A few days ago I made a huge batch of spaghetti sauce. More sauce than I know what to do with since I'm not all that into spaghetti these days. The thought of what to do with all this marinara was weighing on my mind, so I decided to put it to use. There are possibly dozens of recipes that call for use of spaghetti sauce, or that can be topped with marinara sauce, or served with marinara sauce... right? Well I thought of one - meatloaf.
Now, I've never made meatloaf. It involves, like, steps... and processes... and mixing and junk. Things way beyond my experience as a cooker of food (which should in no way imply that I'm a "chef" or even a "cook"). So I looked up meatloaf recipes on Food Network website (because there's no way I'm putting the word "meatloaf" into Google), and I found 4 pages of recipes. Ingredients varied, but the basic procedure comes down to - mix stuff in a nowl. Put mixed stuff in loaf pan. Bake.
Seriously, that's all the instruction some of the recipes give. And yes, one of those is the one I used.
After 30 minutes of prep, 75 minutes of baking, 15 minutes of waiting, and 15 minutes of eating, this is what I learned:
Meatloaf is really difficult to screw up. I know this because I left out the onions, used too much beef and garlic, and substituted marinara sauce, for tomato juice and it still turned out awesome.
Well, relatively awesome. It wasn't perfect, but when topped with my marinara sauce it was pretty damn good. Apparently I'm the only one in the house who is going to eat it because it has mushrooms, but that's fine by me. I've got dinner for the next 3 or 4 days sitting in the fridge.
Now I just have to experiment with different ways to use meatloaf. < insert dirty jokes here >
Now, I've never made meatloaf. It involves, like, steps... and processes... and mixing and junk. Things way beyond my experience as a cooker of food (which should in no way imply that I'm a "chef" or even a "cook"). So I looked up meatloaf recipes on Food Network website (because there's no way I'm putting the word "meatloaf" into Google), and I found 4 pages of recipes. Ingredients varied, but the basic procedure comes down to - mix stuff in a nowl. Put mixed stuff in loaf pan. Bake.
Seriously, that's all the instruction some of the recipes give. And yes, one of those is the one I used.
After 30 minutes of prep, 75 minutes of baking, 15 minutes of waiting, and 15 minutes of eating, this is what I learned:
Meatloaf is really difficult to screw up. I know this because I left out the onions, used too much beef and garlic, and substituted marinara sauce, for tomato juice and it still turned out awesome.
Well, relatively awesome. It wasn't perfect, but when topped with my marinara sauce it was pretty damn good. Apparently I'm the only one in the house who is going to eat it because it has mushrooms, but that's fine by me. I've got dinner for the next 3 or 4 days sitting in the fridge.
Now I just have to experiment with different ways to use meatloaf. < insert dirty jokes here >
I wouldn't want to use him for anything.
[/shudder]