Old Fashioned Meatloaf

0:00It's time for a recipe of the day. So I have a ton of meatloaf recipes on thecookful.com. There is a 1 pound meatloaf recipe at Pork and Beef Meatloaf, Chicken Meatloaf, Turkey Meatloaf, Air Fryer Meatloaf. The meatloaf isn't made. Other air fryer rate is cooked in the air fryer. There's even another recipe for a delicious meatloaf seasoning blend. So all of these delicious meatloaf recipes, what has happened over the years is quite often people have asked me how to make meatloaf in a loaf pan. And I didn't know for sure because all of mine are on sheet pans. That is how I always made it with a shaped loaf on the sheet pan. And so I get those questions and I knew that in theory you have to cook it a little bit longer and I know that some of the fat kind of is around the meat as it's cooking in the loaf pan. But I hadn't done it myself so I didn't have the experience. So I decided it was time and I wanted to come up with a loaf pan meatloaf recipe.

1:01So I started doing research and realized that what I was actually creating or envisioning was the ultimate classic old school traditional meatloaf. And so I really did a deep dive into the research to see like what was meatloaf originally, what should it have in it, what shouldn't it have in it, and then a ton of testing. I did over 20 versions of this and I'm telling you in the end, this is an amazing meatloaf that is perfectly sliceable. It holds together for slicing, but it's still juicy, but not mushy. It is so good. I cannot wait for you to try it. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what's going on in the recipe, the decisions that I've made along the way, what I found was best versus not as good, and then I'll dive into the actual recipe. So first, as much as I typically use a leaner ground beef when making meatloaf, the old recipes use a beef with higher fat content, an 85, 15, or an 80, 20. And so I did a side-by-side comparison and well, our grandma's new best, you know, it

2:06is definitely tastier when you use the higher fat beef, just such a rich meaty flavor and it's really juicy and delicious. Now, what that ended up meaning, though, was that I didn't like having the milk in my meatloaf. A lot of meatloaf recipes, classic ones, even call for milk in there to help make it moist, but I found that when I added the milk, it was like too mushy. Some versions didn't hold together very well and wouldn't slice nicely. So this one does not have any milk in it, which a lot of you might think is normal. I'm promising you it turned out better without the milk. Okay, the only other thing I'm going to say is that the order that you do things in really matters here, I mix the wet ingredients, the eggs and the ketchup together with the seasonings and then add the beef and then add the onions and breadcrumbs on top and then mix. And what that does is it helps spread the seasonings more evenly through the meat because they're being carried by their well-mixed liquid base, right?

3:10They're mixed in with the eggs and the ketchup. So then as you mix, they're getting evenly spread through. And what else will I say? I did not use fresh garlic in this meatloaf. You could add three cloves of minced garlic to the onions when you're sauteing them. Just for like the last minute of sauteing the onions, add the minced garlic, but I found that the garlic powder spread more evenly through the meat for more flavor and I liked it better with the garlic powder. So those are the main notes I have to say. As we go, I'm going to be explaining a little trick I have for getting the meatloaf out of the loaf pan and a little bit of extra information about how you drain the fat away after it is out of the loaf pan. So let us dive in. You're going to preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and then you're going to heat two teaspoons of oil, cookie oil, whatever vegetable oil, olive oil, whatever you like. In a large skillet over medium heat and you're adding a medium sized onion that you've chopped up. It's about one cup of chopped onion and you're going to just cook that stir you occasionally

4:12until it's softened just three or four minutes. Then take that off the heat. It's just going to start cooling down just a little bit, not a big deal, but it is helpful to have it cooling a little so that it's not hot on the beef when you're trying to mix it in a moment, right? Okay, you're going to get on a big bowl and you're cracking two large eggs into there, whisk those lightly and add two tablespoons of ketchup. There's more ketchup in the glaze later, but we're only using two of the tablespoons here. So mix up the eggs of the ketchup and then you're adding one and a half teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of that garlic powder and half a teaspoon of black pepper. I will say that I did not put Italian seasoning in here because it was not traditionally part of meatloaf I found, even though it's so common in versions today. I did have it in one or two of my versions that I tested and I found that it tasted a little bit like meatballs more if I could Italian meatloaf and so I did not put it in here. If you want Italian seasoning in your meatloaf, you can put one teaspoon in when you

5:12add the garlic powder. Okay, so we're mixing together the seasonings with the egg and the ketchup. Then you're adding your ground beef on top of that, two pounds of ground beef and like I said, you want that 8020, something like a ground chuck or 8515 is fine as well. And that's just the meat to fat ratio that's like percentages. Those are those numbers that I'm saying and it usually says that on the label at the grocery store. So you're adding two pounds of the beef and then on top of that you will scrape all of your onions onto there and also one half cup of plain dry bread crumbs, not Italian ones and not panko ones. You just want the regular ones that just say bread crumbs. Then you'll use your hands to mix that all up until the onion is spread evenly through. Once the onion is spread evenly through, you can see it, right? That's your signal that everything has been evenly incorporated and you don't want to mix past that. We know that the seasonings were spread out through the liquid and now the onions are spread through and so it's going to be nice and thoroughly mixed without over mixing because over

6:17mixing makes a meatloaf tough. Basically, if you think of those like strands of meat in your ground beef like thick threads that are in your package of ground beef, when you compress those until they're no longer any of those threads and really smoosh them, that is what makes ground meat tough in things like burgers and meatloaf. So you want to mix it well, but not too well. Okay, wash your hands off and then you're going to lightly grease an eight by four inch loaf pan. Now the grease is there for the short ends so that the meatloaf doesn't stick there, but it's also there to help a parchment paper sheet stick inside there. It just helps if it's lightly greased, it'll stick to the side of your loaf pan because we are using a big piece of parchment paper to make a sling for our meatloaf to get it out of that pan later when it's done cooking. So you lightly grease that loaf pan and then cut a piece of parchment paper that's 20 inches long and that is going to be hanging over the long sides of your loaf pan and then

7:19you're going to trim the other ends of the parchment paper to be the width of your loaf pan. So it's going to be about 20 inches by eight inches and then you're going to lay that into your loaf pan, push it down in the bottom and you'll see that the two ends sort of fly over the sides and those are going to be what you grabbed to pull it out later. Okay, so push that into the loaf pan and it's going to stick there nicely because you greased it and then you're going to scoop all of the meat mixture into that parchment lined loaf pan and once it's all in there, push down gently but firmly. You want the meat to fill all the corners and be evenly distributed in there but you're not like super compacting it for the same reason we talked about before. We don't want to smush that out, we just want it pushed in well, smooth out the top and then that goes into the oven for 40 minutes. Just leave it in there at your 375 degree Fahrenheit oven. While that's cooking, you're going to mix up your glaze. It is six tablespoons of ketchup, four teaspoons of plain white vinegar or you can use cider vinegar,

8:22four teaspoons of brown sugar and a teaspoon of onion powder. That onion powder in there just gives it such a good savory note, ties in well with the meatloaf as well. Okay, mix that up. After the 40 minutes of baking, take the meatloaf out and brush half of that ketchup mixture onto the top and then you're putting it back into the oven until it's cooked through to 160 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle as red on an instant-read thermometer. That's going to be about 17 to 22 more minutes. At that point, you take the meatloaf out of the oven and leave it alone. Just put it on the counter or on a rack either way for 15 minutes. It's very important if you pull it out too soon. It is going to fall apart on you or it's not going to be sliceable. You really need the juices in there to stop like simmering all around and moving like crazy. Calm down. That's going to set everything up a little bit better. After 15 minutes, you can even go a little bit longer if you want. It's still going to be really hot in the middle. Trust me, it's going to be really hot. 15, 20 minutes.

9:22Use your parchment side to lift the meatloaf out of the pan and onto a large rammed plate. Why? Because some of the fat is going to come out with the meatloaf and not just stay in the loaf pan and you want that to drain away. Put it on a large rammed plate so now you have your big plate with your parchment sling and your meatloaf on top and just kind of tip it a little bit side to side. Get any fat to drain away that's there and then use a knife or fork to slide the meatloaf off of the plate and onto a cutting board or onto your serving platter. Brush the rest of that ketchup sauce on top and all over the sides and then you're slicing it. Now, you can either do six or eight slices. I find that if I'm having this with a lot of mashed potatoes, gravy vegetables, then eight slices is going to be good and it serves eight people. If I'm not having as much with it, then six slices is going to be better. And I will just quickly say that if you didn't want to cook this in a loaf pan, if you want to do it on a baking sheet, you absolutely can.

10:23I tested that too. You're going to do the same things mostly, set the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and you're going to put a parchment sheet on a baking sheet with a ram. You want a rimmed baking sheet for sure and then you're going to shape your meatloaf into an eight by four inch loaf, pressing it gently into that shape bake for 35 minutes. Take it out of the oven, brush it all over with half the sauce and then it needs to get up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, it's going to take about 15 to 20 minutes more, take it out, let it rest for 15 minutes, brush it all over with the rest of the sauce and then you can slice it and serve it. So really in the end, it just takes a little bit less time to cook. That's all there is to that. Now you can store cooked meatloaf in the fridge for three to four days. My favorite is cold meatloaf the next day in sandwiches. My parents at their deli used to actually make meatloaf just to chill and then put on the meat slicer for sandwiches like a slice of rye bread with some mustard and some thinly

11:25sliced cold meatloaf. Heaven, I cannot wait for you to try this old school classic, you're going to love it. I will put the link to the recipe in the show notes for this podcast episode or you can head to cookthestory.com slash ROTD and get it there. Everything there is arranged by date so it's helpful to know that today is March 5th of 2026. I'm Christine Pitman from cookthestory.com, thecookful.com, cookfortwo.us and this podcast recipe of the day, I hope you have a great day. Let's get cooking.