With so much emphasis being placed on producing gourmet meals at home it’s easy to forget how special (and tasty) nailing a simple classic meal can be.
My Grandmother, and yours too, for that matter, probably didn’t spend their days making duck confit and whipping up lobster bisque, but could cook the hell outa simple dishes like this here meat loaf. Cooking even the most basic of foods properly makes a huge difference in the yum factor and smiles coming from the dinner table.
It wasn’t at my grandmas house but while visiting family in Arkansas where I first got to experience how good meat loaf can be when someone puts their foot into it. In the south there are what people call Cookhouses, what we might call a buffet, or Hofbrau. I didn’t walk in this place expecting much more than what I was used to back home in California, but boy was I wrong. While browsing the steaming trays around the hot counter, the food visually look like typical buffet fair, but once I made my selections and sat down, the grub fest was on. Everything was jammin, and bite after humbling bite I realized how much my cooking skills were still in their infancy.
When most people here the words health food they cringe because they think it means “not tasty.” Not this one folks. We can all strive to make our health food taste better and this week’s recipe is a good start. Typically meat loaf is made with eggs and breadcrumbs but I can’t eat either so after some tinkering I came up with a way to remove them without compromising the taste or texture. Let’s cook
Meatloaf
Prep time 20 minutes, Cook time 50 minutes
- 2lbs ground chuck
- 1 1/2 cups cubed garnet sweet potato (the orange one)
- 1 medium onion chopped (I did 1/2 white and 1/2 red here)
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce ( or A-1 if you don’t have Worcestershire)
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard (or yellow mustard if you don’t have Dijon)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 2 Tbsps. avocado oil (or butter)
- 1 tsp thyme (fresh or dried)
- 1/3 cup chopped parsley
- 2 Tbsps. olive oil
- 3 Tbsps. ketchup, BBQ sauce, or balsamic vinaigrette dressing for glaze
- Rimmed baking sheet with wire rack and parchment paper
- Probe thermometer
- Food processor
Method
- Peel and cube sweet potato then pulse in food processor into a crumbly mixture
- Sweat (sauté) onion in a pan with the avocado oil for 5 minutes or until beginning to brown
- Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant
- Add onion and garlic, Worcestershire, Dijon, salt & pepper, thyme, parsley, and olive oil, to the sweet potato in the food processor and pulse to pasty mixture
- Scrape mixture into a large bowl and add ground beef
- Using your hands mix thoroughly until fully combined
- Place the wire rack in the baking sheet and set the parchment on top of the rack
- Transfer meat mixture to the wire rack and shape into a tight loaf
- Set oven rack to middle position and set broiler to high
- Brush the top and partially down the sides of the loaf with your glaze of choice
- Broil for 5 minutes
- Remove from oven and let rest while you heat the oven to 350 degrees
- Insert your probe thermometer into the center of the loaf and bake in the oven for 50 minutes or until it reaches 160 degrees
- As soon as it hits 160 take it out of the oven and let rest for 20 minutes.
- While it’s resting spoon the drippings over the meatloaf a few times
- Enjoy!