I think I bought these silicone cupcake cups/liners a few years ago. I have been itching since then to use them. Well, this weekend after going to a butcher (
www.nellosmeats.com) and buying two pounds of their meatloaf meat mixture I decided I was going to break out the cups and find a recipe to give this a try. I found a recipe online and tweaked it a bit.
The mixture.
2 lbs of meat (whatever you like for a meatloaf as there are plenty of things on the internet to use as guidance as noted I bought a pre-made mixture)
1 kaiser roll tore into small pieces and soaked with milk to cover the bread and mix and let sit to absorb as this may take 10-20 minutes (the original recipe called for buttermilk but I used 2%), you can use any roll you like or two pieces of any bread you like
1/2 cup each of onions, celery, and bell pepper diced fine and sauteed together and then cooled...I put in freezer after saute to cool off quickly (I think I had a little more than this and was good with the mix. It all depends on your likes and how course/fine you want the veggies. In hindsight, I think I may add mushrooms next time)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of your favorite beef rub (I used a beef brisket rub I had stored in the pantry)
1/4 cup of your favorite BBQ sauce for beef (I used Abe's BBQ sauce from my wife's hometown of Clarksdale, MS as that joint sits at the kinda intersection of 61/49 and is the self proclaimed crossroads of Robert Johnson for those blues historians out there)
Mix the bread/milk mixture after milk is absorbed with the two eggs, then mix in the cold veggies, rub, and BBQ sauce
Then mix in with the meat. Mix until you feel that the veggies are incorporated into the meat. Do not overwork or it may make the meat tough (according to what I have read)
Meat, veggies, and bread/milk/rub/BBQ sauce mix
Ingredients in one container
Ingredients incorporated together
Ingredients in the silicon cups. I will be the first to admit that this has pros/cons. The pros are that it can cook in this until the meat gets firm. The con is that the grease has nowhere to escape. I ended up cooking in the cups for about 45 minutes these were at 160° before this time so I cooked them until I got a nice color on top which may have taken them closer to 180°. You will have to be your own judge. Tops are nice color, but bottoms are gray and I liked it when they were more firm. I then pulled off and put on a baking tray and emptied the loaves out of the cups with tongs so the grease would not burn me. I lifted the meatloaves out of the baking tray with tongs to a separate pan so the grease was left on the baking pan. I then put back on the grill without the cups and cooked for another 15-20 minutes. Before putting on the grill, I put some more BBQ sauce on the top of the meatloves. You could use ketchup or BBQ sauce.
Finished product. Not the best picture but hopefully you get the idea. As noted earlier on the meat temps, it is a bit of a xxxx shoot. These ended up firm, but very moist. The BBQ gods were in my corner today as this is the first time I have made them. I got 16 meatloaves out of this mixture. I think I could have ate all of them, but I am an above average weighted guy. I will be making these again as my cousin and wife were also very pleased with the outcome. The recipe I borrowed from kept it as a 2#+ loaf. I am sure that would be fine too, but you would have to probably adopt for a bit of a longer cook for a larger chunk of meat cooking. This was a great appetizer in these cupcake cups.
