How to save bland meatloaf?

BBQ sause.

If you eat it in a sandwich, when you slice a piece to eat sprinkle some salt on it. You can add sautéed onions and cheese to jazz it up. Add some ketchup on the sandwich if you like ketchup. I like it on rye or a hoagie roll.

Make beef/onion/mushroom gravy and serve with mashed potatoes and green beans. Gravy on the meat and potatoes.

Dice it up and heat up in some spaghetti sauce. Place over pasta and melted mozzerella.

Thin pieces an inch long on pizza.

Okay..here is my amazing meatloaf recipe. haha

Mix ground beef with one egg, a bunch of bread crumbs, about a half can of pre-made spaghetti sauce, like Hunts or Progresso.
Add dried, minced onions and a liberal amount of dried italian seasonings.
Mold into pan and glaze with a mix of ketchup, mustard and brown sugar.

About ⅓ cup of ketchup
A couple TBS’s of brown mustard
A couple 3ish, of brown sugar.
You want the glaze to look more brownish not like Ketchup, so experiment with the measurements.

In the meanwhile, maybe just crumble up the not so zippy meatloaf and make a spaghetti sauce. haha

Thanks. Guess I’ll have to turn it into spaghetti sauce, just doesn’t taste like meatloaf.

Meat loaf is supposed to be bland. Every time my husband tries to make it interesting, a family protest goes up. Meat loaf should not be interesting.

However, we do put chopped onion and green pepper in it, and only one egg. And a little Worcestershire sauce. I use oatmeal, not bread crumbs. It should be pretty bland, yes, but not completely dead.

Meatloaf bland!? No! My meatloaf is bursting with flavor. Try my recipe you guys. haha

Instead of turning it into spaghetti sauce – after all, you went to the trouble of making it a loaf, there’s no sense in now crumbling that up into spaghetti sauce – use slices of it on pizza, instead. The pizza sauce and mozzarella themselves will add flavor, plus you can use a little garlic, oregano or “Italian seasoning” mix.

When I do make meatloaf I use sauteéd diced onion, green pepper and celery, as well as liberal amounts of parsley and some garlic, and top it with slices of raw bacon, which cook into / onto the top to add a little more flavor.

Is it cold? Sprinkle with a little salt, place in a skillet with a teaspoon of water, cover with a lid and reheat. Serve with mustard and/or ketchup.
Hot out of the oven? Sprinkle with salt and serve with mustard and ketchup.
Next time you make it, don’t omit the salt and mix in some diced green bell pepper and some onion.

My first thought was to break it up and use it in a meat sauce for pasta or whatever. Don’t forget to spice it up a bit this time. You’ve just stretched your servings bigtime in a really cheap way.

Or put the crumbled meat in a large frying pan, sprinkle on a packet of taco mix, add water as directed, cook down, and have tacos with chopped toppings on the side.

Or instead of tacos, saute some chopped onions in the same frying pan with a little olive oil until clear, add black pepper and salt, put the meat in with your onions, cook for awhile, get some hoagie rolls and line them with slices of provolone cheese, spoon in your meat and onions, lay some thinly sliced tomatoes on top, sprinkle with oregano and voila, steak sandwiches.

You could use the meat and onions in omelets tomorrow morning.

Use it like you would cooked hamburger.

@CWOTUS My family’s meatloaf recipe also calls for slices of raw bacon over the top. It is SO GOOD. I think there might also be some cheese mixed in or something else.

Anyway, @AshlynM if you want to try the bacon over the top thing, my suggestion would be to take a couple precautions so the meatloaf doesn’t dry out. Like maybe put a pan underneath with an inch of boiling water in it (like you would for bread pudding) so the meatloaf basically steams with the bacon on top. And/or bake it covered.

Rather than saving them I say reincarnate them in to fried meat balls. Mash the meat loaf on a pan, season with salt, pepper, butter, etc then sautee it for awile, let it cool, mold them in to balls, dip in batter mix with beaten egg then fry them.

Mushroom and onion gravy. Sautée mushrooms and onions, add cane soup and reduce. Serve over the meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Great taste!

Cane soup?

Me too. Cane soup? Is this some sweet lil’ ol’ penguin thing? That would be molasses where I come from.

What is Cane soup? I sometimes use soup mix for a quick gravy, I actually make a roux to do it, but I’ve never heard of Cane.

I can’t imagine it’s sweet with mushrooms and onions in it.

Edit: I get it now, cane like sugar cane.

There’s also a universal quick-save for just about every meat dish. Serve your meatloaf with potatoes like @janbb suggests above, but then dump a can of heated Campbell’s concentrated mushroom soup over the lot. It isn’t elegant, but it gives it some taste and can save a dish when the cook is under the gun.

@JLeslie‘s suggestion that you serve as sandwiches makes me salivate. Always the trencherman and rarely the gourmet, I love meatloaf sandwiches slathered with mayo, lots of black pepper (I sprinkle it on the mayo so it holds) and ketchup.

^^Mayo? You ruined it. Lol. I love meatloaf sandwich too. I only put some ketchup on it, nothing else. I use good bread though usually, not just a typical sandwich bread. Do you heat the meatloaf up? Or, just eat it cold?

I put ketchup on my meatloaf when I eat it. I’d also try bbq sauce if that suits you.

@JLeslie I know, I know… I suppose it’s a regional thing.

^^You probably put ketchup on hotdogs.

Regional and also Jews don’t put mayo on sandwiches (generalization).

@JLeslie For hot meatloaf sandwiches, I reheat like I said above, in a hot skillet or fry pan with a bit of water and a close fitting/covering lid to basically steam the meatloaf. Then it tastes like fresh made, not all dried out. (A cold meatloaf sandwich??? EEEWWW!)

Just to offer my recipe, I use the Lipton’s beefy onion soup packet recipe, but I cut the ketchup in half, and I use a little more soup mix than called for and I add a little bit of chopped fresh onion. My meatloaf is salty not sweet. I form it imperfectly, and put it on an aluminum foil lined cookie sheet, or large baking pan, so the edge get “browned” all around.

I do half the recipe, 1 pound of meat, and just guesstimate the soup packet. When I do the whole recipe I make two loaves and use a little under the two pounds of meat, and don’t forget to half the ketchup.

@kritiper I usually heat it up. I just put the slice of meatloaf in the microwave 30 seconds.

@Espiritus_Corvus If you’re interested, some links about the mayo taboo for Jews on sandwiches:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/12/mayonnaise_hatred_a_brief_history_of_mayo_and_disgust.html

https://m.facebook.com/RosenfeldsJewishDeli/posts/217741181726058

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4848417

I add sliced potatoes around my meatloaf before baking. Slice potatoes into chunky slices, maybe about a half inch thick, coat in a bit of olive oil, salt and white pepper and stand on end layered around the edges of the meatloaf. Bake as usual at about 400–450 for an hour or so until the meatloaf is slightly crusty and the potatoes are browned around the edges. Delicious.

Ohhh…can of soup?

@Coloma I like the potatoes idea when baking. I’m going to try that.

@JLeslie I read your links. Wow. I had no idea. Mayo is one of the 5 mother sauces. Everytime a person eats a Reuben Sandwich, they eat mayo. It’s the base for thousand island dressing. It’s also the base for Tartar, Ranch, Aoli and Remoulade sauces. The only difference between Mayo and Mustard is that you add crushed or powdered mustard and a few other things to the mix during the process. It would be awfully difficult to avoid mayo.

Digital remastering.

Seriously? Worcestershire.

@Espiritus_Corvus Putting mayo in a salad, like tuna salad, is completely different than schmearing it on bread. To a Jew it is anyway. Thousand Island is a bazaar exception that I myself don’t partake in.

I don’t know what you are talking about when you say mustard has mayo? As far as I know mustard is mustard seed and water and then sometimes it also has beer, vinegar, wine, or some other liquid. Not fatty oil and eggs. Not that I know of anyway.

I do once in a while make a dill sauce for breaded fish sticks with mayo, but otherwise none of that other stuff you named. I 86 all of that on sandwiches and I never eat creamy dressings like ranch, but dressing on a salad is a different category than a deli sandwich anyway. Plenty of Jews like ranch dressing and tartar sauce.

I have a girlfriend who is quick to say when food is very goyisha. Bland, not toasted white sandwich bread, mayo, processed lunch meats, and American cheese. it should be meat sliced from the roast (the meat shouldn’t be a perfect circle or square from a mold) bread along the lines of rye, French, or Italian, and often no cheese. If there is cheese it’s usually something with more punch like Swiss. Classic Jewish deli meats like Pastrami I never order with cheese. Just pastrami, mustard, rye bread, and it has to be good deli mustard, none of the yellow or Dijon stuff. Half sour or sour pickle on the side.

On that one link that whole thing about marshmallows I don’t agree, except to say I never saw any of that marshmallow sweet potato pie at Thanksgiving. Marshmallows were for dessert foods like rice crispy treats and to float in hot chocolate.

I’d say Jews kind of look down on some of those foods and combinations as low quality, or lacking taste (meaning lacking a palate that knows better) but plenty of us eat at least some of it. Hypocrites. :)

@JLeslie

Mayonnaise is a thick, creamy sauce often used as a condiment. It is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolks and either vinegar or lemon juice, with many options for embellishment with other herbs and spices. Lecithin in the egg yolk is the emulsifier.

Classice prepared mustards are made from powdered mustard seeds traditionally combined with egg yolks, vinegar and water. Some mustards will contain a wide variety of ingredients including oil, wine, beer and sugar and a number of different spices. Mustards start with one of three types of mustard seeds – white, brown or black. Lecithin in the egg yolk is the emulsifier.

—Larousse Gastronomique, First American Edition, 1938, originally edited by Auguste Escoffier.

edit: First American Edition, 1961. (First English Edition, 1938)

@Espiritus_Corvus: I just looked up the ingredients of Gulden’s mustard and it’s mustard seed, vinegar, salt, spices and turmeric. Maybe in 1938 homemade mustard was made differently (with eggs) but not now. I’ve never been told mustard is something that must be kept cool, the way we always hear about mayo (because of the eggs in the mayo).

I’m sure other mustards (yellow for example) are made with similar ingredients as the Gulden’s.

@Espiritus_Corvus I think your definition of mustard is the same as the old definition of ketchup. Ketchup used to be used for multiple different sauces too, but now it’s just used for the red tomato stuff.

Mustard is encouraged in low cholesterol diets. No way it has egg in it. Not what’s mostly sold on our shelves today.

Edit: I meant to say “canned consomme” soup but my mind and I were on vacation.

@janbb Where’d you both go?

Vermont and Montreal

If you want low fat gravy you can use the corn starch trick, I just did this today. Water, some of the contents of the beefy onion packet, sliced mushroom. Let it all summer for 5 minutes, the mushrooms help take away the massive amount of sodium taste in those packets. It good if it’s a little too string in taste, because the next step adds water.

Then in a separate small cup, about a quarter to half a cup of cool water and a teaspoon-ish, from your flatware, of cornstarch, stir so all lumps are gone, and then mix into the hot mixture. Cook a minute more. Better to use too little cornstarch and add more if you need it thicker. You can add wine to it all if you like.