hamburger, 1/2 pound of ground pork, and 1/2 pound of ground venison, along with all of the other traditional ingredients. Now, I’m sure you never thought your old regular meatloaf was tough or anything, but this meatloaf was so tender- it was incredible. I highly recommend this mixture if you can get your hands on it.
Why are you throwing away the flavor? Take your meatloaf out of the oven and let it sit in the pan for a little while, all the grease will be re-absorbed into the loaf.
You have to use ground pork, ground beef, ground veal, in equal amounts.
“I don’t know why they call this hamburger helper…it does just fine on its own”-Clark Griswold’s BIL (“Vacation”).
Grease =/= flavor.
Extremely lean meat (even boiled in grease) =/= flavor.
Using sufficiently fatty meat and allowing the excess to drain == flavor.
Try it next time, with about 85% meat mix and whatever usuals you put in, with perhaps a tad more binder, and see what you think. I’ve never found any shortage of flavor.
2 pounds of ground beef, 1/2 of a mild onion, diced. 8 cremini mushrooms, sliced and sauteed. 2 eggs. 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, a few diced shallots. 1/3 cup diced Jarlsberg or Swiss cheese. 1/4 cup barbeque sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. You could add 2 diced Roma tomatoes but I don’t.
Mix gently. Shape into individual meatloafs (you should get 6-8 mini loafs) and put on rack on top of baking sheet that is covered in foil. Crisscross each mini loaf with a strip of bacon cut in half. Bake at 350 til done, about 30-40 minutes.
With any luck, a little of cheese will leak out and mix with bacon grease on the foil. Cook’s treat. Nomnom.