The Family Meatloaf Recipe

There was a discussion about mixing meatloaf on a forum I wander into fairly regularly.

Which got onto "what is your family meatloaf"

and I thought, why not?

1kg cheap mince
1 chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 egg
1/2-1 cup grated zucchini
1/2-1 cup grated carrot
1-2 slices bread, wet in water and squeezed
1 good squirt cheap ass tomato sauce
splash worcestershire
marjoram - yes, there is something you can use that for!
if you have fresh parsley - couple of good tablespoons of that
bit of oregano
bit of thyme
stuff from the cupboard
leftover stuff from the fridge
(in place of last 6 ingredients, you could add dried mixed herbs a la the traditional family recipe)

Preheat the oven to 160-200 C.  Dependent on time availability and how tempremental your oven is, of course.

Wash your hands - ensure jewellery is on the ring stand above the sink and no fingernails are giving you gyp.

Prep the above.

Put all the above into a bowl and mix it through with your hands, squeezing it between your fingers, tearing the wet bread as you are doing so.  If too dry, add another egg.  If too wet, put in some breadcrumbs.

Put a slosh of oil into a baking dish.  You can use the spray stuff or lard or oil - whatever - bit of lube, the fat of cheap mince should provide the goodness.

Mould the mixture into thing loggy sort of shapes.  If your time is a bit tight, make it skinnier (because the aim of the game is really to cook it to the centre, not how you've got a bigger one).

If you want to get all fancy, you can wrap some cheap bacon around it.  If you want to look all health nut, try some seaweed or blanched cabbage leaves.  Gee, if you want to go vego, you could use lentils or well cooked any beans, if you want to go vegan, besan flour can hide most shortcomings.  Sprigs of herbs would add a certain frivolity to proceedings - just so long as it doesn't look like scorched earth when the dish is presented, I suppose.

Apparently some parts of the world even use a barbecue saucey sort of drench - each to their own, hey?  Best not to start a war over it.

Anyhoo - into the oven - we love roast vegies here, so will peel and put all sorts of vegetables around - generally I will give the meatloaf a bit of time in the oven before I add these, size of the veges determine the cooking time so adjust accordingly - depending of size and temp, it will take 1-2 hours and goes amazing well with gravy and peas (and corn and broccoli and mashies and salad and between two slices of white bread slathered with butter and tomato sauce).