[Sca-cooks] Re: Meat loaf (was Peppers and Mangoes)

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>Well, meatloaf can be a bit more complex than that. It consists of ground
>meat, onion (usually) and egg (usually) for a binder, but may also include
>bell peppers, mushrooms, and bread or cracker crumbs, as well as spices, a
>hardboiled egg, and Heaven knows what else.
>
>Classicly, it contains a 50/50 mix of ground pork and ground beef, with
>bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and an egg binder, baked in a bread pan (why
>it's called meat "loaf"), and covered with a tomato sauce to bake.

This is pretty common; the imagery of spreading tomato paste or sauce 
(which, in America, is not ketchup, BTW, although some people do use 
ketchup) is a popular one in fiction, TV and movies. Read Jean 
Shepherd, for example.

Some authorities will tell you that the classical mix is one-third 
each of beef, veal and pork, and some will use pork sausage meat as 
the pork component. A majority, today, I suspect, either use all 
ground beef or something like ground chicken or turkey (no comment).

>Practically, it is made of ANY ground meat combination, and whatever you
>happen to have in the kitchen, and can be shaped in a ball, as you say, or
>in a heap, rather like bread you don't bake in a loaf pan.. One I make uses
>venison, with mayonnaise as a binder, and I never put bread crumbs in it
>because I don't like the texture.

I generally form it into a free-standing loaf, like bread, but don't 
use a bread pan because I like it a little crusty on the outside, and 
while I do use bread, it tends to be a slice or two, trimmed of crust 
and soaked in milk or water to a pap before mixing in with the meat. 
How much to use is a big point of contention because too much or too 
little can lead to overworking the meat with the hands (or whatever 
you use to mix it), it gets overwarmed, and has an unpleasant, 
rubbery, grainy texture when cooked. Too much bread or egg, 
especially in combination, can create an unpleasantly leaden, pasty, 
modelling-clay texture.

>  As was mentioned, there are at least as
>many meatloaf recipes out there as there are home cooks- probably more,
>since I myself make at least three different variants.

Mine generally leaves out the onion and any tomato product because of 
health issues on the part of one of the people usually eating it 
(unless, oddly enough, it is in the form of chemical French Onion 
Soup mix, which is why I normally leave it out). Frequently chopped, 
sauteed mushrooms will put in an appearance, as well as chopped 
garlic, plus thyme or rosemary, and, frequently, parsley. If I have 
any leftover meat gravy (which in the USA is normally a thickened 
product), I'll often throw some in there as well.

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04