I love a good meatball. There’s something that happens when you take otherwise one-dimensional ground beef and mix it with fresh breadcrumbs herbs and spices and make a great sauce and that’s I’ll swat your fork away and get to it first. I always thought I wasn’t a meatloaf fan until I mentioned it one day — up here on my invisible soapbox — and someone in the comments quietly asked as if they knew they were talking to a very easily confused person if I knew that meatloaf is basically one big meatball?
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Publish Date not found |  0 Views |
One-Pan Farro with Tomatoes | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
And well I hadn’t. Armed with this eye-opening revelation I set out to discuss what I found so repulsive about meatloaf. First of course I mean the word and the concept of a loaf of meat. No matter how many freshly chopped herbs you pile on top or how heavy you lay the Clarendon filter on top a piece of ground meat is always something we look past to find the flavor we love. And so I decided to make them more like meatballs — round a little more tender and maybe if you squint a little cute. Okay yes I know that’s a stretch.
Next I addressed the ketchup that meatloaf is often topped with. Let me be clear: I love ketchup. I have no shame in enjoying a bottle of Heinz in fact I share Jeffrey Steingarten-level awe over “our proudest perhaps only homegrown sauce achievement” and this was about the hardest thing I’ve laughed at in a food article in the last six months because it’s totally true. But I find it a little thin on meatloaf so I decided to make my own tangy-sweet tomato sauce to top my baby meatloaves by combining tomato paste Dijon cider vinegar and a few other things simmering for two minutes until smooth and boy it’s ketchup. Slightly tangier and thicker but basically no more tomato sauce than these classic meatballs. Take this information as you will.
Because I think we can all agree that vegetables in meatloaf are delicious and essential but chunks of carrots and peas sticking out everywhere are… troubling. That’s why I coarsely grind my vegetables before I cook them and add them to the meatloaf mixture.
