Meatloaf is not just hamburger. That’s your first mistake. It needs, at a minimum, a second meat(usually ground pork) and most of the time a third(usually veal, but I use ground lamb). NOW you have meatloaf.
I personally use a horseradish/ketchup top, baked in. Brown gravy always seemed institutional to me. School cafeteria/public cafeteria–steam tables. But, it’s probably as others say–because that’s how mom made it.
I’ve used crushed potato chips.
There’s a noticeable difference between a fried egg and a scrambled egg. And that’s the same ingredient cooked by the same method. That’s a lot more difference between hamburger and meatloaf.
I like a deep Red and Brown Gravy. There’s no reason tomatoes can’t belong in a gravy.
I almost hate to write this but I was at a dinner one time and the wife served a huge meatloaf. She cooked it for a long time. Then stuck it in the refrigerator until it was cold. Then she put icing on it like a cake and served it. It was weird.
Ah, okay. Maybe my mom did it wrong.
Also, this was probably twenty years ago or so. My memory could be faulty.
I answered brown.
As to the question “what is meatloaf,” no, it does not need to have multiple meats (although that is quite nice.) Basically, you have meat + stretchers (soaked bread, bread crumbs/croutons/crackers/etc, even mashed potatoes) + (often) binders (eggs) + vegetables (usually–at least onion) + spices. You bake it and you serve it. It’s nothing like hamburger, and it irritates me when people make hamburger in the style of meatloaf and call it “hamburger.” No, it’s a meatloaf sandwich.
It all depends on how I feel. Sometimes it’s barbecue sauce, sometimes it’s a few sprays of Worcestershire sauce. It might be a brown gravy, or it could be mushroom soup, undiluted and in a trench on top. Sometimes there could even be some Stovetop stuffing on there with a little bit of margarine melted into it, or it might be a steak sauce like Heinz 57 or A-1. I’ve even used salsa or taco sauce, but…
…ketchup is for kids!
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I hate meatloaf, but I’ve always had it served with a tomato-based sauce. I suspect I’d hate it with gravy too, though, because my horror is a texture issue, not a taste one.
Really, I think that’s why White Castles are so popular. Those are nothing more than meatloaf burgers, The steamed meat and onions… steamed bread… really a deconstructed frikadelle. the mustard clinches it.
Here’s how I make hamburgers/meatloaf: I get several pounds of meat, together with other ingredients, in a big bowl. I mix everything with my hands until everything is evenly distributed. Then I start making hamburger patties and put each one in a freezer bag. At some point my hands get so cold or so tired that I stop. Whatever is left is put into a meatloaf pan. So contrary to what my mother did, the burgers and meatloaf are the same.
And to answer the OP: ketchup.
I use ketchup, and sometimes salsa, tomato paste, or other tomato based ingredients directly in the meatloaf. Enough comes out in residual caramelization and extrusion that it adds to my perfect brown gravy made with the drippings. I don’t typically do the old fashioned ketchup and brown sugar glaze, coatings, or pools that seems to be sometimes classic in iterations.
Definitely don’t use jars of gravy or cans of gravy. My only cheat is Kitchen Boquet or maggi.
Gravy on hot meatloaf.
Ketchup on a cold meatloaf sandwich.
Quick nitpick:
It’s actually “Hot Patootie Bless My Soul”. I know it makes no sense. But then, this is The Rocky Horror Picture Show we’re talking about.
There are so many questions I want to ask about this…sadly I imagine that only the hostess herself knows the answers. I’ve seen meatloaf “cakes” with mashed potato frosting, but if it had been that you’d have said so. I’m just intrigued.
I usually make meatloaf without any sauce or glaze. My son and I both like the outside to be nicely browned and a little crispy. He pours A-1 on it at the table, but he’d pour A-1 on his corn flakes if I’d let him. I do prefer recipes with a lot of moisture in them. I don’t like a dry meatloaf. Recently I did try a recipe for an “asian influenced” meatloaf which had hoisin sauce in the recipe, and called for a glaze of hoisin and ketchup combined.
As a kid I was completely unaware of tomato products on or in meatloaf. At my mom’s table meatloaf came with mashed potatoes and a canned vegetable, either green beans or corn. French’s brown herb gravy was served in our most elegant pyrex measuring cup.
Mustard is not, repeat, not normally served on a White Castle. It’s just: pickles and onions.
I like meatloaf with a ketchup glaze (actually, I mix ketchup and yellow mustard together), with brown gravy, with bacon… hell, I like it nearly any way you can serve it (except with the aforementioned icing).
But Mom made it with ketchup, so that was my vote.
And White Castle burgers, so far as I can tell, do not contain any filler in the same way a meatloaf does. It doesn’t taste anything like meatloaf.