No, you have it right. The bacon adds fat to a low-fat meat blend, like turkey, and tastes delicious! You add bacon to a cheese-burger, so why not a meat loaf?
Mine’s pretty simple, as the mister prefers his on the plain side:
1 pound extra-lean high quality ground chuck
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I grind up stale Italian bread and freeze it for this)
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
few grates of nutmeg
1/2 each of tsp salt and pepper
Mix it up, form it into a free-standing loaf, and bake it at 350 for an hour to an hour and a half or until the juices run clear and there is no pink in the juice. Let it stand for 20 minutes or so to firm up before slicing it.
Or, form it into generously-sized oval patties, sear them in a frying pan, and cover them with a rich brown mushroom sauce and simmer them in it until done. Is this called Salisbury steak?
This is also my meatball recipe.
I don’t add bacon to anything. I take it off! In my mind, you have it for breakfast and it’s on burgers and (crazily, to me) on salads. I know people love it, but I’m not one of them. The texture is weird and the fact that it drips grease is a turn-off.
To each her own, I guess. Leaves more for the rest of us!
Beats me, but that will also be tried. Thanks!
I know, I know. My husband despairs. 
He’s American of Polish descent, and I’m not a fan of sausage either. :smack:
This, more or less, is my meat loaf recipe. It’s an Italian approach: you sear the surface loaf over very high heat before lowering for cooking. That makes it similar to Marcella Hazan’s recipe, if you’ve seen that. However, this one is fairly unusual in that it uses a stovetop method instead of the oven. Also, no loaf pan.
Things I do differently from the linked recipe:
use a particular kind of dry mushroom instead of a generic blend (I like morel)
substitute pancetta for the prosciutto
add an extra egg yolk (especially when working with a dryer meat, such as elk)
heavily reduce and thicken the sauce, then add a touch of mustard
It’s delicious served with polenta and an assertive green vegetable; I recommend Brussels sprouts, lightly braised.
I’m a little bit with you. Maybe 10%. I love bacon, but I really don’t understand this relatively recent meme of bacon being the food of the gods. I mean, yeah, I think pig is the perfect animal, and if I had to eat one animal, it would be it, but, c’mon. Everybody takes the bacon thing wayyyyy too far here.
Bacon on meatloaf is not unexpected, but the problem is the meatloaf ends up tasting like bacon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but, I’m sorry, bacon isn’t that awesome that I want the taste in everything I eat.
I can’t eat pig, or duck, or oxtail. Any high-fat meat makes me see stars and feel queasy. I just can’t process it.
Holy crap, polenta. My italian grandmother used to make this, and I haven’t thought of it in YEARS. Awesome, thanks! Now I need to look that up as well.
So I looked over your recommendations, and I have really underestimated the time involved in a meatloaf. I am going to mix and prep it tonight, and pop it in the oven tommorrow when I get home. Hopefully this should also help it firm up.
It sounds weird, but my mom always took half a can (no water added) of Campbell’s tomato soup with rice. Half the can got dumped in the meatloaf along with some catsup, worstichire, brown sugar, bread crumbs, salt, egg, celery seed (or celery salt–either one, but a key ingredient) and onions. The meat was mooshed together and formed into a loaf shape but not actually put into a loaf-pan. Then the rest of the soup was spread on the top.
It’s much, MUCH better than it sounds. But then…it would have to be.
You can also make mini-meatloaves using a jumbo muffin tin, which I like because it provides maximum surface area for each little loaf.
Oh, and ground turkey is the perfect choice for what I usually call Generically Asian Meatloaf - basically, the usual meatloaf recipe but with turkey or chicken subbed in for ground beef, and some minced green onion, grated fresh ginger, soy sauce mixed in. Glaze with hoisin sauce and you’re good to go!
I certainly wouldn’t push anyone into bacon, but please be aware that if your recipe is designed for ground beef, and you make it with ground turkey, and do not otherwise alter it, it is likely to tend towards the dry because of the lower fat content of ground turkey.
Make sure you take this into account, otherwise what should be a divine meatloaf experience may morph into an arid meatloaf catastrophe.
Suitably cautioned by your excellent turn of phrase.
You know the whole pig isn’t high-fat? Loin is pretty lean, especially in America where pigs are raised to be leaner than their European brethren. Also, the leg isn’t particularly fatty, either.
Pork tenderloin and loin chops even make Mayo* Clinic’s list of Lean Meats!
They also mention that ground turkey may actually have more fat than ground beef, depending on whether or not dark and light meat were used. If it says “Ground Turkey”, it’s probably a mix and certainly no more low fat than ground sirloin. If it says “Ground White Turkey” or “Ground Turkey Breast”, than it’s very low fat and definitely needs the extra moisture treatments we already talked about.
*unfortunate name, in this case…
I can’t believe how complicated some of these recipes are. I’ve never heard of using milk in a meatloaf, and it’s been my experience that the more you add to a meatloaf, the worse it gets. I use my mom’s recipe, which is very simple, but very tasty. She does use Lipton beefy onion soup mix, but I’ve found that the cheapo ramen noodle beef flavoring works just as well. Note: My gf and I made this one night for her sister and hubby, and they ate the ENTIRE meatloaf (I used the onion and italian sausage version)
1 to 1 &1/2 lbs ground meat
1 egg
2-3 pieces of white bread sprinkled with water. I don’t use breadcrumbs, which are an Abomination. (Sorry to those that use them. Perhaps one day you will see the light)
a packet and a half of beef soup flavoring from a packet of ramen noodles.
Optional:
1/2 a yellow onion
Use 1lb ground meat and 1/2 lb italian sausage. that’s pretty tasty.
Mix everything together, shape into a loaf, bake in oven at 350 degrees 1 hour per pound. So if you used 1 and a half pounds of meat, bake for an hour and a half.
shakes fist
Because of this thread, I ended up getting home with a major craving for meatloaf. Which is in the oven as we speak (smothered in BBQ sauce, no less).
Curse you, SDMB, for foiling my supper plans.
Notice you use water with the bread. Some people prefer to use milk. I don’t think it’s a big thing.
My recipe is very simple – one cup of oatmeal (the very-quick-cooking kind) or breadcrumbs, and one egg for each pound of ground beef. Add very finely chopped fresh onion (or dried onion flakes if you’re in a hurry), the amount depending on how much you like onion. Add enough V8 or tomato juice to make it nice & mooshy. Bake at about 325 until a meat thermometer shows it’s well done.
Sometimes I put the egg, fresh onion chunks and V8 all together in a blender and liquify, then just pour that in with the beef and filler. If I don’t have the packaged breadcrumbs available, I put a couple of torn-up slices of dry bread in the blender and make my own.
It’s very quick. You can put a couple of potatoes in the oven at the same time and be even more energy-saving. When it’s almost done, put some fresh or frozen vegetables to steam in the microwave.
Alton Brown’s recipe is pretty goddamned good. I use a mix of ground beef and ground lamb.
One of his most important directions (aside from free-forming the loaf), is to only use two binders. I saw recipes above that called for milk, bread and egg. This is unnecessary and can lead to mushy meatloaf. Brown really has this one nailed, and I’m not always a fan of his.