When I'm thinking about beautiful family cooking I always go back to the great Sunday roast
and of course those cuts can be expensive but as far as like slicing something at the
table, something everyone loves, this dish is my one-pound wonder version.
My mega meatloaf is a mouthwatering way to upscale one of the cheapest cuts of meat into
an incredible family favourite served with spicy tomato sauce and mashed potato, this
beauty feeds six people for under £6.
We're gonna cook the most delicious meatloaf; golden, cheesy, blipping tomato sauce, I'm
gonna serve it with mashed potato and with clever cuts of meat, with clever flavouring,
this is a classic recipe that will work hard for you and your wallet.
So, here we've got 500 grams of minced pork, it is really widely available and it's always
been a really good value cut of meat so we wanna flavour that and make sure it's got
delicious texture, so let me show you how.
First up to bind it we're gonna use one egg, so one egg goes in.
We're gonna flavour it with a beautiful heaped teaspoon of oregano, now oregano or dried
herbs are fantastic, they sit there in the shelf waiting to be used so all those dried
herbs, all those spices, are definitely your best friend.
Another little tweak is cheese, it gives you an amazing deep flavour but also it kinda
gives you that nice texture inside.
So I've got 50 grams here, it's cheddar, and I'm gonna put about half of it in to my meatloaf,
and then we'll go in with a good pinch of black pepper and a nice pinch of salt.
And then we wanna bulk it out but give it nice juicy texture, so for that we can use
bread, a really good value way to bulk meat dishes out.
100 grams okay, now if it's hard and stale, a little tip is just to run it under some
water and it'll rehydrate it'll soften up, and then we can break it up.
Just use your hands to break up the bread.
Yes you could use a spoon, but it's never ever as good as using your hands.
I want you to mush up the bread, really scrunch it together, and this is what's gonna give
you a meatloaf that will hold, that will be almost like a little cup of meat in itself.
What I wanted to do in these recipes for you guys is give you principles that you can use
in your own way, so here we have a lovely meatloaf, happy days.
You can double it if you want, treble it if you want.
You can even chop it up into a lovely big meatball, or small meatballs.
You can use it for a burger patty.
So I really wanted to give you recipes that could bend and stretch to give you not just
one recipe but many recipes that you can use in your week.
So look, bring that together.
There you have your beautiful homemade meatloaf.
It's about 20 cm in length, you can carve it up, beautiful.
Let me just wash my hands.
Ok.
Let's get this pan onto sort of medium-high heat, we're gonna add a nice little lug of
oil in there.
Let that get hot, we're gonna brown this off now let me just tell you, normally I would
cook a meatloaf all in the oven, but the oven is more expensive than the hob.
So I've adjusted my cooking and that is the joy of cooking, cooking has always adjusted
in good times and in bad, right?
So we're gonna do all this meatloaf on the hob and I promise you it will be joyful.
So, that's getting hot now, I'm gonna go in with the meatloaf you can hear it sizzle.
I'm gonna let it get brown then I'll turn it; brown, turn it, probably turn it four
times.
So while that's going I wanna show you how to make a really delicious veggie tomato sauce
it'll be sweet it'll blip away, it'll have a little hit of spice as well.
Now I've washed these carrots, I'm just gonna take the ends off, and I'm not gonna bother
peeling it - why?
Because the skin has a lot of flavour, and I wanna keep that.
I'm just gonna use a little spatula to get in under this look at that, oh my lord look
at that.
I'm gonna cut the carrots just about a centimetre thick at an angle, right?
And I'm gonna start browning those off at the same time as the meat, and they go really
kind of succulent and caramelised and gorgeous.
So carrots have always been humbly good value.
We've kind of seen recently wonky veg coming out that's even cheaper.
And I love to see veggies in all of its sizes, big, fat, thin, short, that's what food's
all about right, so perfectly imperfect is perfect for me.
So get the carrots in, we're gonna go in with onions as well, and again this is from a mixed
bag of different sized onions so they're a little bit cheaper to buy.
Chop it into about 1-2 centimetre chunks.
So we can get the onions in, going into the pan which is lovely we can stir that in.
Also, garlic.
It's one of those things that sort of sits in the kitchen able to give a lot of flavour,
just a couple of cloves, just take the skin off, give the garlic a little tap like that.
Finely sliced, and in it goes.
This is gonna be a beautiful, colourful, optimistic family dish, for under a pound a portion.
Now on family friendly, I do wanna give you flavour, yes chillies!
I'm just gonna use two or three chillies to give a little hum of heat.
So I'll halve them and use the little tip of a spoon just to remove that little membrane
and seeds which is where a lot of the heat is.
If you cook them whole like this, you don't get outrageous heat you get a nice glow.
Into the lovely juices in the pan with the chilli, like that.
Look at that it's looking beautiful, we've got colour on the meatloaf.
We'll fry the chillies off and then we'll turn it into a lovely sauce.
So for that I'm gonna use tinned tomatoes, I'm using chopped today.
We're gonna go in with the beautiful tomatoes around the outside.
Two tins go in.
We'll hit it up with salt, pepper, and oregano for the sauce.
It will be very, very joyful.
So let that cook with a lid on for about 20 minutes, ok so we'll turn that down now to
a gentle simmer, you will get the most rich delicious sauce right, the meat will be cooked
through.
By the way the lid saves you a whole bunch of energy, keeping the heat in, not wasting
so much, so that's a little trick for all of our cooking in these times.
Let's let that cook, I'm gonna do a nice mashed potato now and of course I know you know how
to do mashed potato but there's a few little things we can do to save on energy, and time
actually.
When I was taught to do mashed potato at college, you know big ol' chunks of potato like that,
and that'll take like 18-20 minutes to cook.
But if you just cut them into inch chunks, y'know it's more like 10 minutes to cook.
Less time, less energy, less cost.
And these little hints and tips, they do all mount up.
Another little thing is, if you just fill the fan, just cover them, of course that's
less water to boil.
It's just kind of that whole thing about being more efficient y'know from the cutting, the
amount of water.
It's actually cheaper to boil the water on the hob than boiling a kettle, all this stuff
mounts up.
Let that tick away and in not much time at all we're gonna have the most amazing family
meal that I know you're gonna love.
Right, let's have a cleandown.
So the potatoes are cooked, let's just drain these now, make some nice mash.
You can finish your mashed potatoes with butter, cheese if you like, btu I wanna keep it nice
and simple because this is full of flavour, there's no shortage of flavour right here,
so just a little kiss of olive oil goes in.
Salt and pepper to really season up the potatoes, but the fun hasn't stopped yet because at
this point in time I'm gonna grate the rest of this cheese on top, I want it to ooze over
the top.
So, lid back on, and we're pretty much done, and we've done it all on the stovetop which
is more energy efficient than the oven.
Here we go, come on!
That's joyful that's family food, and for under a pound a portion, let's serve up.
So let's get a nice load of mashed potatoes, let's make a well in the middle to catch all
those juices, look at that!
Pop it on a board it just kinda feels like an event, it feels exciting.
Means you can kind of get a knife and just carve into it.
You can see the lovely texture, just gorgeous.
Let's plate up, a little bit of meat here, let's get some sauce.
I'm gonna put some of that gorgeous chilli on top, look at that!
Beautiful to make, beautiful to serve.
Let's have a try.
This is the kind of food that makes me really really happy.
Clever cooking, good combinations.
What I love about this is it's optimistic, it's tasty, it feels celebratory.
What're you serves six people.
I've taken the average cost of each ingredient and the quantity used across the big four
supermarkets, and it comes in at 97p a portion.