Monday, August 22, 2011

Ma! The Meatloaf!

Sometimes a girl needs her comfort food. Sometimes that comfort food is meatloaf. This week was one of those times for me. I recently acquired a copy of The Gluten Free Bible, which is an amazing resource for gluten free cooking. It has tons of recipes of varying cuisine with a wide range of ingredients that are reasonably accessible. One of these recipes is for Southwestern meatloaf, and it sparked a serious craving. Aaron and I cooked it last night, though with some modifications. Here is the recipe and my critique.

1lb ground beef
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup shopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 can (4oz) chopped mild green chiles, drained
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper (I used a peppercorn medley grinder)
1 can (8oz) tomato sauce, divided
2 tbs ketchup (I used Sweet Baby Rays Chipotle Barbecue sauce)

1) Preheat over to 350F. Spray 13x9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2) Combine beef, onion, cornmeal, cilantro, chiles, egg, cumin, salt, pepper, and half of tomato sauce in large bowl; mix well. Combine remaining tomato sauce and ketchup in small bowl.
3) Shape meat mixture into 6x9-inch oval in prepared baking pan. Top with tomato sauce mixture. Bake 55 minutes or until cooked through (160F).
4) Let stand 5 minutes before slicing.

Makes 4 servings

This is a pretty good recipe! I like the twist on a traditional favorite. I substituted the pepper because that is the pepper we had. I think I would prefer the original black pepper, as some of the peppercorn bits were still too firm and messed up the texture. I substituted the barbecue sauce for the ketchup because I loathe ketchup. It gave it a nice punch of flavor that I quite enjoyed! The recipe was straightforward, easy to follow, and yielded nice results. The only minor complaint I have is that the meatloaf came out a little dry. I think this is because of the cornmeal. Next time I may try GF breadcrumbs. The recipe also needs a bit more salt. To combat this, I topped it with some fresh barbecue sauce, which worked beautifully.

I served the meatloaf with some Southwest corn from Birds Eye. While the recipe claims to feed four, we had quite a lot of food, and I think it could easily feed more, providing no one wants seconds. We have a substantial amount of left-over food to eat now!

1 comment:

  1. I just made this and it came out perfect! It was nice and moist due to one semi-intentional alteration... Since it's just my husband and I, I halved the recipe. Since I'm lazy I didn't bother to half the egg. It was perfect and moist. No dry problems here. For people making this as a whole recipe I would recommend putting in two eggs instead of one. Thanks for a delicious recipe to solve my meatloaf craving!

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