Few dishes scream out “comfort food” like meatloaf. My Mom’s meatloaf was awesome, and she’d cut a huge slab of it onto my plate, with fantastic butter-loaded Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles on the side. I couldn’t stop eating it.
I never thought of making meatloaf when I moved away, because it gave my Mom something special to make for me when I came home to visit. She was thrilled that there was a dish she could make that I would devour every time, without hesitation. (The others were her roasted lamb and Lithuanian pierogis called koldūnai (kol-doon-ay).
But now that my Mom has moved into an assisted living facility where she can’t cook, I’ve had to take meatloaf matters into my own hands. I never got my Mom’s exact recipe. But I had an idea of what went into it, so I gave it a shot.
The standard mix for my Mom’s meatloaf was one-third each ground beef, pork and veal. I go 50-50 with the beef and pork instead, unless I can get my hands on humanely-raised veal from a farm down the road. My Mom used Lipton onion soup mix in her meatloaf. I chose to stay away from packaged ingredients which are nasty and could contain gluten. And instead of layering slices of bacon on top as many people do, I like to use my own home-cured and smoked pre-cooked bacon that I chop up and put inside the loaf.
To keep this dish gluten-free, I use GF breadcrumbs. I buy loaves of gluten-free bread, toast them, then put them in a food processor to make great-tasting bread crumbs that have all the flavor of regular bread crumbs, without the gluten.
4 strips bacon
1 yellow onion, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
pork fat or olive oil
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I use gluten-free)
1/4 cup ketchup
2 eggs
Fry the strips of bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and chop it fine. Set it aside.
Keeping the rendered bacon fat in the pan, and sauté the onion with it until translucent. Add the salt, pepper and garlic. Set the pan aside, letting it cool to room temperature.
In a bowl, combine the meat, bread crumbs, ketchup, bacon, eggs, and the sautéed onion mixture. Form it into a loaf and place it in a loaf pan. Bake at 350 for about an hour.
Delicious, caramelized meatloaf.
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