Thursday, August 14, 2014

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).

5 comments:

Kelly said...

Interesting that you put the zucchini and carrot into yours.

Meatloaf is one of those things everyone has an opinion about! (and funny how many "food snobs" look down their noses at it as "pedestrian" - yet I bet they secretly love it!)

Anyway....I tried recipe after recipe until I finally came up with my own that suited me. Shall I share? Okay. You twisted my arm.

1 lb. ground beef (not too lean!)
1 lb. ground pork (lean)
3/4 cup oats (old fashioned)
2 large eggs
1 can V-8 (5.5 oz)
onion powder, seasoned salt and lemon pepper (all to taste)

I like to pat mine down into an 8x8 or 9x9 glass dish to cook. The flatness cuts into nice pieces that are done (and we certainly want done considering the pork!) I know lots of folks like ketchup or tomato sauce on top, but I prefer mine without. I sometimes put in chopped onion, too. Depends on who will be eating it with me. (I love onion, some family members don't)

Shirley said...

Well, wrap bacon around anything and it's gotta be good, right? :) There's a recipe on my FB page that might tickle your fancy just a little bit, too... xx

jeanie said...

Kelly - don't like onion? Is there such a fiend!!

Shirley - I shall check it out.

Debby said...

Your recipe is not much different from mine, except that I don't use the zucchini and carrots. I'm not sure why I don't, but am thinking maybe I should try it. Your herbs are a little different from mine, so I am going to try your way.

Are you still at Granite Glen?

jeanie said...

The zucchini and carrot are additions since the requirement to up the vegetable content in a discrete manner has been more apparent. You can use most any herbs - just ensure common sense is part of the mix. Or rather, in Dad's words "common sense must prevail"