Spicy turkey meatloaf * how to make a substitute for bread crumbs
Spicy Turkey Meatloaf
oil for sauteeing
2 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 lb ground turkey
2 eggs
1 c bread crumbs
1/4 c milk
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 c ketchup (plus more for garnish)
Preheat the oven to 375 Fahrenheit.
Saute the carrots, onion, celery, and green pepper in a little olive oil or butter until the onions are mostly translucent and the other vegetables are starting to get tender, about five minutes. Add garlic and saute another minute. Put in very large mixing bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until well blended. Shape into a loaf and place in a 9×13″ pan. Top with extra pieces of green pepper and drizzle with more ketchup.
Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes. Let stand ten minutes before serving.
Sauteeing the vegetables:
Meatloaf before and after cooking:
Yum!
Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make spicy turkey meatloaf. It’s really easy and makes a huge amount of food that doesn’t get boring—in fact, it gets even better after the first day as the flavors mingle.
You’ll need a really big mixing bowl, a skillet, and a 9×13 pan, because this makes a lot of meatloaf. Don’t try to make it in a bread loaf pan—it just won’t fit.
The first thing to do is chop up your vegetables. Dice your onion, chop your celery and carrots into pennies, mince the garlic, and slice the green pepper in half and dice one half of it to add. If you don’t know how to clean a green pepper, you can listen to the baked beans recipe, but basically you just cut the stem off and remove the seeds, then use the rest of the pepper. My mom always kept some green pepper slices to garnish the top of her meatloaf and I do this too. It looks nice. So take the second half of the green pepper and cut it into slices so you have half-rings of green pepper.
Next, put a little oil in the skillet and turn the heat to medium low. Then add the onions, carrots, and celery, plus the diced half of the green pepper, and saute for about five minutes until the onions start to turn translucent. That means they’re cooked enough that they will contribute their flavor to the meatloaf without taking over. Then add the minced garlic and saute for one more minute. Then turn the stove off and shovel all the sauteed vegetables into the big mixing bowl.
This is a good time to turn the oven on to preheat.
Next, add the ketchup, the milk, the Worcestershire sauce, and the spices, including salt and pepper. Mix that up well, then add the eggs and mix them in well too. Then add the bread crumbs. I use Panko crumbs because they don’t get soggy, but you can use other types of dried bread crumbs. I can never find the bread crumbs in the store without a hunt, and then I forget where I found them, but Panko crumbs will be on the same shelf. Maybe try the salad dressing aisle. Don’t just crumble up a piece of bread and think that’ll work—it’ll turn into goo as soon as it gets wet. Maybe one day I’ll cover how to make your own bread crumbs, but for now, if you don’t have any, you can crush up some crackers or salad croutons and use those instead. To crush the crackers or croutons, you can put them in a clean paper bag, roll the top closed, and press down on the bag with a rolling pin or something else that’s reasonably heavy and easy to handle, although not breakable. The bag will probably end up tearing, especially if you’re me, but it will hold up to the crushing better than even a heavy-duty plastic bag will.
Once you have all this mixed up well, you will think it looks pretty unappetizing, and you haven’t even added the meat yet. Do that now, just chunk both pounds of ground turkey into the bowl.
Incidentally, it’s usually cheaper to buy the ground turkey in a big package rather than two packages of one pound each. If you can find a two-pound package, great. If you get three or more pounds, as soon as you get the meat home from the store, open the package, take out the two pounds you need and stick them in the fridge in a plastic bag. You don’t have to weigh it unless you just want to, just estimate how much two pounds is. For instance, when I divided mine up, I had a three-pound package. I divided it into three pieces that looked about the same size and used two of the pieces in this recipe. Put the rest of the meat in another freezer bag, press as much of the air out as you can and zip it up securely, and put it in the freezer. That assumes you aren’t going to use it right away, of course.
Anyway, so now you’ve got two pounds of raw ground turkey in a giant mixing bowl sitting on top of a revolting-looking sauce that’s still pretty warm. How on earth are you going to mix this mess up? It’s too thick for a spoon or an ordinary mixer.
If you have a paddle attachment for your mixer, that should work. I don’t have a paddle attachment for my mixer but believe me, it is on my list of things I want. If you don’t have a paddle attachment for your mixer either, you’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, by hand. And I mean by hand. Wash your hands well. Then get in there with one or both hands and mush the meat and the sauce together thoroughly, until all the vegetables and sauce are incorporated into the meat. It’s revolting but it doesn’t really take very long and it’s hands-down the easiest way to do it. You’ll find that a grabbing motion works best to break up the meat and squish it around with the sauce.
When you’ve got it all mixed up, form it into a big ball and lift it into the waiting 9×13 pan. You don’t need to grease the pan. Plop it into the pan, then shape it into a big loaf. Then arrange the slices of green pepper on top and squirt ketchup over that. I have a squeezy bottle of ketchup so I make a pretty zigzag pattern over the top, which looks nice when you serve the meatloaf later.
Okay, yes, wash your hands again after that. They’re disgusting. When I made this recently I had to do all the mixing and shaping with my left hand, since I’d just sliced my right thumb open on the plastic egg carton. Don’t worry, it’s all healed up now. It worked out well, though because I was able to take a picture of my revolting meatloaf-covered hand without getting my phone all smeary. Pictures as always are in the show notes.
Anyway, once your hands are clean, pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for one hour and 15 minutes. Then wash your hands again and make sure you cleaned out from under your fingernails, ugh.
When the timer goes off, suddenly that revolting pinkish pile of meat you put in the oven has turned into a glorious meatloaf! It smells fantastic, but let it sit for ten minutes or so before you cut into it. It needs those ten minutes to finish cooking and cool a little so the texture firms up. This is a good time to get the table set, if you’re going to be fancy and have an actual sit-down dinner instead of standing over the kitchen sink to eat and stare glassy-eyed out the window into the neighbor’s yard.
This meatloaf isn’t as dense as ordinary meatloaf and is mildly spicy. The vegetables baked inside it will have softened and add a pleasant texture and flavor to every bite. You should have leftovers for at least a day or two depending on how big your family is. It took me nearly a week to finish it even eating it for both lunch and supper, but I never once got tired of it. Serve it hot with lots of cold ketchup on top. Mashed potatoes are a traditional side dish, but you can lighten it up with veggies on the side too. Canned green beans are especially good with it and you probably have some in the cupboard already.
You can make this recipe with ground chicken or ground beef, of course. I use turkey because it’s less expensive and not as dense and heavy as beef. It’s also not as greasy as beef or chicken. If you use ground beef, the meatloaf will be swimming in grease in the bottom of the pan. You can also use one pound of turkey and one pound of ground beef, too.
Once the leftover meatloaf has cooled, wrap it up tightly in tinfoil and refrigerate it. Don’t be surprised if pieces magically disappear throughout the day as people visit the kitchen surreptitiously.
Thanks for listening! You can find Real Life Cooking Podcast at reallifecooking.blubrry.net. That’s blueberry without any E’s. I also have an email address at reallifecookingpodcast at gmail.com. Now get out there and enjoy your food.
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