Including meat loaf!
I’ve been collecting the season DVD sets from the PBS cooking series America’s Test Kitchen. I was recently watching Season 1, which I haven’t seen since it aired ten years ago. The show has changed somewhat since then, but mostly due to some of the cast coming and going. The “man on the street” interviews quickly disappeared, and John “Doc” Willoughby left as Science Editor for a gig at Gourmet magazine. That magazine has since folded, I suppose he’s still working on the website/TV end of the brand now.
During Season 1, they made a Bacon-Wrapped Meat Loaf with Brown Sugar-Ketchup Glaze. It looked awesome, so I decided to try it. I already had the companion book for the first season, so finding the recipe was easy. Although I think they have printable recipes on the DVDs.
Fortunately, this recipe is available online for free. At the Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen websites, only current content is available free…too see archives of past issues/seasons, you have to either own the book or get a paid membership to the site. However, it seems that host and Cook’s editor Chris Kimball has not forgotten the older recipes from earlier seasons, as he presented this one last year on the CBS Early Show.
This is a rather awful morning show, but I try to catch Chris’ weekly segments. They are usually sometime during the 8-9AM Eastern time hour; that information will save you from having to suffer through this horrifically awful show. Srsly. If I have to hear either Maggie Rodriguez or Erica Hill point out to the world that they are pregnant, I’m gonna gack. Yes, we can SEE that you’re both knocked up, do you have to point out out every five minutes? I can’t wait until they both go on maternity leave. But then, they’ll come back and do segments about getting rid of belly fat after pregnancy. And endless baby pictures. This sort of crap makes the show even more unwatchable. Only Chris Kimball’s segment is worth bothering to watch.
Anyhoo, here is the segment online, complete with Chris’ tips and recipes for good meat loaf. You can learn how the test kitchen came up with their recipe, and why some ingredients work better than others. The test kitchen recipe, the one I made, is the first one on this page.
A few tips from me…if you can’t find ground veal, or it’s just too expensive, use the much less expensive ground turkey or chicken. I didn’t remember reading the gelatin tip in the book, but it’s probably worth a try if you do not use the veal. But mine, with chicken, came out just fine without it.
I also could not find any ground pork when I went shopping. So I used sweet Italian sausage instead. Hey, it’s basically ground pork with some extra seasoning in it.
Some stores sell something called “meat loaf mix”, which is two parts beef, one part pork, and one part veal, as called for in this recipe. However, I have found that these pre-made packages aren’t big enough. To make a decent sized loaf, you need two pounds of meat. I buy individual packages of each ground meat, weigh them out on a scale, and then I find I have almost twice as much as I need for the meat loaf. That’s okay. I just mix the extra meat all together and make spaghetti sauce or something from it.
This meat loaf is easy to put together and very tasty. Try it!
