Meatloaf

I love meatloaf, for a few reasons. First, most importantly, pretty much everyone in the family will eat it, several with great gusto. Also, it's not all that difficult, and can be done in the slow cooker (with some important restrictions). Best of all, you can be wonderfully creative with meatloaf--you can chunk all variety of different things into meatloaf and it will still come out as something that everyone will eat.

Here is my most standard meatloaf recipe:

Marjorie's standard meatloaf:

1 lbs lean ground beef
1 half medium onion, chopped
teaspoon bottled minced garlic
1 egg
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 slices stale whole wheat bread
salt and pepper to taste

Form this into a loaf and it cooks up great in the crock pot over about 7-8 hours. It looks a little rough along the top, but you're going to cover that in ketchup, anyway.


From there, you can add all manner of other ingredients and spices, such as bells peppers, chiles, or tomatoes. Go crazy and add fresh basil and pine nuts. (I can't do this in my house because of my husband's strict 'no nuts' rule. And no, it's not an allergy, it's just picky. I do use them when I make pesto, but they're all ground up then, which is acceptable to him.)

This morning I didn't have time to get the meatloaf together, so I did it in the oven, instead. I do oven meatloaf at 350 for an hour. There are some important differences in oven meatloaves and crock pot meatloaves.

1. You can't put cheese in the crock pot. This goes for everything. There are plenty of recipes out there that call for cheese in a crock pot, and they are uniformly horrible. Something awful happens to cheese in a crock pot, and it turns into something tasteless and spongy. In the oven, however, cheese is wonderful, almost any type (although you want to match up your cheeses with whatever else you are putting in, of course). I don't like meatloaf super-cheesy--I usually just use about 4 ounces with a pound of meat, and it adds a nice salty, tasty glue (I leave out the egg when I am using cheese).

2. I don't use raw veggies in the oven. Some raw onion or chiles or peppers will melt nicely into a crock pot meatloaf, but they will often stay just a bit too crunchy in the oven. so, just make some adjustments. You also want to keep a close eye on it to make sure the loaf doesn't get too crunchy. This is the recipe I use tonight:

Oven Meatloaf:
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 slices stale 9-grain bread, crusts cut off
1 lbs ground round
1 can Italian-style diced tomatoes
2 ounces shredded cheddar cheese

Frankly, it turned out just wonderful. I always feel a little guilty using canned tomatoes (ye Gods the BPA!) but they really do make life easy, so I keep my pantry stocked.

If anyone is reading this, feel free to share your favorite meatloaf variations in comments!