Anticipating a long day of hiking, I chose a quick meal for this Sunday dinner. We have had mini meatloaves before. The recipe is from the America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook.
Diane thought the glaze (ketchup + brown sugar + vinegar) was too sweet last time (I know because I wrote that in my blog post ) so I halved the sugar.
I used 100% ground beef, no pork or veal or meat loaf mix. I have looked at the supermarket for meat loaf mix but I've never seen it or ground veal. There is ground pork but only in 1-pound packages; I didn't want to have any left over and I didn't want my meat mixture to be 75% pork.
Dinner was ready about 70 minutes after I started preparations.
Eat
The meatloaf was served with peas & baby onions, mashed potatoes (how classic), Vella Merlot, and water.
Diane grew up eating meat loaf with no glaze (my mom often glazed meat loaf with ketchup) but she said this glaze was OK, not too sweet and not too sour from the vinegar and ketchup.
The meat loaf was good, juicy, tender and flavored nicely.
These little meat loaves are a perfect size for us, one mini loaf per meal is just right, and they store well in the refrigerator and the freezer.
I have never heard of this sandwich but came across it at cookscountry.com. It's like sloppy joe but with different seasonings.
The original recipe called for 2 pounds of ground beef and made
10 servings when served on torpedo rolls. I halved the recipe which
would provide plenty of meals for the two of us, particularly when
served on slider buns.
Because I halved the recipe I used a 4-quart sauce pan instead of a Dutch oven.
I made this on Saturday so we could eat it on Sunday after a day at the ball park.
I was afraid of the spiciness of the recipe so modified it, as suggested in the recipe notes. I used jarred sweet cherry peppers instead of jarred hot cherry peppers and I reduced the red pepper flakes, reduced them all the way to zero. So my version is probably not very explosive.
Eat
I wasn't hungry after getting back from the ball park on Sunday (where I had a fried chicken sandwich and a lot of peanuts) so we didn't eat this until Monday.
Served
with white corn, potato chips, Bubbies bread and butter pickles, and
lemonade or Vella Delicious Red so a very quick meal to put together, as
desired. The only "cooking" was reheating the filling in the microwave
and toasting some buns.
Without the hot pepper flakes and hot cherry peppers the sandwich was a little bland.
As
expected, given the ingredients (which included Italian seasoning,
garlic, onion, tomato sauce, and tomato paste), the sandwich had an
Italian flavor.
It took some searching at the supermarket to find the jarred sweet cherry peppers; I never did see jarred hot cherry peppers.
The filling was nice and tender; cooked ground beef can sometimes be rubbery.
The raw ground beef was mixed with a solution of 1½
tablespoons water with ½ teaspoon baking soda for 15 minutes which contributed to the pleasant texture. I might try this trick when next I make Peg's Sloppy Joe.
