I was chatting with my coworker the other day about the fact that the only thing that my dog will eat is meatloaf. I was explaining the complexity of his taste buds and how after he eats something too much he gets sick of it and refuses to continue eating it. It’s been this way for years but has gotten increasingly worse as he ages and his kidneys get worse due to his diabetes. I used to be able to rotate dog food and now he won’t touch the stuff!
I’m convinced that if I keep changing up the flavor of the meatloaf Nathan will continue eating meatloaf in general. Incidentally I’m screwed if this doesn’t work because I usually make gigantic loaves of meat. He eats ½ a pound of meatloaf a day. If he goes on a hunger strike I will be left with a lot of leftover meatloaf and nothing to feed him.
At any rate, my coworker was nice enough to share with me her go-to meatloaf, which happens to be Paula Deen’s recipe. My recipe below is tweaked slightly because I multiplied the recipe by 4. Also, I was not paying attention to the recipe and ended up using way too much tomato juice and got a pretty soupy meatloaf. My gaffe is noted in the recipe. I could still form a loaf but the meat wasn’t as firm as I would have liked or what I believe to be proper for meatloaf.
For Paula Deen’s original recipe, click here.
ingredients.
- 4 lb ground beef
- 1 rounded T. salt
- ½ T. ground black pepper
- 1 large onion, chopped fine (or minced)
- 1 large bell pepper, chopped fine (or minced) (I used yellow)
- 4 eggs
- 24 oz canned diced tomatoes (original recipe says without juice… I didn’t realize that…)
- 2 c. quick cooking oats
- ⅔ c. ketchup
- 2 T. brown sugar
- 1 T. country style mustard
directions.
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Mix ground beef, salt, pepper, onion, bell pepper, egg, tomatoes and oats together well and place on a large sheet pan. Shape the mixture into a loaf.
- Mix ketchup, brown sugar and mustard together and spread on top of the meat mixture.
- Bake until the middle is 155°F.
The original recipe directs you to cook the meatloaf for an hour. I didn’t think an hour would suffice in an instance where I was quadrupling the recipe. Plus I have this handy-dandy thermometer I can plug into my oven which works nicely when you’re making something like meatloaf or roasting a bird. You set the oven temperature and then you set the desired internal temperature of your dish and like magic the oven turns off when your dish hits the desired internal temperature. I continue to be amazed by this feature.
I was pleased with the end result of this meatloaf despite the fact that I completely screwed it up and added way too much tomato juice. I actually added another 8 ounces of tomato sauce in addition to the diced tomatoes (with juice) because I really was not paying attention. The recipe is so simple it’s hard to believe anyone could screw it up, but I manage to skip a step or omit something quite often because I’m always rushing with everything in life. I literally have one speed. While I would have liked the meatloaf to have a nicer bigger mound (mine spread out a bit too much because of all the liquid), the taste was spot on. Warning though that if you do not love bell peppers you may not love this recipe. I am not a fan of green peppers and opted for yellow instead. Now I’m wishing I would have used red.
Recipe rating:
Food Snob 