FoodB

We've been doing really good this last couple of weeks on not going out to eat. This week I made a menu featuring mostly items that we already had in the freezer and cupboard so we didn't have to shop that much. One of our favorite items to cook when we have a week like this is meatloaf because we always have plenty of ground meat in the freezer and my wife has memorized the recipe.

When Jenn and I were dating, we both enjoyed Boston Markets meatloaf because neither of us had ever had a good meatloaf when we were growing up. When we moved in together, I looked up their recipe on the internet and it's become a staple of our menu the last few years. Jenn has also changed the recipe a few times and it seems to get better every time. Here is the basic recipe we use now:

Meatloaf
1/2 lbs. Ground Beef
1/2 lbs. Ground Pork
1/2 lbs. Ground Veal
6 Tbsn Flour
1 Tspn Onion Powder
1/2 Tspn Garlic Powder

1 Can Tomato Sauce
1/4 Cup BBQ Sauce
1 Tbsn Sugar

1. Combine all three meats in a bowl. Add onion powder, garlic powder and flour and mix together.
2. Heat the Tomato Sauce with the BBQ sauce and sugar in a small pot until it come to a slight boil. Remove the pot from heat. Pour 1/4 cup of the sauce into the meat mixture and combine.
3. Place the meat mixture in a loaf pan and press the meat down so it is compact in the pan. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
4. After 30 minutes remove from oven, uncover and drain the fat. Cut across the meat into sections going width wise and pour a small amount of sauce over the top so it can seep through the cracks (don't spread it in, just pour). Put the pan back into the oven uncovered and bake for an additional 15 minutes or until the top has a nice crust.

You can just use all ground beef for this recipe but it tends to be a lot fattier and falls apart easier. Last night Jenn put some pancetta strips on top of it and we both really enjoyed how that added to the flavors as well. Pancetta is slowly becoming one of my favorite foods as you might be able to tell if you have seen my waist line recently.

Oh and I can't stress enough that when you pour the sauce on the loaf midway through the cook to go easy on the amount of sauce you put on. I cooked this recipe once when Jenn wasn't feeling well and drenched it and the results were pretty nasty. Think high grade dog food and that was about how it tasted.