smoked loafs

This is my first attempt at smoking meatloaf! After hearing so many good things and personally really liking oven roasted meatloaf i decided to give it a try. The recipe I used was from smoking-meat.com and I followed it to a T.

http://www.smoking-meat.com/meat-loaf-recipe.html

Easy Meat Loaf Recipe

• 2 lbs. ground beef
• 1 small onion finely chopped
• 1/2 green pepper finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic minced (optional)
• 1 C. fresh bread crumbs or saltine cracker crumbs
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 3/4 C. ketchup
• 1/4 C. milk

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. blend the mixture about 4-5 minutes and then form onto a flat cookie sheet.

Step one combine ingredients!

The best tools I have

ready to be formed!

I cooked mine in an aluminum pan so I could just throw it away when we were finished. I also punched some holed using a fancy cheese fork to help it drain as it cooked.

Close up of my holes :oopsie:

Formed into a loaf and ready for the smoked! Make sure you dent your loaf like you would a hamburger paddy so when it swells from the meat tightening up it will look normal and not like a giant meatball.

Probed....

My supervisor and head flavor consultant

I smoked it at around 260* for roughly 3.5 hours. I waited until it his 165 IT.

Yum, nice and smokey with an amazing crust on the outside

Winston trying to sneak a sip of my beverage...

One last shot before we started eating!

So what did I learn from smoking meat loaf.... first I liked this recipe on paper but it felt like it was missing something when we actually ate it. Perhaps it had something it should not have...? I think next time I would skip the green peppers and add more onions or perhaps mix in some sausage with  the ground beef for more flavor (like 80/20 mix). texture left something to be desired for me, maybe I am just used to eating dry meat loaf my whole life and that is what I was expecting but aside from the outer edge the inside was a bit mushy for my liking. It was definitely cooked all the way and aleks liked the way it was but I think next time I would take it up to 175* IT and see how it is. Last I would either put a small rack in the pan or punch WAY more holes in the pan to help it drain. It drained a lot less than I had anticipated and was made worse by the fact I didn't check it at all during the cooking to manually remove the extra rendered fat. All and all the flavor is good but texture left something to be desired. I would definitely try this again though, the small amount of leftovers we had were awesome re heated in a pan and eaten as a sandwich.