Episode 054 Classic Meatloaf Cups

Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: Oh my gosh, I’m so excited you guys are here. We are going to be making a super classic dinner, Coca-Cola Classic. We’re making meatloaf muffin cups. So meatloaf is a super traditional, Sunday family dinner recipe, eighties, seventies, yummy. Something that I grew up eating. We are going to put a little modern spin on meatloaf. It’s still going to have all of your classic flavors, you know, onion, tomato, with a ketchup topping. But it’s just going to be made a little bit easier by baking them in a muffin tin so that it bakes faster.

Sometimes meatloaf can take an hour and a half to bake if you make a really big, solid meatloaf. So if you cut it down into smaller little individual portions, it’s ready in a flash. Which we’re all busy, okay? We need minimum effort, maximum flavor. Maybe that should be the name of my podcast. Minimum Effort, maximum flavor, let’s make dinner. 

Tips and Tricks: Okay, let’s get into a couple tips with this recipe. So we’re making ground beef muffin cups. With ground beef, there’s lots of different fat ratios that you can buy for ground beef and different fat ratios work for different things. So if you’re cooking something made with ground beef in its own juices, like a meatball or a meatloaf, or a casserole or a chili, something where the beef and the fat are contained, you want something that is not quite as fatty as an 80/20. 85/15 is excellent. If you want to go, if you can find a 90/10, wonderful. You could go 93/7. That’s getting a little bit lean, but you could certainly use that. 80/20 is going to be great for burgers or something that you’re cooking where the beef is not cooking in its own fat. Because the fat is good. I mean, it adds flavor, but it also makes things greasy. So you want to avoid that. 

Now the other tip with these meatloaf muffin cups is that we’re going to be adding a panade anytime. I’ve talked about making burgers, making meatballs, anything that’s really made with ground meat, we make a panade to add to it. That’s basically just a mixture of a starch and a liquid that keeps a ground meat recipe juicy.

So for this one, we’re using panko breadcrumbs and milk. It’s the perfect addition for meatloaf. Now let’s talk about the topping. I’ve seen a lot of different toppings for meatloaf. I mean, I’ve seen zhuzh up ketchup, I’ve seen a barbecue sauce, I’ve seen a barbecue ketchup mixture. Lots of different options here. If you have a family favorite, use whatever you like. At my house, we like straight up traditional ketchup. Nothing added in, just ketchup. It’s not going to taste like straight up Heinz ketchup after it comes out of the oven. Something happens. To the ketchup when it’s in the oven, and I think it has to do a lot with the sugar content in ketchup. It caramelizes and really becomes rich in flavor and it’s the perfect topping for these meatloaf muffin cups. So if you trust me and you trust my flavor, then go with just the straight up ketchup. I think that’s all the tips that I have for this recipe. 

Meatloaf Muffins Recipe: So we can just pop right into making the full recipe. You want to start by making sure that you have a 12 cup muffin tin. This recipe’s going to make exactly 12 cups. Get yourself a 12 cup muffin tin. Then the other thing that I recommend is placing that muffin tin on a rimmed baking sheet because the meatloaf muffins will pile a little bit higher than your muffin tin, and you don’t want any grease to bake out and spill in your oven and make a mess. It will make a smoky mess if grease runs out in your oven. 

Okay, let’s get to making these. You’re going to start by preheating your oven to 400. Then you want to spray your 12 count muffin tin with a little non-stick spray baking spray, or you can coat it in some kind of olive oil or canola oil.

Then you can set that aside. In a skillet over medium heat, you’re going to saute one diced onion and three chopped garlic cloves until they’re softened. So this will be like eight to 10 minutes. Then you remove that from the heat and you’re going to stir in two tablespoons of worcestershire sauce, one tablespoon of tomato paste, and one teaspoon of chopped fresh rosemary.

Now, if rosemary is not your jam, then you can absolutely sub in chopped fresh thyme. I think those are probably the two herbs that I would use here. I don’t think I would stray into basil or oregano. I would keep it to that rosemary or thyme, or you could do a combo of the two. That would work as well.

So go ahead and set that mixture aside and let it cool while we make the ground beef mixture. In a large bowl, you’re going to add one cup of Panko breadcrumbs, and a third a cup of milk. You’re going to let that sit for just like a minute or two so that the Panko breadcrumbs can soften in that milk. Then to that, you’re going to add two pounds of ground beef, two eggs that are lightly beaten, one teaspoon of kosher salt, half a teaspoon of black pepper, half a teaspoon of onion powder, and then that sauteed onion mixture.

With clean hands or a fork, you’re going to mix everything together, just until it comes together. You don’t want to overmix it because we’re not trying to make compact little meatballs here. We’re trying to make some nice tender meatloaf cups. Once that is all mixed together, it’s time to grab that prepared muffin tin. With a third a cup, a measuring cup, you want to portion the meatloaf mixture into the muffin tin. So it should be just exactly one third of a cup into the muffin tin. No need to pat it down or make it look perfect. It’s totally fine if it looks kind of craggy on the top and is just messy. Totally fine. 

Next, you want to top each individual little meatloaf cup with about one tablespoon of ketchup and just spread it just a little bit so it’s not all the way to the edge, but so that it covers the surface.

Then you’re going to place that muffin tin on top of the baking sheet, like I said before, to catch any spills. You’re going to bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes until the center of the meatloaf cups reaches around 160. If you have an instant read thermometer, you can check the internal temperature there. 160 is totally fine. It will climb a couple degrees once you take it out of the ove., and that’s just called carry over cooking. Let them rest for a few minutes and then you can pop them right out of that muffin tin and serve them. Serve them! 

I got really excited about serving my meatloaf cups. Okay, so you’re going to serve one to three meatloaf cups per person. One per kid, right? Maybe three per super hungry person is great. 

As far as side dishes go, keep it classic,okay. It goes great with mashed potatoes and any kind of green veggie; like roasted broccoli, green peas, roasted asparagus, green beans, anything like that is just super classic.

Now if you want to make this recipe with ground Turkey, I actually have a recipe for ground Turkey meatloaf muffin cups that’s wonderful. So I will link that in the show notes for you. I also have a really fun recipe for meatloaf slider sandwiches, you know, like little mini sandwiches. I will link that in the show notes as well, because you can serve your meatloaf muffin cups one night and then a couple nights later you can serve meatloaf sliders if you have leftovers. So a great two for one dinner. 

That does it for today’s episode of Let’s Make Dinner. Of course, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about right in the show notes for you so you can find them when you’re ready to make dinner. 

If you’re enjoying this show, I would love to have you follow or subscribe to your preferred podcast player, as well as let a friend or family member or somebody you love know about this podcast. I would totally appreciate it. 

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.