How Italian with my mapeen on my shoulder.
I'm going to roll with that.
Very restaurant style, very nonna style, so any moment when you're being fresh you're
just gonna pop!
I scratched myself.
Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I want to show you
how I make my Epic Italian Meat Loaf dinner.
Now, if you've been a follower of mine for a long time, and if you so happen to follow
me on Instagram, which you should if you don't then you will know because you will have seen
that we make this recipe a lot.
I mean a lot.
It's one of our family favorites, every time my brother Sal comes to visit from Italy,
this has to be on the menu at least once a week because it's his favorite meal of all
time, my husband loves it, we made it for his birthday, I don't know we make it all
the time, it's really delicious, it doesn't taste at all like a regular traditional American
meat loaf, which I love and I have done a version of this years ago, but this is sort
of an updated version that is just our go-to recipe and it's my mother's recipe so I feel
like mamma would be proud.
Let me run you through the list of ingredients, not very big, and this would make a great
Easter main dish if you're looking for something different.
You'll need your antipasti king and queens here, prosciutto, salami, this is good Genoa
salami and some sharp provolone, you'll need parsley and garlic, some shredded parm, breadcrumbs,
an egg, some hard boiled eggs, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, you need some good ground
beef and then you'll also need some potatoes, peas onions, and that's it.
So good, I gt the oven preheated to 400, if your oven isn't as hot, because it's really
strange my downstairs oven, like this oven is really hot, so 400 is great, but my other
oven upstairs, 425 is more like it because 400 isn't as hot.
So, between 400 and 425 will be perfect.
Now, like I said, this would be great for an Easter main dish, if you're doing it Italian
style, double up on everything and make it in a bigger pan and you will serve 8 to 10
people so happily they might not ever leave your house.
In a food processor, I know!Just have to bear with me, in a food processor you're going
to add the provolone, the prosciutto, the salami, the parsley and the garlic.
Why are we doing this in a food processor, I know why you're asking me that, because
everything needs to be chopped so finely so that it incorporates with the meat, almost
like ground meats to go in with your meat, this does the job much easier than to do it
by hand and I'll show you what it looks like when it's there.
Perfect!
That is what you want it to look like, see that?
Really finely chopped.
Now, you can absolutely not substitute the sharp provolone with mozzarella, no way Jose,
it does not give you the same flavor what so ever, and it's also the wrong texture so
you've gotta use what mamma's asking for here because it's the reason why it's the best
meat loaf you'll ever have in your entire life, it's so good and it makes your house
smell like a one thousand percent Italian household because the sharp provolone that
cooks for a while, oh my word!
It smells so good, just you wait.
Okay, to this you need a pinch of salt, not that much because you've got saltiness going
on over there, so just a little pinch, parmiggiano reggiano, freshly grated, breadcrumbs, and
you need an egg.
Along with some cracked black pepper.
Alright, put some elbow grease in here and you're going to mix everything together until
it's well combined.
Alright so what I have here is a large - this is a cast iron pan but you can use a big baking
pan or whatever, I just love the rustic look of this, and you take about half of your meat
at a time, and you kind of just squish it, you know?
Squish it down because you can see I'm kind of making a well in the center.
A well if you will ha!
I crack myself up.
Making kind of a well in the center, and then you're going to take some hard boiled eggs,
now what I've done here is I have hard boiled these for seven minutes because they are going
to get some more cooking time in the oven, I know it sounds crazy but it would not be
an Italian meat loaf without hard boiled eggs.
So then, you carefully take the remainder of the beef, you can see I can do this with
my eyes shut because I made this dish so many times, ha ha!
You can just, you take the meat, right?
And you just cover the eggs, and if you have to take a little bit from over here like this,
now this is huge, right?
This will feed I don't know, six people pretty nicely and it's just using one pound of ground
beef because you're using so much other stuff.
If you're going to make this for more than four to six people, trust me people will go
back in for seconds and then leftovers in the nice crusty Italian roll with some melted
cheese on top, the best thing in the world, then I would double the recipe, and like I
said if I was making this for Easter, I would do two pounds of meat, four pounds of Salami,
four ounces of Salami, four pounds of salami could you imagine?
Four - although...
Four pounds of pr.. oh I really want to make a meatloaf with four pounds of salami and
prosciutto, four ounces of prosciutto, four ounces of salami, four ounces of sharp provolone,
two eggs, half a cup of breadcrumbs, you know you just double everything, and you just let
it cook a little bit longer but not much because it's just going to be the same thickness really.
Okay, so this looks perfect, I'm going to set this aside, wash my hands, bring over
the potatoes and we'll move forward from there.
And I'll walk you through the potatoes which by the way are just as important as the meatloaf,
you can't have this without the potatoes and stuff around the sides, it just won't do.
So let me wash up and I'll be back.
Alright so what I've got here is a couple pounds of potatoes that I have peeled, once
I peel them and I chop them into large chunks, what I did is I put them in a pot with cold
water, a little bit of salt, brought it up to a boil and I boiled these for two minutes
exactly, drained them, leave them in a colander for a while until they were really really
dry, and then I put them in this large bowl.
I've been doing that for a long time now where I pre-cook my potatoes before I roast them
and it made a world of a difference.
For some reason I feel like it absorbs flavor even better, so that's what I have got in
here, in here I've got some sliced white onion, yellow onion and some frozen peas, I love
frozen peas, do not talk bad about my frozen peas you need black pepper, you need some
salt, and you need olive oil, you're going to toss all this together and you're going
to put it on the side of your meat loaf.
See me licking my lips.
As the meatloaf cooks, and it renders a little bit of it's fat, and the provolone renders
its fat, the prosciutto - the potatoes will be the bed that absorbs the flavor, therefore
it's phenomenal, now normally if I do peas and onions and potatoes I would add rosemary,
if I was cooking with chicken.
I don't do that if I'm doing this because it's too much of a flavor, it's like battling
for flavor because the rosemary is so strong, and you don't need to do that because this
needs the flavor from whatever is coming out of the meatloaf.
So, put it on either side, this is going to be so good, just you wait and it's going to
go into my pre-heated oven 400 for about 45 minutes or so, give the potatoes a little
jujj halfway if you have to halfway through and I'm going to show you what it looks like
when it's done and you need to be prepared for what your house will smell like as this
is cooking.
Because there's nothing better in the whole world, especially if you're in an Italian
household, no siry Bob.
In it goes.
Alright, my meat loaf was in the oven for 45 minutes, I gave the potatoes a stir halfway
through and look at this, yeah, uh huh.
Mmm!
I love potatoes and when they taste like provolone, boy do I love potatoes!
I'm going to take this baby out, oh that's really hot!
It's just going to take some fenageling here, to keep the parchment paper underneath so
that it makes it easier to slide right off.
Now, make sure you let this rest a little bit before you cut into it, just like any
kind of meat, you know?
I like to cut it on an angle, I don't know why, I just think that you get really beautiful
slices, look at that huh?
Look at that beautiful egg!
I'm probably making a giant mess.
But nobody cares because everyone loves this meatloaf, but no one loves it as much as I
do, let me tell you.
This goodness right here, with a nice salad, maybe a nice tomato salad, oh my word.
Yeah!
A nice tomato salad along with it and that is pretty much an ideal, special occasion
meal if you were to ask me.
There's never been a meatloaf in the history of meatloaf's that's been better than this.
It is so, I am like chewing so fast because I am so excited about it it is so full of
flavor, I don't know how to explain it, I really don't it is full of flavor, it is juicy,
it's like salty from the meats and the cheeses.
Mmm!
And the peas and the potatoes, perfection!
LauraintheKitchen.com has got the written recipe for you, I hope you have enjoyed spending
time with me, make this and you will love it forever.
I'll see you next time.
Bye!