Italian Meatloaf

Now meatloaf. I am not expert on meatloaf, I did not grow up on meatloaf, what I have
here is a couple of red peppers that were minced really fine. A couple of medium onions
that I did the same thing too, to this I have six cloves of garlic here, we will going minced
it up really fine. Perfect, quarter a cup of olive oil goes in the saute pan. The idea here is
we are going to saute out vegetables until it really nice and tender. So we are going to
saute the garlic first, oh it just begins to get light brown. Now the onions and peppers go
right in.

While these are sautéing I can go ahead and chop up my herb and we are going to mix
right into our meat mixture. I am going to do about a half of cup of basil and a cup of
tablespoon of Italian parsley and we can just chop them of together. I have three pounds
of ground sirloin to start. Now you can mix up meats a little bit here a little. If you want
to add some chicken alright, if you want add some turkey or ground pork or something
you can do, anything that you like really.

But here is the ratio for it. I have my half of cup of basil and a couple tablespoons of
chopped Italian parsley. I am going to put in here four eggs, what are that risk with
meatloaf is that you over mix it. If you over mixed it, it’s going to get tough. So what I’m
going to do is, take my four eggs, and my herbs, I am going to mix these together in
advance so as not to over mix my meatloaf.

So those are mixed nicely. Actually, we’re going to put our salt and pepper in here, that
way it is in the liquid, and it is going to disperse through out the entire loaf itself.

Now I have to cups of parmesan cheese that I have grated here, a nice Reggiano. Now I
have a cup and half of unseasoned bread crumbs, I am going o mix those together in
advance as well. So everything is kind of already premix. Our liquid is going into our
meat. The vegetables that we sautéed, the garlic, the peppers and the onions, those have
cooled now, I’m going to put those right on top. Now two tablespoons of balsamic
vinegar, the balsamic is going to give it a nice little punch. It is going to give a little acid
layer of flavor which I love.

Two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, beautiful, and two table spoon of olive oil,
because I use the super lean ground sirloin. We’re going to add a little bit oil back in
there to give it a really nice mouth feel. And then we take bread crumbs and parmesan
cheese, then you take a spoon that’s attached to your arm and you mix it together. You
can really can’t do this with the spoon it is almost impossible. You need to kind of mash
it up. You do not want to be over mix this. You just want to fold this flavor together.

Perfect. Now what we’re going to do is divide this up in half. Okay then for our marinara,
all we got to do is spread it right on top, we’ll have about a cup of marinara. This is going
to help keep the top really moist and make sure that it does not get crust on top. Alright
350 degree oven, it is going to take about 50 to 60 minutes, If you a little meat
thermometer, that would be 160 in the thermometer.