A meat thermometer. I need one. I made meat loaf the other day, based loosely on Alton Brown’s online meatloaf recipe, and couldn’t even be sure of the internal temperature of my meat. Stuffing one’s finger into a meat loaf to check whether something’s cooked isn’t exactly the ideal, but I guess it has to pass.
Anyhow, it was pretty decent meat loaf. Alton adds lots of spices to his meat loaf, and I was happy to head that way, although I did tone down the cayenne pepper a little. So it had a little more heat than most meat loafs. It wasn’t so sweet as some, and it was fairly dense. I wonder if it shouldn’t have been a touch crumblier. But it sliced as easily as pate, which was a great advantage considering it went into sandwiches.
Where I really off-roaded on this recipe was with the meat. Yes it was meat, but Alton goes for a blend of ground chuck and sirloin. I used half ground beef, but then also had 25% each of ground pork and lamb. This makes the whole thing take on another aspect, which I was assured meant this was not merely meat loaf, it was meat spectacular.
