Hey guys, welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. Today, I’m going to be making a Mediterranean meatloaf. This is another recipe in my series of recipes for Mediterranean – Americana dishes. Now remember you can get this recipe ad all of my other recipes at ww.DedeMed.com. And remember when you’re there, you can sign up for my social network so we can chat daily. Ok, so we’re going to start off with the ingredients and I’m going to tell you what you need and how to put it all together.
Ok, here we have two tablespoons of freshly chopped basil. I have a fourth cup of freshly chopped flat leaf parsley. The spices we’re going to need are half teaspoon of paprika, half teaspoon of cumin, one teaspoon garlic powder, a teaspoon and a half of salt, and teaspoon and a half of coriander. I have one cup of shredded carrot, one cup of frozen peas, half cup, or I’m sorry, third cup of bread crumbs. Any normal bread crumbs will do. I have one cup of freshly diced onions. I have a half cup of Parmesan cheese. I have some sun-dried tomatoes, an egg, and a pound and a half of ground chicken. We’re going to put these all together.
We’re going to start off by mixing all the ingredients first before adding the chicken. We start off with our vegetables. We have the onions. I like using frozen peas rather than peas in a can just because they are fresher and they don’t have any preservatives. I love fresh carrots, and herbs. Fresh herbs add a great, great amount of flavor to dishes so I prefer using those whenever I possibly can rather than dried hers. These are basil. Basil has wonderful aromatic smells. I have my Parmesan cheese, our bread crumbs and our sun-dried tomatoes. Now I get my sun-dried tomato, I’m going to add about two tablespoons of this. I get my sun-dried tomato already chopped up and ready to go. You can get, if it’s not available you can always buy the whole sun-dried tomatoes and then just chop them off. I’m going to add our spices. Make sure we get that all in. And then mix it up before we add our egg and our ground chicken. Now if you can’t have chicken, you can use ground beef. You can use ground turkey. You can use any protein that you’d like in this. I have lot of vegetables and kids love me though because you can get their vegetables in without them even knowing. If you’re having, you know difficulty with your kids them eating vegetables, this is the way to do it. So just like that, make sure everything’s evenly mixed. I want to add some fresh ground black pepper, just about a quarter to a half teaspoon depending on how much black pepper you actually like. Give it a little mix. Add the egg, just like that. Give it a mixture. And then you’re going to want to mix the chicken in, but it’s best to use your hands so that it’s evenly mixed. You don’t have any chunks of chicken that aren’t flavored, or any chunks of vegetables, and the egg helps to bind the mixture. Now if you can’t have egg and you’re allergic to egg, you can omit it. It will bind pretty well on its own but adding the egg does help keep it bound up. I’m going to add the chicken. If you don’t have ground chicken at your grocery store, you can always just get two lean chicken breasts and in the blender or food processor, just blend them up and it serves the same purpose. There we go, making our hands dirty, and mix it up really well. This is a great dish. It’s a great alternative to the regular old meatloaf because I know a lot of people who are like, “Oh I don’t like meatloaf. It’s you know, they just don’t have any flavors”. This is a great, great flavorful dish. Ok, so it’s mixed pretty well. I’m going to show you how to put it all together.
Now that we have all of our ingredients mixed up, I’m going to show you how to actually cook the meatloaf. Now, there’s a couple different ways. Some people like to cook meatloaf in a loaf pan, because it is called meatloaf, or you can actually form it into a loaf if you have a glass pan or a baking sheet. Anyway will work, it serves the same purpose. You just want to make sure it’s formed into and actual loaf. So I’m going to first spray it with some non-stick spray and I’m going to form it into a loaf. You want to preheat your oven to 400 degrees so it will all be ready when you put the meatloaf there. Just like that. I want about three to four inches wide, an about an inch and a half to two inches thick. Just like that to make it really nice and pretty. Now some people like to top their meatloaf with tomato sauce. Some people like to top their meatloaf with ketchup. I prefer ketchup just because ketchup is a little bit sweeter and I’d like that sweetness and that acidity from the ketchup when you add it to the meatloaf. So just like that, and then were going to cover it with some aluminum foil, and then we’re going to bake it for 20 minutes at 400 degrees and then we’re going to remove the foil and bake it for another 20 minutes, so it gets a nice cook on it. And then after 40 minutes, we’re going to top it with some ketchup and let’s cook for just a couple of minutes in the oven and then I’ll show what it looks like.
So, it’s been 40 minutes and I took the meatloaf out and what I’m going to do is top it with some ketchup and then I’m going to put it under the broiler for about two minutes. Just cover the top. Again, if you don’t like ketchup, you can use like a tomato sauce, and if you don’t like tomato sauce or ketchup, you don’t have to even use anything. Some people like to use a gravy with meatloaf. That is always good as well. You can just serve that on the side. So there we go. We’ve topped our meatloaf, just like that. Do you see how pretty it is? When I put it back in the oven, under the broiler, we’ll wait for another two minutes.
Ok, so it was under the broiler for about two minutes. Now you want to let your meatloaf sit for five to 10 minutes before cutting it, and always use this rule whenever you’re cooking any type of meat or protein. Whenever you take it out of the oven, or however you’re done cooking it, let it sit for five to 10 minutes before you cut it. What happens if you cut it immediately is all the juices run out and then the meat tends to get dry, so if you’d let it sit, the juices stay within the meat instead of running out and you end up with a juicier meat product. So were going to let this sit for five to 20 minutes and then I’m going to cut it and show you the wonderful colors inside this meatloaf.
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