Meatloaf with sweet glaze, dishes-minimizing recipe

man I love a classic American meatloaf and over many years I think I've arrived at a particularly efficient procedure for making one the name of the game here is minimizing dishes I will start with an oven-safe pan I use nonstick for this because it'll make cleanup a lot easier later but you could use anything I'm gonna start by grating in like four big carrots directly into the pan you could cut them up on a cutting board but that would dirty the cutting board plus the pieces need to be really small I like a lot of veg in my meatloaf but big chunks tend to fall right out of the slices the grater gets you tiny pieces that'll stay incorporated and grating carrots is very quick and easy might as well grate my onion too while I'm at it no reason to dirty a board or a food processor grating onions is very easy too alrighty heat on high and I'll pour in a little olive oil stir that around and get it steaming most vegetables have to be softened somewhat before you cook them in a meatloaf otherwise they'll just be crunchy have the confidence to use high heat there's so much water in this pan that there's no chance of anything burning as long as you keep it moving after maybe eight minutes enough water will have cooked out that stuff will start to brown that's more than enough cooking for this off the heat it comes and in goes maybe a cup of breadcrumbs at the most I'm using panko just because that's what I usually have around but any form of breadcrumb would be just fine and then I will stir in just as much milk as it can absorb this will have the added benefit of cooling down the pan which is something that I want to achieve right now some people say the function of breadcrumbs and meatloaf is to absorb and retain moisture from the meat I suppose they do that but they can hold a lot of moisture the milk tastes good and it makes the finish texture even more moist and soft you could use stock if you can't eat lactose I think the main function of breadcrumbs and meatloaf is to tenderize it the bread gets in between the bits of meat and disrupts the protein matrix that it forms when cooked it just keeps everything from getting too hard okay I'm gonna let that pan sit and keep cooling down for a sec while I turn on my oven 350 Fahrenheit 180 C convection if you've got it and I'll make my glaze a great american-style meatloaf generally has a glaze based on ketchup that looks like maybe three-quarters of a cup I'm squeezing out I often don't have ketchup in the house these days I have replaced this with roughly equal quantities of tomato paste vinegar and any form of sugar that's basically all ketchup is anyway I'll mix this with an equal quantity of Worcestershire sauce and that's it mix it up all that sweet sweet corn syrup and the ketchup will create a beautiful shiny sticky shell on our loaf okay now that this pan has cooled a bit I can mix up my meatloaf right inside of it instead of dirtying a mixing bowl two pounds or a kilo of basically any ground meat you want that's 1 pound of beef chuck and I like to mix it with a pound of ground lamb delicious flavor that way but some people use all beef some people use beef and pork go nuts I'm putting in a good teaspoon of garlic powder such a convenient way of intensifying the meaty flavor of ground meat mixes now salt it's tough to gauge seasoning with a meatloaf mix because you can't just taste it and adjust I think a totally solid rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon per pound of ground meat I'm doing a heaping teaspoon because I've got a lot of veg in there to grind on a ton of pepper and you could put in some dried herbs but I like to see a little green in there if possible so I'm putting in some fresh rosemary from my plant and rather than dirty a cutting board I'm just snipping it into the pan with scissors once you've snipped most of the needles in half you can just run your fingers across the stem to pull off the remaining halves now you could just crack in one whole egg as a binder for this much meat but I prefer the texture I get from using only yolks to yolks for two pounds of meat I suspect the emulsifiers in the yolk help the loaf to hold more fat inside it but who knows and then my secret ingredient like four spoonfuls of that glaze inside the meat I always used to hate how bland the interior of the loaf tasted compared to the outer bits with the glaze on them well this gets a really noticeable dose of that sweet and sour goodness running through the whole loaf and now I'll get in there with my hands and mix it up some people are really careful to just mix with their fingertips and to make sure that they don't get this too homogeneous I do that from meatballs but to me a classic meatloaf is really thoroughly mixed I'm totally doing that squish through your fingers thing I want slices that are solid and set almost like gelatin you get that by quote-unquote over mixing if you want a more crumbly texture mix it way less if you're in any way unsure of seasoning or flavoring in this just cook a tiny bit of it right now maybe in the microwave taste adjust some people would transfer this to a loaf pan to bake but since we already have this dirty pan I say let's just bake it right in here ground meat is pliable stuff you can shape it into a free-standing loaf just shape it a little taller than you want it because it'll spread outward a bit in the oven last thing is to spread on a primer coat of the glaze just half the glaze I'm spreading it with the back of the spoon and I don't worry too much about the sides because it's gonna drip over we'll cook that in the oven for about an hour until its internal temperature is at least 155 to 160 fahrenheit like 70 C to me a classic meatloaf is done all the way through and given the ground meat is particularly susceptible to bacterial contamination that'll keep us safe just as we can keep ourselves safe with the sponsor of this video surf shark whenever you're using public Wi-Fi you can just connect with surf shark and all of your data and personal information you send will be encrypted via secure Virtual Private Network VPN this has many benefits beyond assuring privacy surf sharks global network of servers allows you to get around internet censorship that happens in many countries and you can get around geo restrictions on content like I pay for Disney Plus for my kids but if we're outside the US we might get blocked well we just route through one of surf shocks American servers and we're in you can also tell surf shocked that there are certain sites or apps that you trust that's called white listing it's useful for things like banking apps surf shock is unlimited they've got 24/7 support and you can get 85% off if you hit my link in the description and use the promo code Adam Ragusa 85 percent off surf shark plus an additional three months for free lincoln code in the description thank you surf shark now we can turn our attention to our sides and I have mash and peas with basically all of my roasts I don't apologize for that it's what I want but I think I have developed a particularly streamlined way of making it again the order of the day is saving on dishes I'm just using a paring knife to cut some potatoes into chunks directly into the water I've got my burner on high but it'll take a while to heat this water up so I'm not worried about scalding myself unless your potatoes are really dirty I see no reason to wash them before boiling them the water will effectively rinse them hey check out my fancy new downdraft pulling steam away from the camera lens I told you it'd work let's check on the meatloaf about halfway through the cooking I will put on the rest of my glaze doing it in two coats like this gets you a nice lacquered finish on the thing if you put it on all at once super heavy it wouldn't have time to dry out and go sticky vacuum that goes the potatoes start to visibly fall apart when they're about done though I think it's good to test with a fork too I got a lot of resistance there I like pretty smooth mash and to get that you've got to boil the potatoes really soft that's better I'll slap the lid on there and drain the potatoes through a gap between the pan and the lid even if you only got the lid dirty for this purpose it's still worth it because a lid takes up way less space in the dishwasher than a colander does ok heat is off but there's still plenty of heat in the pan and the burner I'll melt in a couple of huge knobs of butter and I really like some fresh chopped garlic in my mash here's a very easy way to make that happen I'll move the potatoes aside so that I've got a clear patch of melted butter on the bottom of the pan and I'll turn the heat back on for a minute now that the butter is fizzing I can cook some garlic in it and this is a great time to use the garlic press because I just need a couple of cloves I changed my mind about these things when I realized that you don't have to peel the garlic first the skin stays behind in the press this is also a convenient way of using those really small cloves that would be a pain to peel ok I've got my garlic down in my butter patch and I can let it fry for a minute just to knock down that harsh raw garlic taste while I'm waiting I can grind in some pepper and put in a big pinch of salt to start with and when the garlic is done a glug of milk to start with now I'm gonna get him there and mash like I said I like it pretty smooth now I can taste for seasoning needs a little more salt and a little more milk to loosen the texture and that is done now I want peas and rather than dirty another vessel for boiling the peas I'm just gonna push all my mash to one side of this pot and dump some frozen peas into the other side seriously this works just cover it up put the heat on low and they will thaw in the time it takes to remove and rest our meatloaf I'll take its temperature usually the coolest part is near the top for me and it's now about 155 I'd consider that minimum for meatloaf for the last couple of minutes of cooking I'm gonna turn my broiler on and get some nice brown color on that glaze just watch it very carefully because sugar burns in a flash look at that my peas are half thawed it helps to stir them and we might as well stir in some butter while we're at it yes some of my peas are gonna get stuck in the mash with this method but let me tell you that is my endgame anyway after the meatloaf has rested for a good 10 minutes it should be firm enough that you can just lift it out to a carving surface and this right here is why I like to use a nonstick pan the glaze that drips on to the exposed pan surface tends to burn and it's way easier to scrub off of Teflon you'll get cleaner slices on meatloaf than just about anything else if you work the knife back and forth with long strokes as you push down if you just push down it'll crush the slices kind of wish I'd cook that a hair longer that texture could be a bit firmer and tighter for me plus I would have gotten a smoother surface on the slices but hey it's meatloaf whatever mash and peas on the plate and a big slice of meatloaf we seriously only dirtied two pans to make this dinner to me that is the archetypal American family meal beloved by people old and young for generations

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,058,939

Rating: 4.9170814 out of 5

Keywords: meatloaf recipe, ground beef, how to make meatloaf, homemade meatloaf, meat loaf, how to make meat loaf, meat loaf recipe, comfort food, recipe for meatloaf, easy meatloaf recipe, easy meatloaf, meatloaf glaze, meatloaf recipes, home cooking, ground meat, meatloaf recipe easy, homemade meatloaf recipe

Id: m6IrjnZMu9E

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bud_hasselhoff]

u/aragusea I really appreciate the format of simple dishes with all the nuts and bolts that go in prep, cooking and cleaning. Time efficiency reigns supreme.

[u/_angman]

gotta say, it's become apparent that adam loves soft, sweet meat.

[u/D3rptastic]

I gotta say I was horrified when Adam put unpeeled garlic in his garlic press, but after looking into it that’s actually the correct way to do it and I’ve been peeling my garlic like a fool

[u/Paxtez]

I think I may give this a shot the next time I make meatloaf.

I wonder if it might be worthwhile to pan cook it a little bit to kinda give it a bottom crust.