My Best Meatloaf Roll

A few weeks ago I mentioned this delicious meatloaf that I had made.  It took me a long time to learn to like meatloaf but I think I've made, remade and tweaked until I found a couple of good standbys that even I really like.  This is one that I tweaked here and there from my main meatloaf recipe (which I'll mention at the end of the post) and it was delicious.  Served with mashed potatoes and a gravy made from the drippings and my family was raving.

-1kg (2 lbs) lean ground beef
-1/2 kg (1 lb) ground pork
-1/4 cup Parmesan
-1/2 cup of vegetable thin cracker crumbs
-1/2 cup milk
-1 large egg
-2 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley (1 tsp. dried)
-1/2 tsp. garlic powder
-1 tsp seasoning salt
-1 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp pepper
-1 tsp onion powder
-2 cups white mushrooms, sliced
-baby spinach leaves
-2 tomatoes, sliced
-1/2 cup Parmesan cheese and/or grated mozzarella

To make the cracker crumbs, I used a mini chopper and just whirled the day lights out of it until I had coarse crumbs.  If you don't have a mini chopper you can put them in a bag or in between wax paper and crush with a rolling pin or something heavy until the desired coarseness is acheived.

Place the crumbs, milk and egg into a large mixing bowl and stir together.  Let sit for a few minutes until the crackers have absorbed some of the moisture.  Add the ground beef, ground pork, 1/4 c Parmesan, parsley, garlic powder, seasoning salt, regular salt, pepper and onion powder.  Mix together until well incorporated.  In order not to overwork the meat, I get in there with my hands.  But if you're squeamish about that wear some plastic gloves, though you will eventually have to touch the meat to shape it.  Or if you still can't stand that thought, use a spoon though you take the chance of overworking it and overworked ground meat = a tougher end product.

Okay moving on, hopefully you made it through the mixing.  Now get yourself a nice long piece of wax paper approximately 2 ft in length and lay it on the counter.  Place your meat onto it and start patting it out into a large rectangular shape leaving a couple of inches on the shorter sides.  Pat it out so that it is nice and even making nice straight sides.

Now we'll do the stuffing layering. When putting on the stuffing leave at least a couple of inches empty on both of the short sides of the meat rectangle and an inch on either side of the long ends to allow for shifting of stuffing as you roll and to be able to pinch it shut.   Lay enough spinach leaves to cover loaf.  Next lay your sliced mushrooms on top of that.  And finally lay the sliced tomatoes onto the mushrooms.  Sprinkle with the parmesan and/or mozzarella cheeses.

Place a small amount of oil into the bottom of a 13x9 inch baking pan and spread around with a brush or your fingers.  Now starting on the short side start to roll the meatloaf onto itself.  Use the wax paper to help lift and roll it.  Use your hands to tuck filling in as you need to.  It might be a bit awkward at first but keep going all the way to the end.  Pinch all seams and sides together as well as you can. Bring the baking pan close to the roll and using the wax paper lift the roll over the pan and let it roll off the paper into the pan.  Sorry for the raw meat pic but this is what it should look like in the pan.  See?  No seams.

Bake uncovered at 375*F for 70 - 75 minutes.  Let rest 10 minutes before slicing.  And this is what you should get:

Yummy!!!  Moist and full of flavor!

The beauty of this meatloaf is you can totally play with the ingredients.  The mainstays are the ground beef, ground pork, egg, milk and some kind of bread type item that mixes with the milk and egg.  Everything else, from the seasonings to the filling is mix and match.  It's a fun recipe to play with and see what kinds of delicious combos you can come up with!