Recipe Review: PW’s Meatloaf

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I’m a new, proud owner of The Pioneer Woman Cooks.   There are literally dozens of recipes in the book that are must-try and so I’ve decided to work my way through them in the coming year. I’d love to share the recipes with you as I go, but since they’re not on PW’s blog or published elsewhere for non-buying-customers, I’ll just stick to reviewing her recipes.  How does that sound?

Well, since we agree on that, let’s get to the point here: meatloaf.

PW writes about how meatloaf has gotten a bad rap, and I couldn’t agree more.  Sure, a loaf of meat doesn’t sound uber exciting, but it tastes good!  When I saw that her version is wrapped in bacon, I went for it.

On a scale of 1 to 10, Chris and I would give this an 8.5.  It was really quite good, but it could use a little something extra.  Other than 1/4 tsp. of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt there is no seasoning for the 2 pounds of ground beef that the recipe calls for.  Parmesan cheese is a key ingredient and it provides a nice flavor, but the whole meal could be livened up a bit with some Italian seasoning, or even some Worcestershire sauce (Worcestershire, that’s a funny word).

That being said, if you diligently made sure that every bite had some bacon and tomato gravy, you really wouldn’t need much more!

From start to finish, the recipe was quite easy.  This was my first time cooking meatloaf on the broiler pan and it worked well.  As PW recommended, I lined the bottom in foil for easy clean up.

We wrapped our loaf with some thick cut bacon and topped it with a tomato gravy that was slightly altered from the recipe.  We threw some BBQ sauce in with the ketchup, brown sugar and ground mustard.

PW recommended cooking this loaf for 60 minutes, but ours really needed an extra 20 minutes.  If I were making this again for our little family of two, I would cut the recipe in half (as written, it serves 8 very hungry, seconds-wanting people).  We ended up putting 3/4 of it into the freezer!

We would definitely make this recipe again, adding some extra spices and flavors that we like.  The bacon makes it really hard to go wrong!

Want more of PW?  You can see my review of her crème brûlée recipe.  And, of course, check out her blog!