Sunday, March 16, 2008

Turkey Meatloaf

When I first made Ina Garten’s turkey meatloaf, I went by the book, the cookbook that is. I made it just as the directions called for and it was huge. Really a great recipe for a crowd but I only wanted to feed the 4 of us, so I cut the recipe in half for future use, hence some of the strange measurements. You should have seen the faces on some the engineers where I worked when I asked for their help with conversions. Yeah it’s for a meatloaf man. Important stuff. They all think I’m a crazy hippie anyway, and that’s ok with me. I have fine tuned it so it works well with 2 ½ pounds of ground turkey. You certainly can use ground beef if you’d like, but I’m sticking with the turkey.


Turkey Meatloaf
Recipe from Ina Garten
1 cup chopped yellow onion
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons & 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup & 2 tablespoons chicken stock
1 teaspoon tomato paste
2 ½ pounds ground turkey
¾ - 1 cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup ketchup

Preheat oven to 325. In medium sauté pan over medium low heat cook onions, olive oil, salt, pepper & thyme until translucent but not brown, approx 15 mins. Add Worcestershire, chicken stock and tomato paste, mix well. Allow to cool to room temp.

Combine turkey, bread crumbs, egg and onion mixture in large bowl. This will be a fairly wet mixture. I think that’s why the meatloaf comes out so moist, so don’t add so much breadcrumbs that you dry it out. Mix well and shape into rectangular loaf.

At this point in the recipe I turn to a Cook’s Illustrated technique using aluminum foil and a cooking rack.


Allowing meat loaf to stew in its own juices makes for a greasy mess. Here's our solution: Fold heavy-duty aluminum foil to form a 10 by 6-inch rectangle. Center the foil on a metal cooling rack and place the rack over a rimmed baking sheet. Poke holes in the foil with a skewer (about half an inch apart). Spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Spread ketchup evenly on top. Bake hour or until internal temp reaches 160 and meatloaf is cooked through. My meatloaf took an hour and 20 minutes to reach 160. (A pan of hot water in the oven under the meatloaf will keep the top from cracking). Serve hot, room temp, or cold in a sandwich.


3 comments:

Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) said...

Ina Garten's recipes are consistently great, and this used to be my favorite turkey meatloaf.... until I tasted one from a little café in Boston, that's made with a fig gravy. Now that's my favorite, but Ina's is still on my list.

Big Boys Oven said...

that meat lof of yours look so awesome!

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa,
Thanks for posting the half recipe. I've wanted to try this but the full recipe looked like just too much!

jackiecat