Everybody's favorite -- meatloaf

Well, it's not mine. I loved my mom's meatloaf, but I haven't found any meatloaf at a "restaurant" that I like. Alan loves all things meatloaf, and he will often order meatloaf from a menu, and I will taste it. I still like my mom's best.

My mother made meatloaf often. Ground beef was cheap. She could do a lot with only one pound of the stuff. And her meatloaf was something I really liked. She NEVER made it with ketchup and we never put ketchup on it to enhance (?) it's flavor.

So here's my mom's recipe and then after that I'll tell you how I made it and the way my children loved it.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound ground beef (use your favorite kind, chuck, round, etc.)
1 cup bread crumbs (make your own, my mom used Progresso Italian crumbs)
salt and pepper to taste
10 shakes from a shaker of garlic salt
1 small onion diced
1 egg

Mix all the ingredients together. Make into one large hamburger. On top of stove, high heat, brown both sides of the loaf. After you have turned over the loaf to brown the second side, immediately turn down the heat to low (the heat from the pan will continue browning the second side). Cover the pan. Cook for about 1 hour on low heat ON TOP OF THE STOVE. At the end of the cook time, remove the loaf from the pan, and add 1 cup of water to the pan drippings. Stir. Taste. If this "gravy" needs salt, add a little. Use your favorite thickening agent to make the gravy thicker. I use cornstarch (equal parts water and starch) -- no lumps. Use the gravy instead of ketchup to add flavor to the loaf.

That's it. Try it sometime without ketchup. You might be surprised that you like it.

Now, to the way I made it when my children were growing up. Instead of breadcrumbs, I used barbecue potato chips smashed and instead of an egg, I used a little bit of barbecue sauce, about 1/2 cup. The rest of the ingredients are the same. And I cooked this on top of the stove, making the gravy the same way, but it tasted a lot different than my moms because of the BBQ sauce.

The children and Alan would often add more BBQ sauce to season the loaf. I preferred the gravy.


This recipe happened because I was out of bread crumbs and didn't feel like making my own, and I didn't have any eggs, so I improvised. It was a hit!

ttfn