Meatloaf
Learned this very simple recipe as a teenager working in a restaurant. Few years later I was pulling KP duty during Basic Training & was told ‘go start making the meatloaf’. Not knowing the entire USAF used a standard recipe book, I started making this recipe. The cook didn’t find out I wasn’t following the book until I asked for the Worcestershire Sauce. By that time it was too late to change. It was such a hit the cook used my recipe from then on.
2 lb ground beef
80-85% lean – 90-95% would be too dry.
1 finely-chopped white onion
2 eggs
salt, pepper
2 tblsp Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup ketchup
2/3 cup oatmeal
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Preset oven to 350°
Grease a loaf pan – shortening or Pam or your preference.
Put the beef in a medium-sized bowl, break it up and spread it out.
Sprinkle some salt and black pepper and the cayenne pepper.
Sprinkle the Worcestershire Sauce over it.
Spread the ketchup over it.
Poke a couple of holes in the meat and break the eggs into the holes.
Scatter the oatmeal across the meat.
Mix it thoroughly by hand – it’s fun, like playing in the mud. 🙂
Pack into the loaf pan, keeping it level and tuck down a bit at the edges.
Bake for about 1 hour or until a meat themometer reads 160-165°
Optional: Brush some ketchup or BBQ sauce across the top and bake another 5 minutes.
Can serve as is or with tomato sauce or brown gravy.
If you’re ambitious and have the time, a hunter sauce is great.
With a good enough hunter sauce, a rock would be edible 🙂
Variation – HamLoaf
When I have leftovers from a roast ham, I put it through my meat grinder.
Use the ground ham plus as much ground beef as needed to make 2 pounds of meat.
I’ve seen hamloaf recipes calling for all ham, but to my taste they are much too strong.
Serve slabs spread with sauce:
tomato sauce slightly thinned with juice from the pan, parsley, cilantro, finely chopped yellow onion, dash of WorcesterShire or lemon juice.
Chocolate Bacon
Couldn’t be simpler
As many 8″x8″ sheets of waxed paper as needed.
Cook and drain your bacon. Should be crisp.
Set aside a few pieces to crumble to small bits.
Put canning jar filled with your chocolate into a pot of hot water and bring to boil.
I prefer Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet – use whatever chocolate or combo you like.
Stir until chocolate it thorougly melted; remove jar from pot.
Dip bacon strips in the melted chocolate and move to waxed paper to cool.
Lay a few slices on a sheet of paper on a plate, cover with another sheet, etc.
Spoon leftover chocolate onto waxed paper.
Optional: Dust with powdered sugar or cake sprinkles.
Sprinkle bacon bits on top.
Chill the coated bacon strips and wafers.
Warning: They seem to mysteriously disappear. Refrigerator gnomes?
My wife’s fruitcake recipe is 99% fruit. She filled old ‘square’ jars with about 3 pints of fruit, citron, raisins, currants & Secret Ingredients, then added a cup of cake batter – 6 cups fruitstuff, 1 cup batter. My job was picking the stems out of currents and 3 different types of raisins, dicing up the citron and candied fruit into teeeeeny pieces.
At one time you could buy coffee in cans about 6″ wide and 4″ tall. She lined them with greased brown paper and baked in them. Each fruitcake weighed about 3lbs although she made a 5-pounder for special orders (like feeding 100 people).
We sliced them as thin as deli meat. They are rather like baklava – too rich to eat more than a very small portion. The uneaten part was wrapped in waxed paper, then foil, then sealed in a tin box. Opened once a year for few more slices, sprinkled with a bit of brandy or sherry and sealed up again. I’ve still got a couple on the shelf at least 15 years old. It’s edible forever – too rich for bacteria to survive.
🙂
I suspect chocolate bacon is illegal n several states due to the sinnful attracttion.
When I saw the pic, I thought t was photoshopped but, as I understand it, you can actually make chocolate coated bacon. There is a goD!
I must have refrigerator gnomes, I looked in the fridge and there is no choco bacon or meatloaf! However, the cat looks mighty satisfied 😉
Your recipe kinda reminds me of mine, stolen from Ann Landers I believe.
Most meatloaf recipes call for bread crumbs but the oatmeal binds it better. It’s also best if the ketchup is getting down to the bottom of the bottle.
I spent part of my teen summers working in a restaurant and have some other great recipes lurking in the back of my mind, along with enough tales to make you swear off ever visiting a restaurant again. 🙂
The husband was a master at preparing fish and meat and the wife did the soups and sauces.
What I really miss from those days is the herring pickled in brine. All I can find today is packed either in wine or a cream sauce.
I never thought to use oatmeal or bread crumbs, I have always used crushed saltines or oyster crackers. I tried substituting tomato sauce for ketchup, but it wasn’t good, but better than my friend who tried it with tomato soup concentrate(barf). To me what makes it so good is the Worcestershire sauce and putting ketchup over the top half way through cooking. 🙂
An old boyfriend of mine was a chef, so he taught me all kinds of secrets. I have been going nuts lately trying to find his Redfield Pheasant recipe, I have just been craving it. 🙁
Shortly after I got married, my wife made a meatloaf for the family and I was dumbstruck to find peas and carrots therein. On the other hand, she added onion soup mix (the powdered stuff you use to make a dip) and that worked. She’s a much better baker than I am, having learned from her father, whose hobby was Obsessively Serious Baking.
Sometime soon I may post his/her recipe for fruitcake. It’s nothing like the doorstops you find hawked during the Christmas Season and which get traded from friend to friend to friend until someone finally junks them. Production is very labor-intensive but the result is stupendous.
I’m one of those odd people that like fruitcake, if it is moist. lol
I usually put in a package of onion soup mix in meat loaf, it works really well. I do not however care for veggies other than onion in my loaf. We used to also sometimes put in treasure cove crumbled bleu cheese. That is really good, but we had to lie to my daughter and tell her it was mozzarella. lol