Michael Van Cise

Have you ever heard anyone say, "I don't eat meatloaf out because I don't know what's in it. I don't eat meatloaf at home because I do know what's in it."?

The February/March 2011 issue of "Fine Cooking" will make you wonder where this saying came from. The magazine offers up, not a recipe for the perfect meatloaf, but a list of numerous ingredients and the proportions to use to make meatloaf. Even if you're not a fan of meatloaf, I expect you can build a version to your satisfaction. Here's the one we came up with:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound 100% grass fed ground beef
• 1 pound sweet italian sausage in casing (about five sausage links)
• 1/4 cup celery
• 1/4 cup leek (white parts only)
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 2 large garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup pilsner beer (I used Pacifico)
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh sage
• 1/2 tablespoon fresh rosemary
• 1/4 cup bleu cheese
• 5 strips of normal to thin sliced bacon
• 4 oz. bread crumbs (about 1/3 cup)
• 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
• fresh ground black pepper
• olive oil
• 2 eggs lightly beaten

Recipe:
First, prepare all your ingredients. Chop the onion, leek and celery (O.K. to combine them together). Mince the garlic, sage, and rosemary (keep garlic separate; sage and rosemary can go together). Measure out the bread crumbs and bleu cheese. Crack and lightly beat the eggs.
Next, saute the onion, leek, celery, and garlic in a little olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add the beer and continue cooking until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 6 - 8 minutes. Set the pan aside to allow the mixture to cool. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Now put the ground beef, sausage, bread crumbs, rosemary, sage, salt, pepper, and eggs in a large bowl. Crumble the bleu cheese over the mixture. After the celery/leek/onion/garlic/beer mix cools, add it to the bowl as well. Mix all this together in the bowl with your hands until everything is combined.
Line a baking sheet with tinfoil, then form a rectangular mound with the combined ingredients. Next, overlap your bacon strips diagonally across the meat-mound. Of course, the bacon will shrink some during cooking, so if you care about the aesthetics of the loaf, you'll want to overlap each piece, and also tuck a little bit of the bacon underneath the loaf. I didn't really care so much about it looking perfect, so I just did my best to cover it.
Put the pan in the center of the preheated oven and cook for 40 to 55 minutes, until a thermometer in the center of the meatloaf registers 160 degrees (or close to it). Finally, turn your oven broiler on high and put the loaf about 6 inches from the top of the oven. Finish the bacon to a crisp under the broiler for about 3 minutes. Allow the meatloaf to rest for 10 minutes. Slice and serve!

The meatloaf was really flavorful. The bleu cheese adds a nice flavor and the sage and rosemary is really good. Frankly, the sausage added a lot of flavor to the meatloaf, so your sausage selection could play a big part in the success of this dish. I don't know what the beer in the sauteed onion, leek, celery, and garlic did, but the aroma from those veggies was great. This dish will definitely be one I cook again.