Adding Meatloaf Ingredients Together

Shannon Overmiller: Hello! Shannon Overmiller at the Majestic in Old Town, Alexandria. We are demonstrating meatloaf. Previously I showed you a good blend of meat to use which can vary from veal liver or veal meat but today we are using the ground beef, the pork, some salami scraps. You can use anything you choose and the veal liver. Next, we will be showing you is the mixture of the ingredients. One thing that is important about home style meatloaf or any type of meatloaf is that really it's a ratio and recipes are not exact but they are important. You do want to follow up some recipe when making a meatloaf that you find works for you and that you find works for salt amounts, your ingredients amounts. It doesn't have to be exact to the bone but you do want it to some ratio per your pound amount of meat. We have our meat mixture. A five pounds of beef mix. With this you use a ratio of salt which is five pound of beef mix to one-and-a-half ounces of salt. So now for the other ingredient that will go into the meatloaf. We are going to use about a tablespoon and-a-half of dry mustard powder, a pinch of cayenne, a tablespoon of fresh thyme. Tabasco sauce, just a dash or suit to your preference. About one to one-and-a-half cup of oats for five pounds mixture. You can use bread crumbs if you choose but we like to use oats. A tablespoon of tomato paste, a tablespoon of whole grained mustard, or mustard of your choice. About two tablespoon of ketchup. Here is the ingredient that will also make it very home style. This is pork fat. This is something that probably your grandmother did or your mom that you probably didn't know about in the meatloaf. But this is one of the key ingredients to making a meatloaf moist. We like to do about eight of cup of Worcestershire sauce per mixture to your taste, put about a eight of the cup. Also we like to use chopped fresh garlic, and for this I say about a tablespoon and-a-half to two tablespoon to your taste. Per five pound batch five eggs whole. Lastly we will also be putting in one large onion, we want to cut into small dice. So now we will be showing you how to mix the ingredients together to make the meatloaf. In a large mixing bowl you take all of your meats and you make sure to put everything together. Take your beef. You can do this by hand, it's fine. Then take your pork as well as your veal and salami. Then I go ahead and get a little mixture on here so I am kind full, slowly. Add in some of my onions. My Worcestershire sauce, pork fat, Tabasco, ketchup, mustard and tomato paste, fresh thyme, cayenne, mustard powder, eggs, your oats. You want to get a emulsification right now of the meat. It gets to bake the texture of the meat a lot more fine and little more compact and really blend the flavors together. Salt and pepper. I know this is five pound of meat. So I know that five pound of meat to one-and-a-half pound of salt. I know how it looks like, but again you can taste. For one and-a-half ounces of salt is something like this.

In a way of rule of thumb too with any meat that you season, you basically want to coat all the surface with it. So think about that when you are doing it. You want all of that to have to be seasoned. I know that sounds strange but just I think of it. Pepper, alot. You can smell it too. You can smell it before you cook it and you can smell the salt and pepper in it and you can smell because that mixed meat smell like seasoned wheat. If it doesn't smell like anything then it really probably doesn't have enough salt in it. One to way to test it is as like said before is to try to take a little piece of it and make a patty and put in a pan to heat. So that's how we mix ingredients. Now I will show you how to test the meat in a pan to see it's seasoned enough or we have to come back and add more seasoning to the meatloaf now.