Meat: Beef & Pork Easy Recipes

This is one of the quickest and easiest meatloaf recipes I know of. No, it’s not a meatloaf recipe made with Lipton onion soup either. It’s a bit more work than that and has a better taste. I’ve been cooking with ground beef (it’s hamburger where I come from) all of my life and most recipes I have in my head I know who taught me to make them. This meatloaf recipe is different and I have no clue where I learned to make it.

For this meatloaf recipe you need to pay a little attention to the details. It will taste okay if you don’t but it will be better if you get the onion chopped really fine and the crackers crushed up fine, too. No big chunks of onion or crackers in this ground beef. It’s still one of the simpler recipes tho.

Before you start doing anything set the oven to 350 degrees and let it warm up while you are putting the ingredients for the meatloaf together.

What you need to make the meatloaf.

1 8×8 non stick cake pan.
1 meat fork.
1 bowl
1# ground beef
3 onion slices
3 Tablespoons catsup
1 Tablespoon mustard
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
18 saltine crackers
Salt and Pepper

First find a bowl big enough to hold everything so you can stir it all up with the meat fork. Put the ground beef in the bowl. Chop up 3 slices of onion, slicked thing, until it’s pretty finely chopped. Put the onion in the bowl with the hamburger meat. Put the egg in the bowl with the ground beef. Add the 3 Tablespoons of catsup, the 1 of mustard and the 1 of Worcestershire sauce to the meatloaf mixture.

Now count out 18 saltines and crush them up until they are pretty fine. I do them nine at a time between my hands. You can also put them on a cutting board and roll over them with a glass or a rolling pin if you have one. The idea is to get them pretty fine for the meatloaf to mix right.

After you have everything in the bowl, use the meat fork to stir it all together. Mix it really well so everything is distributed as evenly as possible. I can generally tell when I have it right as it wants to all go into one big ball.

When you have it all mixed up and you’re happy with it dump the big ball out on the counter or a cutting board. Now form it so it’s all the same thickness and a little bit smaller than the 8×8 cake pan. When you have that done use a spatula to help you pick it up and slide it into the pan. If it’s your first time you’ll probably break it. Don’t worry about it, just reform it and try again.

After you get it in the pan put it in the oven, on the center rack, for 45 to 50 minutes. Voila, it’s done.

Baked potatoes go well with it and are very easy. Just put them in about 15 minutes before the meatloaf. Ground beef doesn’t take as long to cook as baked potatoes do. Try to keep all your potatoes as close to the same size as possible so they all get done at the same time.

Personally I like my meatloaf and baked potatoes with Bush’s baked beans, whole kernel corn, sweet potatoes from a can or acorn squash. Any one of those goes quite well with the meatloaf.

The meatloaf you just made should feed 3 hungry people or 4 that aren’t quite so hungry. Meatloaf is just a quick easy way to make 1# of ground beef feed more than 2 people. It’s easy, quick and cheap. I’ve definitely had worse meatloaf.