I wanted to try something a little different again, so I went with the meatloaf with ground beef and mild Italian sausage. A few different ingredients and wound up with something quite tasty. I made 2 loaves…each exceeding 3 lbs so I could, once again, vac seal one and freeze it for a later time. Here's the recipe:
3 lbs mild Italian Sausage (loose, extracted sausage from casings)
3 lbs ground beef-93% lean (lean cause of sausage)
1 large red onion (coarsely chopped)
2 Tbsp garlic powder
4 eggs
2 Tbsp Canadian Steak seasoning
4 oz ketchup
4 oz Big Bob Gibson’s Red Sauce (any you like)
2 oz Memphis rub (use your own)
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
8 oz Italian 4 cheese mix
Mix the ingredients thoroughly, form into 2 loaves, and place them on a single broiler/cookie type sheet (Pam or such is a good idea here) with holes in it so the smoke can get to the underside of the meatloaf and fat drippings can escape. Here’s a picture just before they went into the smoker:
Throw the sheets with the loaves into a 210* preheated smoker (2 oz hickory, 2 oz white oak or your choice) until internal temp hits 150*. Here they are fresh from the smoker:
Let the meat loaf rest for 20 minutes and coat the top/sides of the meat loaves with Big Bob Gibson’s Red (or sauce of your choice). Here coated before their visit back to the smoker:
Then throw them into a 250* preheated smoker for apprx. 20 minutes to set the outside of the meatloaves. Let them rest for 10 minutes and slice:
Very very good. They finished with a tasty, smokey barbecue flavor. Nice consistency...the hamburger meat and sausage melded well. I must be getting
anesthetized to the smoke flavor cause I mentioned to Mrs. Pags that I thought it could use more smoke flavor, and she said, "Are you kidding? The smoke flavor was strong. Right on. But no more."
If you recall from a previous post, I was going to incorporate horseradish into this endeavor, but I forgot until too late. Horseradish flavored meatloaf will have to wait for another time.