Saturday, October 24, 2015

Meatloaf and Oven Fried Potatoes

Saturday 17 October
Barbara is still on the track of whatever the hell she did to make the best meatloaf ever.  Today she tried using 1 lb. pork and 1.5 lb. beef, and 4 oz. (1 sleeve) of whizzed-up saltines mixed into a panade with 1/4 cup milk; though that was what she had measured once before, it worked out to a whole lot of crumbs (well over a cup), and not much moisture.  This is because she beat her 2 eggyolks (left over from the granola-making) in the bottom of the bowl, not in the panade, on the principle of this.  Anyway, there was already a debate about whether the original crackers were Ritz or Saltines.
By now, we're so confused that we're not even going to try to figure it out.  Despite what those stingy bastards at Cook's Illustrated say, meatloaf is supposed to be different every time you make it; though we usually depend on these seasonings, we just add more ketchup until the meat mixture reaches the right stickiness.

We shaped the loaflike object on the tray and set it on convect at 400º almost the whole time, which made it nice and brown.  We also oiled and salted some steak-cut gold potatoes and roasted them alongside.  
When the meatloaf was done, we put the steak fries on a plate in the warming oven, and let the meatloaf rest an interminable ten minutes.
Result: the meatloaf had excellent flavor, though it was still a mite crumbly, and both it and the potatoes stuck to the pan (doubtless because we were using Jungle Jim's excellent ground beef and pork, rather than the fattier commercial stuff).

So next time, we may add an extra whole egg as well as the two yolks, and maybe put the eggs back into the panade.  
No matter what, it's good with extra lashings of ketchup.

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