Spicy turkey meatloaf * how to make a substitute for bread crumbs

Spicy Turkey Meatloaf

oil for sauteeing

2 carrots, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 lb ground turkey

2 eggs

1 c bread crumbs

¼ c milk

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ c ketchup (plus more for garnish)

Preheat the oven to 375 Fahrenheit.

Saute the carrots, onion, celery, and green pepper in a little olive oil or butter until the onions are mostly translucent and the other vegetables are starting to get tender, about five minutes. Add garlic and saute another minute. Put in very large mixing bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until well blended. Shape into a loaf and place in a 9x13” pan. Top with extra pieces of green pepper and drizzle with more ketchup.

Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes. Let stand ten minutes before serving.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make spicy turkey meatloaf. It’s really easy and makes a huge amount of food that doesn’t get boring—in fact, it gets even better after the first day as the flavors mingle.

You’ll need a really big mixing bowl, a skillet, and a 9x13 pan, because this makes a lot of meatloaf. Don’t try to make it in a bread loaf pan—it just won’t fit.

The first thing to do is chop up your vegetables. Dice your onion, chop your celery and carrots into pennies, mince the garlic, and slice the green pepper in half and dice one half of it to add. If you don’t know how to clean a green pepper, you can listen to the baked beans recipe, but basically you just cut the stem off and remove the seeds, then use the rest of the pepper. My mom always kept some green pepper slices to garnish the top of her meatloaf and I do this too. It looks nice. So take the second half of the green pepper and cut it into slices so you have half-rings of green pepper.

Next, put a little oil in the skillet and turn the heat to medium low. Then add the onions, carrots, and celery, plus the diced half of the green pepper, and saute for about five minutes until the onions start to turn translucent. That means they’re cooked enough that they will contribute their flavor to the meatloaf without taking over. Then add the minced garlic and saute for one more minute. Then turn the stove off and shovel all the sauteed vegetables into the big mixing bowl.

This is a good time to turn the oven on to preheat.

Next, add the ketchup, the milk, the Worcestershire sauce, and the spices, including salt and pepper. Mix that up well, then add the eggs and mix them in well too. Then add the bread crumbs. I use Panko crumbs because they don’t get soggy, but you can use other types of dried bread crumbs. I can never find the bread crumbs in the store without a hunt, and then I forget where I found them, but Panko crumbs will be on the same shelf. Maybe try the salad dressing aisle. Don’t just crumble up a piece of bread and think that’ll work—it’ll turn into goo as soon as it gets wet. Maybe one day I’ll cover how to make your own bread crumbs, but for now, if you don’t have any, you can crush up some crackers or salad croutons and use those instead. To crush the crackers or croutons, you can put them in a clean paper bag, roll the top closed, and press down on the bag with a rolling pin or something else that’s reasonably heavy and easy to handle, although not breakable. The bag will probably end up tearing, especially if you’re me, but it will hold up to the crushing better than even a heavy-duty plastic bag will.

Once you have all this mixed up well, you will think it looks pretty unappetizing, and you haven’t even added the meat yet