So my husband loves meatloaf, it is his go to birthday supper. Which I am totally fine with since I mean meatloaf is great and easy to whip together plus you can have one standard recipe or just go with the flow.
This meatloaf happened the way it did because I had one pound of our farms beef out to thaw then I realized not only does my husband love meatloaf our kids do too, so needing another pound of beef I went to the freezer grabbed it to defrost in the microwave and that was when I noticed the packaging from our butcher has changed. Their ground beef packs now have twisted metal clips on them so no microwave action on that package and back to the freezer I went. Looking at my freezer door to see what other ground meat option I had available I noticed I had one pound of ground turkey left from making buffalo turkey burgers a while ago, out of the freezer comes the turkey and into the microwave it went to be defrosted.
This is a very basic meatloaf recipe and even when I am changing mine up you will find a lot of these ingredients in my “whatever I find meatloaf”. If you aren’t big on ground poultry use full beef or a meatloaf is always delicious with ground pork if you have that available to you at the time. The pasta side I made I have done before without the toasted pasta part it is a super easy side dish that can be eaten warm or cold and four ingredients in it so really simple.
Mini Meatloaf with Mustard Topping
Prep Time: 15 minutes, Cook Time: 20 minutes, Serves: 8
Meat Loaf Ingredients:
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 pound ground turkey
- 1/2 cup whole wheat panko
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tbs worchestershire sauce
- 1 large clove garlic, grated
- 1/2 small onion, diced
- 2 Tbs chopped parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp pepper
Topping Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 1 1/4 Tbs Dijon mustard
- 2 Tbs yellow mustard
- 1 Tbs brown sugar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and prepare your cooking pan of choice; loaf, mini loaf, or free form on a baking sheet, with nonstick cooking spray. In a medium sized bowl combine all of the meatloaf ingredients mixing until just combined with your hand. Put mixture into you cooking vessel and bake for 10 minutes. While baking in small bowl mix topping ingredients after the meatloaf has baked for 10 minutes take out of oven and put most of the topping on meatloaf bake an additional 10 minutes, or until your meatloaf reaches 165 degrees internally. My husband and kids like when I keep some of the topping off so they can use it as dip.
Toasted Pasta with Peas
Prep Time: 10 minutes, Cook Time: 11 minutes, Serves: 8
- 8 oz whole wheat rotini
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1 clove garlic, sliced
- 2 Tbs butter
- Parmesan
- Parsley chopped
Bring a stockpot with water to boil. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper, pour the noodles onto the baking sheet and place in the same oven that you are baking the meatloaf in. Toast the noodles for 5 minutes, watch carefully as they can burn easily. When the noodles are golden brown dump into salted boiling water and cook until al dente, before draining noodles reserve 1 cup of pasta water. While the noodles are draining put the butter, garlic, and peas into the same stockpot and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add pasta back into pot stirring into the pea mixture, add pasta water as needed to make sauce come together better. Serve hot, room temperature, or cold with parmesan cheese and chopped parsley.
