Chris Rywalt's Vaunted Meatloaf Recipe

(This post is 100% written by Chris. Pretty Lady only re-formatted it.)

As suggested, here's my Magic Meatloaf Recipe. I've been thinking for a long time now of collecting my recipes and food knowledge into an online cookbook called "The If You're Feeling Ambitious Cookbook." The idea is each recipe would have extra instructions "if you're feeling ambitious." Usually I'm not, but sometimes I am.

First, put on "Bat Out of Hell" as loud as possible. It's important for the ambience.

1.25 lb (570g) ground beef (85% lean)
3 oz (87g) breadcrumbs (unseasoned)
salt
freshly ground black pepper
0.5 to 1 tsp dried thyme
3 baby carrots or 1 regular carrot
2 cloves garlic
0.5 to 1 medium onion
1 egg

Start the oven at 325 degrees F. The idea here is to cook the meatloaf slowly and evenly, then crank up the heat at the end to form our crust.

I am the laziest person on Earth so I use a food processor for this part. If you're feeling ambitious, you can chop everything by hand. Start with the hardest ingredients -- garlic and carrots -- because otherwise, the softer ingredients (the onion) will liquefy before the harder ones are small enough. Process the garlic and carrots until very small. Add the onion, the breadcrumbs, the thyme, salt, and pepper and process again, pulsing and scraping down the sides until the onions are fairly small. Then crack the egg into the processor and run it until everything is combined. If you're doing it by hand, mince the vegetables and then just, you know, mix everything together.

If you don't have breadcrumbs and you're feeling ambitious you can always make some. Either throw some old hard bread into the processor and grind it up or, if you don't have any of that around, you can try this: Lay out slices of sandwich bread in a single layer on a sheet pan and cook at 200 degrees F until all the moisture is gone. Let cool (don't try to grind them while hot -- trust me, it doesn't work) and grind up in the food processor.

Back to meatloaf: Mix the ground beef and the goop from the processor. You can do this by hand, but I find it icky and, again, I'm lazy. By hand is really best, though. The trick with ground beef is to handle it as little as possible. If you compress it too much, it becomes solid beef, which for meatloaf means it'll come out like a block of wood. Not good. So mix it loosely and do not squeeze it -- keep your fingers apart and think of your hands like forks, turning the mixture over and getting it combined. Because we've pre-mixed everything but the beef, you can finish this with minimal handling. Or you can do what I do which is mix it using a stand mixer with a dough hook on low speed, scraping down the sides and turning over the bottom a few times. (My wife actually prefers the finer texture of the meatloaf mixed this way.)

Once everything is mixed, put it into a loaf pan. Don't press it in too much, but make sure it fills out the corners and is kind of flat on top. It'll never be perfect, but it'll be okay. Then turn the loaf pan over a baking pan or larger vessel. Something where the loaf won't touch the sides. It'll take some shaking to get the loaf to let go of the loaf pan, but eventually it will plop out. (Or you can just slap the mixture right on the larger pan and shape it by hand, if the loaf pan doesn't pan out for you. Ahem.)

Now insert your digital oven thermometer. Don't have one? Too bad for you. Now you're going to have to guess when it's done. If you do have one, cook until the center of the loaf is 155 degrees F. If not, well, um, let it go about 45 minutes. That's usually about right. (I've burned out about four digital oven thermometers and am currently doing this by guesswork, too.)

Then crank the oven to 500 degrees F for ten minutes. (This cooking time is for a Pyrex pan. If you're using metal, reduce it. Try maybe five and see how that goes.)

Remove the pan from the oven and let the meatloaf set for ten minutes before slicing. If you've got a lot of fat in the bottom of the pan, you might want to pour it off before resting.

I like mine with ketchup mixed with hot sauce. It's great on sandwiches the next day, also.