Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Easy, Lower Fat, Energy-Efficient Meatloaf

"How can meatloaf be energy-efficient" you ask? In a quest to find any way to lower our astronomical energy bills, I've been getting a little creative. So here's how I make meatloaf these days...

You can do this with any meatloaf recipe, but here's mine if you're curious. I think I've posted it before. Warning: I dump a lot of ingredients and don't measure much. These are estimates and you might want to play with it a bit.

1-1/2 lbs. ground turkey (you can use beef too or a mixture of both)
1/2 c. Italian bread crumbs (way better than oatmeal if you ask me)
1 c. milk
2 eggs
1/4 c. wheat germ
1/4 c. minced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. worchestershire sauce
salt
pepper
1/2 c. frozen, chopped spinach, THAWED AND DRAINED
generous squirt of ketchup or barbecue sauce
1 t. dry ground mustard

sauce--1/4 c. ketchup, 1 T. brown sugar, 1/2 t. worchestershire sauce

Heat oven to 350 and spray a muffin pan with nonstick spray. Mix all of the ingredients together with your hands (or upright mixer) until well mixed. Then, scoop into the muffin cups, dividing the meat mixture evenly among all the cups. Put them in the oven. They cook fast, so pay close attention to them. Let them cook for about 20 minutes, maybe more. In the last few minutes of cook time, put a dab of the sauce on top of each mini meatloaf and let it cook for a few more minutes before pulling it out again.

There you have it... meatloaf in 20 minutes ;). Less time in the oven and more money in the bank.

1 comment:

Keri said...

Mmm. Meat muffins. I tried this one time, but I overcooked them and they were terrible. Your recipe sounds delicious, though, and we have ALL Those ingredients here! :) I'll let you know how it turns out.