I’ve been sitting on this post for a while now because I’ve been too distracted to type up the recipe. We had a dumpling cook-off party weeks and weeks ago, and since I have a tendency to buy a lot more food than we need, we ended up with three extra pounds of ground beef sitting in the fridge afterwards.
When you live in a household where two cats eat more meat than their two humans combined, I knew we were going to have to figure something out. Luckily, my husband (who is an elementary school teacher) volunteered to bring whatever I decided to make to his work. I liked the idea of all this food going to feed a hoard a starving teachers because they’re overworked and underpaid as it is. At least this way, I can do my part to help support our education system!
Now, let me just preface this recipe with a disclaimer: I have never made meatloaf before, never eaten it before, never even seen a real one up close. But since meatloaves are apparently super duper easy to make, I rolled up my sleeves to give it a try.
Not-A-Vegan Meatloaf (recipe based off of Easy Meatloaf on Recipes.com)
- 3 pounds ground beef
- 2 eggs
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 tbsp butter
- 2 cup non-fat milk
- 2 cup dried seasoned bread crumbs
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 10 tablespoons brown sugar
- 10 tablespoons prepared mustard
- 2 cup ketchup
- 1 block of aged cheddar, sliced
- 12-15 ciabatta rolls
- assorted veggies, sliced (I used two cucumbers, 1 red onions, 4 roma tomatoes)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- In a saucepan, lightly brown onions and garlic in butter.
- While onions are cooking, use a large bowl to combine the beef, egg, milk, and bread crumbs. Add onions to this mixture when ready. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add worcestershire sauce. Mix well.
- Make sure you use aluminum foil on your baking pans as it will be much easier to clean your pans afterwards. Divide up meat mixture to make two loaves and place each loaf in a 9×13 inch baking dish.
- In a separate small bowl, combine the brown sugar, mustard, and ketchup. Mix well and pour 1/3 of sauce over each meatloaf. Set aside remaining 1/3 sauce.
- Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour.
- At this point, my meatloaf formed odd little cracks so I used the rest of the sauce as glue to seal everything together.
- Bake for another 30 minutes.
- Remove from oven, and let rest for 15 minutes. The meatloaf will continue to cook and solidify. You can take this time to scoop up excess oil at bottom of pan.
- Serve meatloaves with ciabatta rolls as well as sliced veggies and cheese.
And there you have it! The entire spread was all gone by the end of the day so I consider my very first meatloaf experiment to be an enormous success.
Comments
Should you ever make this again, add some shredded mozzarella cheese to the mixture. Now that really tastes good!
@Classy: That sounds almost illegal. It must taste that good…
Being a meatloaf lover, I will be trying this recipe soon. Thanks.
@J: Let me know how it turns out. Since I’ve only tried this recipe once, I’m wondering how it will turn out the next time I happen to find myself with 3 pounds of beef in the fridge. LOL. Love the man recipes on your site btw.
For someone who doesn’t eat meat, your meatloaves look delicious!
@Mary: Thanks! I was told they were delicious so it ended up working out just fine. LOL.
I’m pretending it’s eggplant under the sauce!! lol
@Melissa: Ooooo. Is there such thing as eggplant loaf??? I <3 eggplant.
I love how the spread looks. T must be super popular at school! And ciabatta? My fave!
@Soto: Hey, your first comment.
You are now officially not a lurker. LOL. But thanks. I loved how all the colors turned out. For some reason, the green table makes everything look extra vibrant.
You’re a vegan?.. I want to be a vegan, but my husband loves lamb, I can’t be a vegan and lives with someone who loves meat, chicken and everythings… ^_^
@Farah: Yes, I’m a vegan. My husband is not which can make mealtimes a little tricky but we manage. It helps that he’s not meat-centric like a lot of other ppl.
Sounds so yummy!
Sadly, my first attempt at a meatloaf didn’t turn out quite so well! It was tasty, but it looks…shall we say…mildly disturbing. I titled the entry “Pounding the Beef – Making my first Meatloaf”…quite the experience! lol
@Au Contraire: Just saw the post!!!! That photo doesn’t look very appetizing does it? LOL. Did you ever try again?
It was actually quite yummy! Just…um…dense. LoL
I haven’t made it since but as I recently used up the final frozen meatballs from the batch, I think it’s about time to try again
@Au: Nothing a little ketchup can’t fix, right?