Friday, February 5, 2010

Sloppy Joe Meatloaf

Description:
I'm not a big fan of Sloppy Joes but my wife and kids love them. I am reminded of my School cafateria's version when ever I have one. To me a Sloppy Joe consist of ground beef browned with some onions, peppers, some garlic and seasonings and then sauced with about a half a bottle of catsup to pull it together enough to hold it on a bun.

My wife likes to use Manwhich Sauce.



Ingredients:
I took about 2lbs of ground beef, seasoned it up with salt, pepper, a few cloves of garlic minced up, a medium sized onion diced fine and a small green pepper diced. I mix that all together and then mixed in a couple eggs. I cut up 4 pieces of white bread into small cubes and then used them to firm up the meat mixture to form a meat loaf. I shaped the loaf into about an 8" round giant burger. It was about 4-5" high.



Directions:
Now for the twist. I put a couple tbls of olive oil in the pressure cooker and heated it up on medium high. I then browned the meatloaf, top and bottom, then stood it up and rolled it to brown the sides. Just to get a good crust on it as if doing meatballs or a pot roast. After the meatloaf had the nice brown crust all the way around I removed it from the pot.

Into the pressure cooker now went 2 cans of Manwhich Sauce. Thats about 3 cups. I tasted it and thought it needed a bit more tang so I added about a half cup of catsup and a shot of vinegar. That seemed to give it the flavor I wanted. I brought this liquid up to a boil, gently set the meatloaf into the sauce, covered, waited for the pressure to come up, lowered the heat and allowed it to pressure cook for 20 minutes.

I preheated the oven to 375*

After the 20 minutes I released the pressure and then removed the meatloaf to an oval shapped casserole dish that I like to use for meatloaf. It has high sides on it. I placed the meatloaf into the oven.

In the pressure cooker is the sauce. I put it back on the heat on medium high and while stirring I reduced the Manwhich Sauce to a BBQ sauce consistancy. (The stirring spoon left a trail in its wake) This took maybe 6 minutes over medium heat.

I then glazed the meatloaf with the sauce. I baked the glazed meatloaf for another 20 minutes.

After removing the meatloaf from the oven I let it rest for a good 10 minutes before cutting slices for the serving platter. I took the remainder of the sauce I had leftover and spooned it over the pieces on the platter. It was a good looking presentation.

I served homemade buttered noodles and a nice salad along with the meatloaf. The Meatloaf turned out excellent. I had a nice sandwich later in the evening that was very enjoyable too.

The pressure cooker is a great tool for making things like pot roast, stuffed peppers or cabbages or anything else you want to have flavor injected into.
We usually have meatloaf either made and served with a brown gravy or our Italian version which is slow cooked like a giant meatball in sauce with mozzarella cheese over the top. This was the first time attempting a meatloaf by starting it in the pressure cooker and I'm glad I did.

10 comments:

  1. I never ever thought of making a meatloaf in a pressure cooker. I know I have one somewhere around here. I am not that found of ketchup/sauce on my meatloaf so I opt to lay a few strips of bacon on top and mix in a bit of cheese with the meat mixture before forming a loaf and baking it. My mom was always a firm believer in the ketchup/mustard/brown sugar sauce though... a meatloaf was considered naked without it,lol...

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  2. This sounds really good Mac. (Too much work for Vic though) lol
    It sounds similar to my bar-b-que style meat loaf which is baked slowly in the oven covered by a rich sauce which thickens as it bakes.

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  3. Vic, I am not a fan of catsup sauce type meatloafs either. Growing up my parents really liked buying the mystery meat Encore frozen dinner meatloafs.

    I used the pressure cooker to start the proccess and to push the flavor of the sauce into the meat a ball. It worked really well.

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  4. One of my first cooking request back in the day of 360 was a request for everyone's meatloaf recipes. It was amazing to see all the different versions. That's one of the reasons I enjoy chatting with everyone here about cooking.

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  5. I remember that request. Geesh that was a long time ago.

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  6. the pressure/canner cookers are great to have....couldnt be a farmgirl without a canner....got some friends coming in next weekend....im gonna use that recipe out on them....will give all the credit to you....

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  7. I lost my pressure cooker during a move. This sound yummy ! A few weeks ago I made a meatloaf, the first one I had made in years. It came out okay, but I am going to try this one. I will have to get another pressure cooker, I might be able to find one for a good price at a local estate sale that is going on today n tomorrow. Thanks for the recipe
    I always look here and on Veros page for good recipes. I should have saved all of the recipes from 360 and the gardening thing.

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  8. Sue I have all my 360 blogs transferred to Multiply and the recipes are there. You might have to search a bit for them though. Not many have tags so I can't find them easily for you.

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  9. Thank you vero ! I should have saved them when I moved over to multiply, I thought I had. oh well. Im off to go searching your recipes ;)

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