How To Make Classic Meatloaf That Will Melt A Man's Heart - Sunday Dinner - The Hillbilly Kitchen

howdy folks and welcome to the hillbilly kitchen today we're making meatloaf [Music] now i want to start by telling y'all this ain't the healthy version of meatloaf this is just a good old-fashioned meatloaf it has a ton of flavor but as we go through the ingredients i'm going to give you some substitutions that so you can make it a little bit healthier and maybe even change the flavor if you want a different flavor in your meatloaf obviously you need some meat and today i'm making a really big meatloaf so i have like almost three pounds of ground round you can use any meat or any ground hamburger you want you can even use healthier stuff like ground turkey or ground chicken if you want in your meatloaf i'm making an extra big one because we've got a little road trip planned this weekend with half the family and what brett and i don't have for dinner tonight we're gonna pack up and take and have meatloaf sandwiches on the road instead of so much fast food so as we go through it i'm gonna give you kind of the ingredients if you're making a one pound meatloaf too and tell you how to do that because not everybody needs three pounds of meatloaf at one time you can use regular 70 30 ground beef i prefer at least ground chuck and i don't like to go any leaner than ground round and i'm using the round today because it was on sale cheaper than the chuck when i went to the grocery store so that's something to kind of watch for when you're doing a meatloaf you need quite a bit of meat obviously it's the main ingredient if you can get it on sale get it on sale even if it's a little leaner or maybe has a little more fat in it the other thing you need or the next thing you need is some filler and i'm using crackers in my filler today um if i was making a one pound meatloaf i would use like just a sleeve of regular saltines you want about three quarters of a cup to a cup of filler depending kind of on what texture you're looking for per pound of meat and you can use a lot of different things for filler in your meatloaf like i said i'm using crackers you can use crackers you can use bread crumbs if you want to go healthier you can use oatmeal quick cook or old-fashioned rolled oats and my aunt louise used to make the best meatloaf when i was a kid and she always used um oatmeal but brett has this texture thing with oatmeal and meatloaf is his favorite food so ever since we've been together for 35 years over 35 years now i have always used the crackers it makes a really moist meatloaf and so does the oatmeal but if you want it healthier use the oatmeal and you can even use stuff like ground flaxseed in it to really add some nutrition into your oatmeal but that's up to you like i said if you're doing healthier pick something healthier you want at least one large egg per pound of meat you're using if you got little bitty small eggs use a couple and what you flavor it with again is up to you you can use all ground spices and seasonings you know onion powders and garlic powders and stuff like that and not chop up any vegetables when the kids were little a lot of times that's what i did because sometimes you just cannot get kids to eat stuff that has diced peppers and onions in it but now that they're all grown they all eat it and brett and i certainly prefer it with chopped onions and bell peppers in it and i have my onion was about this big i didn't measure it even with a one pound meatloaf you're going to want at least a half a cup of chopped onions maybe a little bit more if you use them and about half a cup of bell peppers but i have just a pretty good sized onion and one pepper that i've chopped up fairly fine and how fine you chop them up again is up to you if you want to leave them in bigger chunks leave them in bigger chunks and then you would have that added texture in your meatloaf again i have a texture thing with great big chunks of vegetables in my meatloaf so i chop them finer and the thing about home cooking is it's cooked the way you like it in your home so feel free to substitute stuff feel free to leave stuff out the only thing you need is the meat the eggs and the filler and it and the filler like i said you can choose different kinds of filler and you can even choose different kinds of meat just pick what you like now for flavor and sauce i have about a quarter cup of ketchup maybe a little bit more you would want if you were just doing one pound maybe three or four tablespoons and i have a cup of barbecue sauce total with your sauce per pound you're going to want at least a half a cup of some kind of sauce in there now it i'm using honey barbecue sauce you could use salsa you could use taco sauce you could use anything like that you know do a different flavor you can even use tomato soup crushed tomatoes fresh tomatoes dice them up and use fresh tomatoes instead of the sauces if you have them and you want the healthier stuff but like i said you want about half a cup per pound and i'm gonna put part of this barbecue sauce in my meatloaf and i'm gonna top it with the rest of it i know a lot of folks just top it with plain ketchup i don't really think that has enough flavor and i don't know where the barbecue sauce idea came from but i've been doing it for years and years and years and brett won't eat it any other way now i have a little bit of minced garlic and i'm using the garlic that comes packed in water already minced up that is the world's easiest way to use garlic i love that stuff and i also have a tablespoon of onion powder and i've got about two teaspoons of salt i got a lot of meat here but when you're measuring your salt and adjust this to your taste keep in mind i have salt in here salt in here and salt in here so when you pick your fillers and you pick your seasonings adjust the salt based on what you're using if you were using oatmeal and fresh tomatoes you would definitely have to add more salt or your meatloaf would be so bland and it would just have no flavor no matter what you added to it and i have a teaspoon of pepper and a tablespoon of onion powder even though i've got the onions in here i want the onion powder because it will mix in the meat better and it'll really ensure that i have that even flavor throughout my meat so let's get started mixing up some of these ingredients the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to beat my eggs up a little bit with a fork and then i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to add in half of my barbecue sauce are there about oops well that might be a little bit more than half and i'm going to go ahead and put my ketchup in and you know like i said if you got fresh tomatoes just chop up a fresh tomato and put in there i just didn't have any today um i'm going to go ahead and add my garlic in here and my onion powder and salt and pepper put those in there and then mix that a little bit again that'll kind of help make sure that they're distributed in the meat when i start adding all this stuff to the meat you do want to kind of make sure you get enough salt in your meatloaf because you know some people just like a ton of salt you can add a little salt to it on the table but it's not as good as if you actually cook all the flavors in your meatloaf so don't over salt it like i said keep in mind how much salt is in your crackers if you're using crackers and in your sauces and stuff but make sure you get enough in there okay now i'm just gonna add everything else to my bowl here with my meat in it go ahead and dump your crackers in there and your onion and your peppers you can add hot peppers and stuff to meatloaf too if you want to um you know it's just kind of what kind of flavor you want because like i said the thing about home cooking is it's cooked in your home and it should be cooked the way people in your home like it now even mixing your meatloaf is going to change it dramatically if you mix it really really well with your hands you know if you get in there and squeeze it and mash it real tight it's going to have a different texture to it it's going to be more solid you know the hamburgers that you get are the rolled hamburger meat the stuff that comes in like a five or ten pound roll it's and it's really squished together and more processed and you can get hamburgers that they just slice off of that in the grocery store they'll sell like a 10 pound or 10 patty pack of those hamburgers that they just slice off the roll that's what kind of texture it will have if you mix it with your hands a lot i mean you can mix it with your hands and not get that texture but if you over mix it and you really mash it up a whole lot it's going to get that kind of texture to it and it the flavor i think is better if you don't over mix it and the texture is certainly better it's much more tender if you don't mix it to the point that it turns into like that processed hamburger if you're using fresh ground meat it's much looser and you want to keep your meatloaf a little bit looser you just you don't want to squish it until it turns into one of those processed hamburger patties that's more like the freezer meatloaves that you buy and yes i have had frozen meatloaf i don't remember where i had it at i don't think i've ever bought one and made it at home because brett would literally have a heart attack if i fro served in my frozen meatloaf but meatloaf does freeze really well usually if i'm going to freeze it i will divide it up before i put my barbecue sauce on top and wrap it up actually i vacuum it vacuum pack it put it in the freezer and it will last for quite a long time that way if you don't have a vacuum sealer um you can just wrap it up good and tight but i do it before i put the barbecue sauce on it because if you put the barbecue sauce on it and then do it you're going to have barbecue sauce stuck all to your paper that you wrap it in when you freeze it so if you want to freeze it just divide it up before you top it and wrap it up tight and freeze it and it'll last for quite a while like i said in the freezer and then you can just start out and top it and you've got a quick dinner this is about what you want right here you can see everything is evenly distributed in there it's all sticking together really well now um but it's not turned into this mushed up ball and i mix mine with just this big fork um you're gonna get your hands in it and if you want you can wear gloves but i you don't want to continue to mix until it turns into that super processed mushy stuff so i'm going to bake mine in my iron skillet if you're only doing one pound one of course you would need a smaller skillet and a one pound one fits really nice in a loaf pan and if you are making it for meatloaf sandwiches a loaf pan is a good way to cook it because you can slice it in nice slices and it makes really good sandwiches the iron skillet is another one of those things though that brett has gotten used to having his meatloaf cooked in an iron skillet and i tried cooking some in some of the little small aluminum pans and freezing it that way you know i'd do a big one like this and then divide it up and he said the flavor is just different than it is in the iron skillet so if you've got an iron skillet and you've never tried cooking your meatloaf in it give it a try you do want to wipe it a little bit with some oil or some kind of grease because we're going to put the barbecue sauce on top of it it is going to stick to your skillet and it's going to make it hard to clean if you don't wipe it with a little something but now just put your meatloaf mix into whatever pan you're using and you want to preheat your oven to about 350 degrees and i know everybody wants exact bacon times but there's not really an exact bacon time on meatloaf it's going to vary a lot based on how much meatloaf you're making of course and it's also going to vary based on how much filler you have in it and how much sauce you have in it that's going to change your cooking time and certainly the kind of oven matters i mean if you've got a convection oven it's going to cook a whole lot faster than with a regular oven i can tell you this we like ours a little doner than most folks do and generally speaking a one pound meatloaf you're going to want to cook it at least an hour in that 350 degree oven maybe a little bit longer make sure it's pretty firm in the middle or we'll make sure it's really firm in the middle if it's not done in the middle keep cooking it the one this size is going to take about two hours and in about two hours then you can take it out and top it and we're just going to stick it back in after it gets done until our topping is brown you know it's hot and a little gooey and so probably total cooking time for this one i'm looking at anywhere between two and a half to three hours um one pound one you're looking at an hour to an hour and a half so you know you're just going to have to base it on what size meatloaf is and how well you like it done you do want to make sure you get it done though because it has ground beef in it and you don't want to eat raw ground beef and make everybody sick you can use a thermometer if you need to and check the temperature of the middle but you can usually just take your fork or a a knife or something and check in the center and make sure it's done i mean you can tell when it's done and once you get it all in your pan you do want to kind of take your knife or your fork and mash it down mash it together you don't want um great big craters in the top of it because it would get it would almost make little burn spots in the top and you don't want that and i kind of go around the edges a little bit that gives the grease somewhere to go and after you've cooked it like i said this one will cook for about two hours if you have a lot of grease you can drain that grease off before you put your topping on and we'll check on this and see how much it has the ground round sometimes it varies sometimes i don't have enough grease to even drain if i use it and sometimes i have more than i have with the ground chuck so we'll see what it looks like when we take it out of the oven now the only other thing is before you put in the oven i cover mine and i cover it because this is going to have to cook like i said about two hours and if you cook it in the oven uncovered for two hours the top is going to be all burned and you don't want that that doesn't make a good meatloaf so i just cover it with foil that also keeps it from splattering in your oven kind of tight i want to hold the steam in out of the peppers and the onions and keep the top from burning it's better if your full doesn't touch your top but this was such a big meatloaf i think mine is a little bit but it'll be okay so i'm just going to put this in my 350 degree oven and we'll come back and check on it in a couple hours when it's ready to add the top okay our meatloaf has been in the oven a couple hours now so we're gonna pull it out and check on it okay it's just like i expected there's not a lot of grease in this ground round you can see there's not enough to even worry about draining it but if you used ground chuck or regular 70 30 ground beef you might want to drain it at this point and i said the cooking times will vary based on a lot of different things your oven um how much fats in your meat how much liquid you put in your meatloaf you know whether you use fresh tomatoes or you use the barbecue sauce or some other kind of sauce some different flavor ground meat if you can't tell if your meatloaf is done or not it's supposed to be cooked to 160 degrees at least and you can get a meat thermometer like this or you can get a digital one and check it just stick the meat thermometer in the middle of it at this point if it's not quite at the 160 degrees we are gonna put it back in the oven and you know put our barbecue sauce on the top and let it cook a little bit longer but it looks like mine is yep it's going all the way up there it's right at 160 degrees i have my my little arrow pointed at where i want my thermometer to get to so if you're new to cooking or maybe you're not sure how to tell when a meatloaf gets done get a thermometer and like i said you can do this one or you can one like this or you can do a digital one it doesn't matter and stick it right in the center and make sure you don't go all the way to the bottom and get your pan you don't want to make anybody sick with your meat loaf that's not good so once you know your meat loaf is done and you do want it if it's not at that 160 degrees it should be really really close because you're not going to cook it a real long time once you put your barbecue sauce on just until it gets brown and like i said a lot of folks use plain ketchup for this if you want to do that you can do that but the barbecue sauce really adds a lot of flavor and you just kind of spread it around there and coat it all and how long you cook it when you put it back in here is just entirely up to you um you just cook it until it gets as brown and as done as you want it and you can put the barbecue sauce on as thin or as thick as you want the thicker you put it on the longer you're going to want to let it cook because you're going to want to kind of let it get a little bit sticky it improves the flavor of it you don't want it well we don't like it just pour it on there we like to cook it a little bit and you know like i said let it get a little bit sticky even a little bit crispy around the edges but it is your meatloaf so you do it how you want to okay so we're just going to stick this in the oven and then we'll come back and pull it out here in a few minutes i want to say thank you to some folks and i want to say i'm sorry to some folks too if you have sent something in the past two months maybe that you didn't see in a video i've been having some sound issues for the past year the microphone that i used for a long time it it got old and it quit working and i bought another one and the one that i replaced it with had a short of some sort in it and we thought for a year that it was a battery issue and i bought several different kinds of batteries and different kinds of rechargeable batteries and we finally figured out that it was cutting out because it had a short in it and we had several videos that had to be thrown away because the sound was bad and some of your mail i think got in some of those videos and i don't know what actually made it into videos that got uploaded and and what was on the videos that we had to throw out because the sound was bad or it cut out and it had no sound at all so if i didn't get your letter or your card um some of you have even sent gifts that i'm afraid didn't get in videos i am very sorry i promise i did put them in a video but it didn't get up and now i don't know what's in videos and what isn't i'm pretty sure y'all haven't seen any of this stuff today so um i got some letters i got a letter from george and there was a thank you note in the letter from george um he received one of the ovens that we gave away early in the year maybe february or so and i really appreciate your letter george it was very nice and i want to thank all of you who helped with that project i think there were at least 45 ovens total that went out so everybody who helped with that thank you so much and god really provided way more than i thought we would be able to send so that ended up being just a an unbelievable blessing to a lot of people and it was one of those things that where god really showed me what he could do i mean what i had planned on doing was nothing like what god did and i also got a really nice note from miss grace in alabama and miss grace said that she had my cookbook in there thank you so much and i want to thank all of you who have bought the cookbook and everybody who's asking about volume 2. i am working on it um i wanted to make sure i had at least a hundred recipes to go in it because if you're gonna spend money on a cookbook you should get a few recipes in it so i'm working on it i've got about a hundred recipes together and i've started putting it together and we hope volume 2 is going to be even better than volume one and then maybe next year we'll start working on some dessert cookbooks or holiday cookbooks and stuff like that but i'm working on volume two thank you all for purchasing volume one everybody who has it i know a lot of you have i was just i can't tell you how overwhelmed i am with how many people have purchased cookbooks it's it's just an incredible blessing your support so thank you all and i got a very nice carded note from tammy thank you tammy and i got some books from um brenda wood brenda is from canada and she writes christian books she sent a photograph of all of her books she has several children's books as well as devotionals for adults and a cookbook and she sent me some of her stuff she also sent me a card that has a scripture on it that i've quoted a few times during this mess that's gone on the past year uh it's romans 8 28 and we know that in all things god works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose and i love that scripture and i'm sure she found that card and sent it just for me so thank you brenda but here is one of her books happy days life after 40 and that's an acronym that she uses in a lot of her books living in freedom every day and she did a food lovers devotional where she did something similar to what i did where she has her recipes and scriptures and stuff and i'm sure she's on the internet i haven't actually looked her up up yet but i'm going to because she is a motivational speaker um and like i said she has several books so y'all can look for her and i got a t-shirt and a card from dorinda and i actually just got this and it says uh happy mother's day in it but thank you dorinda for the t-shirt she said she hoped that it was all right that she sent me a t-shirt but when she saw it it just sounded like me and it's certainly all right i appreciate it very much and i'm probably going to pack it take it with me this weekend when we do our little road trip it says let your faith in god be bigger than your fears and that is based on first john 4 18. now if you are having problems if you are experiencing anxiety or you're sad or you're just having trouble getting through stuff first john is a really good book of the bible to go to and first john chapter 4 is a really good chapter um first john 4 8 actually says god is love and then first john 4 18 says there is no fear in love but perfect love cast us out fear because fear hath torment and when you have god in your heart you should not have fear in your heart and if you have fear whatever you're afraid of god will take care of that he is bigger than your fear so if you're in a situation where you're worried about something or you're afraid of something go to first john particularly first john chapter 4 and read it and pray about it and study on it and meditate with it and let god have that fear so thank you all for the gifts and like i said if your gift your letter your card didn't make it in a video i am terribly sorry but we have been having some real battles with sound and you know that's just one of the things that we expect in this world and it's one of those things that you just kind of got to deal with and go on i do have a new microphone now and um i had some help of picking that out vanessa and her husband kind of made some recommendations and stuff so i want to thank them for helping me find a microphone that would work and i think we're going to do pretty good with this one i'm still doing some little adjustments on it trying to get it where the sound is as clear as possible but it definitely seems to work much better than the last one so hopefully we won't have any more issues okay so my barbecue sauce is nice and bubbly now and it should be good and sticky barbecue sauce is its best when it gets good and sticky um if you are in a real big hurry and you don't want to wait for this to cook at the 350 degrees you can turn your boiler on especially if your meatloaf is already up to that 160 degrees and you know it's done in the middle just turn your roller on and cook your barbecue sauce or whatever else you choose to top your meatloaf with under the broiler and it'll get brown in just a couple of minutes this took maybe 15 minutes or so and like i said how long you leave it in there is just going to depend on how you like it the only other thing that you really need to know is you want to let this sit for about 10 minutes before you cut into it and that kind of gives it a chance to settle down and everything kind of firm up before you start cook cutting it and it will also help it release from the pan a little bit now because it's had the onions in it and the peppers in it and all the barbecue sauce if you chose to use something else all that stuff is going to tend to stick to your pan so just take your knife and go around the edge and like i said give it about 10 minutes or so and that will help it release from the pan and come out really easy before you serve it if you've never had a meatloaf sandwich when you make your meatloaf make sure you make one big enough to have some leftovers for meatloaf sandwiches because they're as traditional around here anyway as the meatloaf itself is and this is one of those really classic dishes every dad loves it so make your dad a meatloaf this year for father's day maybe and i'm sure that he will love it as much as every other man i know does in fact i heard that it was one of the president's favorite dishes and his sister makes it for him so you know it is something that guys love whether they're from the south or the north or the east or the west it's one of those things meatloaf of mashed potatoes and just please any man i want to thank you all so much for joining us in the hillbilly kitchen if you have not already please don't forget to click like and subscribe before you leave and until next time remember to put god first [Music]

Channel: The Hillbilly Kitchen - Down Home Country Cooking

Views: 1,891,502

Keywords: Meatloaf, dinner, recipe, Cooking, culinary, the hillbilly kitchen, food, country cooking, southern cooking, how to make meatloaf, baking, Jesus, GOD, meatloaf recipe, iron skillet cooking, perfect meatloaf, BBQ meatloaf, homemade meatloaf, best meatloaf, meatloaf, beef meatloaf, ground beef, ground beef recipe, comfort food, hamburger recipe, hamburger casserole, classic meatloaf, meat and potatoes, father’s day dinner, how to please a man, heirloom recipe, depression cooking

Id: -n_YHRuk5Hk

Length: 31min 47sec (1907 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021