Meatloaf is a dish whose visibility is considerably higher in real life—especially in North America and Britain—than in cookbooks. (Maybe because it doesn’t have a French name?) The use of “loaf” is particularly appropriate as most recipes include bread, usually in the form of soft breadcrumbs. Also, it is shaped like a loaf and is usually baked in a bread/loaf pan.
My recipe for meatloaf traces its roots to a cookbook that my father gave my mother in the early 1960s, Lea and Perrins’ “Dishes Men Love.”Unfortunately, the cookbook—along with another memorable book “Complete Songs of the Beatles”—got lost (pinag-interesán, as we say in Pilipino; loosely translated, someone took interest in them) during my forgettable five-year stay in my husband’s house in Pasig. Every time I cook this dish, I cannot help but pine for those two lost books—and invariably stew inside me.But I just couldn’t let go of my favorite meatloaf. I reconstructed the recipe from considerable research in various cookbooks, publications, and on-line sources, as directed by taste-memories of the original dish. The bacon helps keep the meatloaf moist, a key concern and one of the reasons that I always cook this dish in a bain-marie. The meat mixture can be spooned into a loaf pan or formed into a loaf shape and placed on a baking pan. I like to use a regular loaf pan and/or mini loaf pans. Sometimes I bake it all in mini loaf pans for single serve portions.
Meatloaf
Ingredients
- 1 c milk
- 2 eggs slightly beaten
- 1 T soy sauce
- 1 t Worcestershire sauce
- 1 t salt
- {¼ t ground pepper}
- 4 slices white bread
- 1 k ground round
- ¼ k ground pork
- ½ c chopped onion
- {¼ c finely chopped carrot}
- 2 T butter
- 10 strips bacon
Gravy
- juices from meatloaf
- ½ c butter
- 2 T crushed garlic
- ½ c finely minced onion
- 2 beef bouillons or 4 T gravy mix
- 2 t Worcestershire sauce
- 2 t soy sauce or Kitchen Bouquet
- ¼ t salt
- ¼ t sugar
- 4 T butter
- 4 T flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350˚F.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine milk, eggs, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and ground pepper. Cut off and discard bread crusts; cut bread into cubes; soak in milk mixture for 15 minutes.
- To milk mixture, add ground meats, onion, and carrot. Knead to combine thoroughly.
- Butter sides and bottoms of a large (9¼” L x 5¼“ W x 2¾“ H) loaf pan. Take bacon slices and place them across the pan, slightly overlapping, to line the bottom and sides.
- Pack meat mixture into pan. Fold the ends of the bacon strips up and over the ground meat mixture. Top with more bacon strips, if necessary.
- Place the loaf pan in a larger baking or roasting pan and fill the larger pan with boiling water halfway up the sides of the loaf pan. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour (30 minutes for mini meat loaves).
- Remove the foil and continue to bake 30 minutes (15 minutes for mini meatloaveor until an instant read thermometer registers 165˚ F.
- Remove the meatloaf from the oven. Carefully pour the juices out of the pan; set aside. Invert onto a grooved cutting board. Let meatloaf rest about 10 minutes before slicing, otherwise the slices will fall apart. Let the juices redistribute and solidify.
- Using a sharp serrated knife, slice meatloaf into desired thickness. Serve hot or cold, with pan juices or gravy and desired sides.
Gravy
- In skillet over medium heat, melt the ½ cup of butter; sauté garlic and onion. Add reserved pan juices as well as any more juices that have collected in the cutting board. Add bouillon, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce or Kitchen Bouquet, salt, and sugar. Keep mixture at a simmer, uncovered, stirring every now and then.
- In a skillet, melt the 4 tablespoons of butter. Add flour and stir to make a smooth paste (this is called a roux).
- Add roux a little at a time to garlic-onion mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring with a wire whisk until mixture is thick and smooth.
One Comment
Norman Tarwater
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