Comfort Food: Meat Loaf Night

Tonight's dinner was a repeater for us. Not many recipes make "repeater" status for us. In general I like to keep trying to find a recipe that is better than the last. I have tried other meat loaf recipes, however, none have topped this one so far.

Russ and I decided to put meat loaf on the menu for this week after watching Bobby Flay have a meat loaf throw down on the food network the other night. I am a big fan of the food network and have been trying to catch Bobby Flay's throw downs in preparation for my own throw down with Scott. That's right, I am taking my brother-in-law on! I am not sure who we will have pick the throw down dish or judge the dishes, so go ahead and throw your name in the hat if you are interested in campaigning for one these prized positions.

Back to tonight's dinner... this is a Cooking Light recipe from 2005 for Chipotle Meat Loaf. When I first made this I had not cooked with chipotle peppers in adobo sauce before and now I have come to love their smokiness. Neither Russ nor I liked meat loaf growing up, but we have since found an appreciation and taste for it. It really is a comfort food and consequently I always feel like it needs to be served with mashed potatoes. This meat loaf is a different take on the traditional one though. It uses ground turkey instead of beef and uses very little tomato sauce. It also is loaded with lots of fresh and dried spices including cilantro, parsley, cumin etc. It also as I mentioned before has a chipotle pepper and adobo sauce in it. This is definitely the key ingredient that makes me like this recipe over others I have tried. It is also a moist, flavorful meat loaf. Russ rates the meat loaf a 9. Which for those keeping count is currently the highest rating on the blog!

It was a little bit of a sad night here though as we used the last of the bottle of Mrs. Hassinger's homemade ketchup. If you have never tried her ketchup before you are missing out as it has a fantastic flavor and texture to it. The few times we have made meat loaf we have topped it with her sauce and tonight was no exception. I am not sure what we'll use next time as just regular ketchup would be a big disappointment. I guess you'll just have to stay tuned to find out what we top our next meatloaf with.... As if that is not enough suspense already, we have special guests come over for dinner tomorrow night and we'll be serving a dish that is as pretty as it is tasty!