Turkey Meatloaf

We use ground turkey as much as - if not more than - we use ground beef. Any recipe that would normally call for ground beef, the majority of the time we make the same recipe but with ground turkey (and make sure any cooking time/temperature/doneness differences are accounted for). I don't even remember WHY ground turkey might be better for you (heart-wise? weight-wise? both?) but after a few years of substituting, we're used to it.

We have this old recipe for "Juicy Meatloaf" that we've been using for many years now - and it, indeed, produces JUICY meatloaf. Juicy is good when it comes to meatloaf, and this recipe is certainly juicy. So, the juicy part is taken care of - the rest is up to you.

One of the great wedding gifts we received was a mini-prep food processor. This thing is great for the majority of jobs you want to do in a food processor - but on a smaller scale. The mini-prep takes up no counter space and it is much easier to clean up after. You know how sometimes you're reluctant to use something or do a certain technique because of the clean up involved? Not with this one...

So quartered a big onion, opened a can of carrots (that's all we had, unfortunately... use real, live carrots preferably), and peeled a couple garlic cloves, threw them all in, and pulsed them until they were very finely chopped:


We took four pieces of wheat bread and shredded 'em (shredded 'em good!) and poured enough milk to get 'em moist, stirred 'em around, and turned our attention elsewhere...

To our 1.3lbs of ground turkey, we added the pulsed veggies, a tbls of dijon mustard, a few generous shakes of soy sauce, one slightly beaten egg (that egg had it coming!), the soaked bread, a good handful of grated parm, dried sage, and some ground black pepper. Knead that together and you will get a very moist meat mixture... it will feel overly moist. If it is too unruly (can't hold a shape at all) add some bread crumbs a little at a time until you get some structure. Don't over-do the bread crumbs though, you want it to JUST be able to hold a shape on it's own.

Put that in a loaf pan that's been sprayed with pam or whatever and put it in a 370-degree oven for an hour or until the loaf is 170-degrees in the middle and the juices run clear. Juicy and delicious! And like most things, even better as leftovers. We had this with a cuke-and-tomato salad and (surprise!) some roasted sweet potatoes.