Meatloaf: more musing than recipe

I love old fashioned meatloaf. My mother makes a great version, and I've been making variations on it since I was about 13. Unfortunately, it's untenable for a low carb diet. Her ratio is 1 cup breadcrumbs to bind 1 lb ground beef. No can do.

So I started playing around with meat loaf, and I learned some stuff. This post is about what I learned finding a pattern for making a great loaf out of meat that doesn't leave me all saggy and craving mashed potatoes an hour later.

My mother's meatloaf is one pound of ground beef, an egg, 1 cup bread crumbs, some seasonings and flavorings, topped with a generous coating of catsup and baked in a loaf pan until it's well done all the way through.

The first problem with meatloaf as my mother makes it is that it's topped with catsup. You can obviously replace this with a low carb catsup such as Heinz Reduced Sugar Ketchup or something similar (just be sure that whatever you use is sweetened with something that does not turn into formaldehyde when heated). That works fine, but when I started this exploration, Heinz did not make a lower sugar catsup, so I went looking for other things to top my meatloaf with. Here are some things I've used with great success on standard meatloaf:

• demi glace mixed with a little double concentrated tomato paste and a splash of vinegar
• demi glace mixed with some caramelized onions
• low carb mustard mixed with a little regular catsup (this one is especially good if you crumble some bacon and 1/2" chunks of cheddar cheese into your loaf -- presto! you have a bacon cheeseburger meatloaf, and what could be better than that?)
• catsup mixed with mayonnaise (the mayo disappears when it bakes and leaves a very thin layer of catsup, much thinner than I could ever make by just trying to spread it very thin)

Once I had sorted the topping issue, I had to address the thornier problem of what to do about those pesky bread crumbs. If you leave them out, the meatloaf has an unacceptable texture, too heavy in some places and completely falling apart in others.

I'd read in a few places that you can use cheese to bind meatloaf, and it's true that you can. However, doing so tends to make the meatloaf a lot more greasy than I like it to be, and the overall texture is a bit heavy. Still, grated cheese works. Initially, I made do with grated parmesan, and while the texture left a lot to be desired, the flavor was good.

I wasn't really satisfied, however, so I started doing some more radical experimentation. Since standard meatloaf is not possible, I decided to build on the idea of meatloaf. I was also inspired by rustic pates I had eaten in Belgium, where chunks of minced vegetables and meat were clearly visible in the forcemeat mixture. In an attempt to reduce the fat that leaked out of my loaves, I also switched to leanest ground beef. Not that I object to beef fat, but in this case, I was paying for it, rendering out of the meatloaf during the baking process, and then throwing it away. Wasteful.

I ended up with a pattern for meatloaf that looks sort of like this:

• 2 lbs very lean ground beef
• 2 cups very finely minced vegetables (more about this further on)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan (the good stuff)
• 1/4 cup matzo meal (more about this, too)
• 1/2 cup liquid (beef broth, vegetable juice, even water)
• 1 Tbsp double concentrated tomato paste
• various flavorings (and more about this under "variations")

Basically, you mash all this together with your hands and then put it in a largeish casserole dish. I use one that lats me make the "loaf" be a large oval about 2" thick. Top it with something tasty (like low carb catsup) and bake in a 425F oven for 1 hour 15 minutes. When you take it out, let it sit for about 10 minutes before you eat it, so it soaks up all its lovely meat and vegetable juices.

So. Let's discuss the matzo meal first. Yes, this is 28g of carbs. However, with 2 pounds of meat and 2 cups of vegatables, this thing makes about 10 really big servings. I find that I can tolerate that level of carbs. By soaking the matzo meal in the liquid, it becomes the almost perfect binder and lets me cut down the amount of cheese by more than half. In my highly unscientific experiments, I have discovered that bread crumbs, even from a low carb bread, require at least twice as much (by carb count) and still don't give as good a result.

For the vegetables, what you use is up to you. You can control the carb-iness of the loaf right here. If you need it to be very low carb, use celery and fresh herbs only. If you can tolerate more carbs, add some onion, red pepper, even a tiny amount of grated carrot. You do want this all grated or minced in 1/8" dice or smaller. A food processor is a great help if you don't enjoy the process of chopping vegetables to a very fine brunoise.

For flavorings, I always add salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you don't use onions, then onion powder and garlic powder taste great. If there is no fresh thyme in it, I generally use dried thyme, too.

So there you have it: how I make "loaf" now, and some idea of why I do it that way.

Variations

The real payoff here is that this is a recipe pattern. Don't feel like traditional meatloaf? That's okay. Try mixing things up along any of these lines . . .

Bacon-cheeseburger meatloaf: Use onion, celery, and red pepper. Once the loaf is more or less mixed up, add a bunch of crumbled bacon and 1/2" cubes of cheddar cheese. Use a mustard-catsup mixture for the topping.

Generic Southwestern meatloaf: Use onion, celery, and red pepper. Replace 1/2 pound of the beef with 1/2 pound good quality fresh chorizo. Instead of tomato paste, use cooked salsa, processed to make it smooth. For flavorings, use ground red chiles, cumin, a little oregano, and powdered garlic. If you can afford the carbs, use half beef broth and half tomato juice for the liquid (otherwise, use all beef broth). For the topping, mix demi glace with bottled taco sauce.

Onion meatloaf: For flavorings, use dried onion soup mix (let it soak in the liquid with the matzo meal) and Italian herb seasoning. The liquid should be half water and half beer. For the vegetables, use some onions and some scallion tops along with celery and grated carrot. As a topping, go with demi glace mixed with a small amount of tomato paste and chopped onions that have been caramelized.

Chicken sage meatloaf: Use 1 pound ground chicken and 1 pound bulk chicken italian sausage (mild). For vegetables, use scallions, celery, fresh sage, and garlic. For flavorings, stick to thyme, salt and papper. Use chicken stock and white wine for the liquid. For the topping, process some roasted tomatoes with some roasted garlic and some more fresh sage. You can tuck in cubes of fontina if you want.

I've also made a good lamb meatloaf with south Asian flavors that was reminiscent of seekh kebab; a chicken meatloaf with green chiles, topped with a tomatillo sauce; and a pork meatloaf that had apple, ham, and onion in it. Really, just pick some flavors you like and go from there.

P.S. Speaking of matzo meal, matzo balls are actually remarkably low carb. They are mostly egg, as it turns out. As long as the soup also has meat and vegetables in it, the glycemic index of an entire serving is not horrible. I had to give up rice in soup, and dumplings made with flour, and noodles, but my blood chemistry seems to be fairly non-reactive to a bowl of soup with a couple matzo balls in it.

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