Scottish meatloaf in a slow cooker

It’s been too long since I spent a day cooking. It’s been a shite week and in the interest of everyone else’s safety and my sanity, my phone is off for the weekend. I’ll deal with the world on Monday.

A few weeks back I mentioned I was seeing a nutritionist and for the most part, I’ve been able to stick to her food guidelines. Bonus is 12 lbs. have found a loving home elsewhere and 15 to go! The challenge is keeping the food interesting and not defaulting to comfort foods that are ‘off-menu.’

Although it’s the middle of summer and the air outside feels suspiciously like Satan’s sauna, I need comfort food. It seems to be where the road leads when I’m stressed beyond reason. The challenge is making it taste like comfort food but without the inevitable calorie bomb that comes with the deliciousness.

My mom makes a kickass meatloaf in the slow cooker so I’ve found a traditional Scottish meatloaf recipe cooked in the oven that I’m going to attempt to tweak to fit both my eating plan and morph into a slow cooker recipe. Basically, I’m winging it and hoping for the best. The bonus with meatloaf is that it can be served hot or cold so with a salad, it is a great dish for a scorching summer.

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs Angus beef mince (ground beef)

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp mixed herbs (Italian seasoning for me)

1 tsp each of Cumin seeds & Oregano

2 eggs

2/3 cup of seasoned breadcrumbs

2 gloves of garlic, finely chopped (I use more which is probably why I’m still single….)

Ground black pepper and salt to taste.

(I tossed in a 1/3 cup of grated Parmesan cheese because why not, oh and 1 tbsp of crushed red chili flakes because I eat that with everything, but both are completely optional.)

Toss all the above ingredients into a mixing bowl and mush them together with your hands, (or a wooden spoon if you’re squeamish but seriously, driving a spoon through that consistency will take more elbow grease.)

I’m a weirdo and eat raw ground beef so I taste to make sure I like the flavour and tweak if needed. Most people would put this in the ‘you’re going to die of salmonella’ category so taste or not, it’s up to you.

Take a fair sized piece of aluminum foil and fold in half lengthwise. (Pictures included to show what I mean). This goes into the slow cooker  lengthwise and slightly up the sides. It makes it dead simple lifting the meatloaf out of the cooker without having to dismantle it. Because of the weight of the meatloaf, you need to fold it double or it will just tear and you’ll lose your mind. It also traps most of the juice so clean-up is a breeze!

I shape the mixture into a loaf shape in the mixing bowl so I can get one hand under it to move it to the slow cooker.

Pop it in the slow cooker, 6-8 hrs on low or 3-4 on high.

Instead of putting the liquids into the meatloaf, like you would for a traditional oven loaf one, I keep it aside and use as a glaze for the last 30 mins of cooking time.

Glaze ingredients:

1/3 cup of ketchup (I use jalapeno ketchup/tomato sauce)

1/3 cup Dijon mustard (or whatever mustard floats your boat.)

1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins of course, because the Empire runs on this stuff)

Mix together in a bowl and pop in the fridge while the slow cooker does its thing.

You can add 2 tsp of brown sugar to the glaze but because this is Murica, the ketchup already has a metric ton of sugar in it so I leave that out. But again, taste and see if you would prefer it sweeter and toss some in if you need to. Dijon mustard has a vinegary tang to it so you might prefer a slightly sweeter taste. Cooking is more intuitive rather than strictly to a recipe so wing it. You’ll be fine.

Spoon the glaze over the meatloaf about 30 mins before the end so it can warm through. It makes it look delicious because meat in a slow cooker can look very pale. The glaze fixes that right up.

Meatloaf is great on mashed potato but because it’s 8 billion degrees outside (and my eating plan frowns on potato) it’s going to be salad for me.

You’d think that cooking a meatloaf in a slow cooker without adding in liquid would make it dry but it comes out surprisingly tender without that sometimes sawdust texture that meatloaf has. Give it a go. Who knows? Maybe it will become a simple family favourite.