Meatloaf

One night, the hubby and I were watching Better Homes and Gardens where Fast Ed was making meatloaf.  The hubby was pretty impressed with it, maybe the fact it was wrapped in bacon had something to do with it, and I talked about making it for him.  Well, a million years later it finally happened.

The nights have started getting quite cool in our neck of the woods, after all that is generally the effect winter has, which makes it perfect for a nice, hot, comforting meal.  Our friend J was coming over for dinner and it was a good opportunity to make the meatloaf so the hubby had someone to share it with.  Now it ended up being a little bit of a mess when it came time to serve it, but the flavour was there and that’s really what matters at the end of the day.

There are quite a few ingredients in this, but despite that it really is quite easy to prepare, especially if you make someone else do the work.  Which I may have done…

You will need bacon, mince, eggs, breadcrumbs, onions, carrots, grated mozzarella (which we substituted for the four cheese mix that is always in our fridge), parsley, teriyaki sauce, tomato paste, the juice of a lemon plus salt and pepper for seasoning.

I found that we needed to use two loaf tins for this recipe, which were lined with the rashers of bacon.  The hubby was hoping to achieve a weaved looked with the bacon rashers, which did not quite work out as planned, so you can simply arrange them across the loaf tin, slightly overlapping, with the excess hanging over the side as this will be folded over the top after the mince is added.

To prepare the remaining ingredients, the original recipe calls you to finely mince the onions, finely chop the parsley and grate the carrots.  We ran the carrots and onion through the food processor with the 6mm plate, because the 4mm plate was in the dishwasher after making hash browns that morning, and roughly chopped the parsley so you could actually see it in the mixture.

Place the mince, eggs, breadcrumbs, onion, carrot, cheese and parsley in a large bowl and mix together.  It is much simpler to do this with your hands than a spoon to make sure everything is thoroughly combined, and the hubby took care of this for me like the good man he is.

Add the teriyaki sauce, tomato paste and juice of the lemon and mix through, adding salt and pepper to season.

You will end up with a nice and colourful mince mixture.

Divide the mixture between the two loaf tins lined with bacon.

Fold the excess bacon over the top of the mince to encase it completely.

Place the two tins on a baking tray and then cover with baking paper and a layer of foil.  This will keep the meatloaf nice and moist whilst cooking, preventing it from drying out.

Bake in a preheated 170°C oven for one hour, checking at 45-50 minutes.  You may like to remove the foil and baking paper at this point to allow the bacon to get nice and crispy.

You will notice that there is a bit of liquid pooled in the loaf tin and we did find that there was quite a bit of liquid in the meatloaf which made it quite hard to serve as it basically just fell apart.  I didn’t get any pictures because I was a bit annoyed to be honest.  We served the meatloaf baked in the silicone tray which bulged because the tin isn’t as rigid of course, and placed the other in the fridge overnight which made it much easier to handle the next day.

Full disclosure, these pictures are of the cold meatloaf the next day and in an ideal world it would be the same once removed from the oven.  But as I have been struggling lately with anything working, which you may already be aware of if you follow me on Facebook, this is the best I could do for this one.

Not that I ate it, but I really liked how you could see the bits of everything throughout the meatloaf, and the hubby really liked the flavour of it overall.

Given the hubby is the only meat eater in the house, the second meatloaf was sliced up and frozen in single serves for him so he can reheat it for the many cold winter nights ahead.

Print Recipe

Meatloaf

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

Course

Main

Servings

Ingredients

• 12 rashers bacon
• 1 kg lean beef mince
• 4 egg(s)
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 2 brown onions chopped
• 2 carrots grated
• 1 cup mozzarella grated
• 1 bunch parsley chopped
• 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 lemon juice of
• salt and pepper to season

Course Main Servings Ingredients 12 rashers bacon 1 kg lean beef mince 4 egg(s) 1 cup breadcrumbs 2 brown onions chopped 2 carrots grated 1 cup mozzarella grated 1 bunch parsley chopped 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce 1/4 cup tomato paste 1 lemon juice of salt and pepper to season

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
2. Line two loaf tins with the rashers of bacon, allowing the excess to hang over the side.
3. Place the mince, eggs, breadcrumbs, onion, carrot, cheese and parsley into a large bowl and mix together with your hands, or a spoon if you prefer.
4. Add the teriyaki sauce, tomato paste and lemon juice and continue to mix, adding salt and pepper to season.
5. Divide the mince mixture between the two loaf tins and then fold the overhanging bacon over the top to encase the mince.
6. Place the tins on a baking tray and then cover with baking paper and aluminium foil to keep it nice and moist while cooking.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for one hour, checking at 45-50 minutes. You may like to remove the baking paper and foil at this point to let the bacon get nice and crispy.
8. Let the meatloaf cool slightly before serving, sliced with salad or warm vegetables.

Recipe Notes

You may need more, or less, bacon depending on how you choose to line your tin with the rashers as well as the size of them.