Mushroom-Kale Meatloaf (AIP Friendly)

Yup, you read the title correctly. I’m doing it. I’m posting a recipe for a loaf of meat. 

And let me guess, as soon as you read this title your mind shifted either to either a) visions of that “mystery meatloaf” served every Friday at your grade school cafeteria, b) memories of that hard & chewy meatloaf your mom served for dinner occasionally (how it was both hard and chewy I will never know..) or c) a hybrid of the two – Mystery Meatloaf meets Hard and Chewy Meatloaf.. yikes.

Something about meatloaf tends to turn people off & my guess is that it mostly has to do with the second part of it’s name. You cook up some meatballs, meat patties (aka burgers), meat pies (aka chicken pot pie & people can’t have enough. Bring them ON. But a quick mention of meat loaf & quickly the noses turn up & people are all of sudden not so hungry. Uhhh, I think I’ll stick with the salad…

Poor meatloaf carries around quite the stigma.

BUT I’ve created/modified a recipe that I think will help lessen that stigma a little bit & hopefully inspire some of you out there to give the old loaf a second chance.

If you’ve read my previous posts (on both this site and my old site) you probably know by now that I’m a big fan of ground meat – ground beef, ground turkey, ground pork, ground [insert meat of choice here].. it’s all good to me. Cook it up in a pan with a few simple spices & I’d be more than happy to eat that for every meal. But nine times out of ten I will cook my ground meat exactly the same way so when I stumbled upon this recipe on Mickey Trescott’s blog, Autoimmune Paleo, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to experiment with a new way of cooking my ground meat.

And I’m really glad I decided to put all previous meatloaf connotations aside and make this bad boy because it is my new obsession. Seriously. The meatloaf is delicious and saves me a ton of time in the morning. My new routine (for the past three weeks at least) has been to make a batch at the beginning of each week and cut it up into individual slices to eat for breakfast (and also an occasional lunch or dinner) for that week. Each morning I take out a slice and pop it in the toaster oven to heat up while cooking up some veggies in the excess fat/juice (saved in a small glass container) that cooks off in the loaf pan! I’ve found that each loaf usually provides me with between 8 and 10 meals.

The first time I made this meatloaf I didn’t venture too far from Mickey’s original recipe since I had never made meatloaf before, however the second time I made it I customized it to my preferences which is the recipe I’ve included below. The cool thing about this meatloaf is you can pretty much sub out the ground meats, vegetables, and spices for the ones you like best. Also, if you’re not following the autoimmune protocol feel free to mix in a few eggs for some additional protein or add some sliced tomatoes or tomato sauce on top. I imagine that would taste very good.

Mushroom-Kale Meatloaf

Makes: 8 – 10 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon Coconut Oil (or Duck Fat, Bacon Fat, etc.)
• Small Handful Dried Sage (about 1/4 cup not packed down)
• 3-4 cups Chopped Kale
• 2-3 cups Mushrooms, Halved
• 2 lbs Ground Meat (I used 1 lb Beef / 1 lb Turkey)
• 1 tablespoon Minced Garlic
• 2-3 Teaspoons Sea Salt
• 1 Teaspoon Pepper
• 5-6 Slices Bacon

Kitchen Tools:

• Cutting Board
• Sharp Knife
• High-powered Blender or Food processor (or Hand Grater could work too)
• Large Mixing Bowl
• Cooking Pan/Skillet
• Loaf pan (I use a 8″ x 8″ square pan)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).
2. Place Dried Sage in the food processor & turn on for about a minute to chop down sage into small pieces (alternatively you could also chop up the sage with a knife)
3. Add Kale to food processor & pulse until the kale is chopped up into very small pieces (don’t blend because otherwise kale may form into a paste)
4. Transfer Kale & Sage blend into mixing bowl
5. Add Mushrooms to food processor & pulse until majority of the mushroom are chopped up into small pieces – I recommend actually leaving a few of the mushrooms out & dicing them up into slightly larger pieces so you’ve got a few larger chunks scattered throughout the meatloaf
6. Melt tablespoon of Coconut Oil in a pan and once melted add tablespoon of Minced Garlic
7. Add Kale, Sage, and Mushroom contents into pan and mix around to coat mixture with oil and garlic
8. Add about 1-2 tablespoons of Sea Salt & cook veggies for 5 – 10 minutes until they begin to soften and then transfer back into mixing bowl to cool for about 10 minutes
9. Add ground meat, the remainder of the Sea Salt, and a tablespoon of Black Pepper to mixing bowl and mix entire contents with your hands until thoroughly combined
10. Transfer mixture into loaf pan (spread and smooth out the mixture so that it forms into a uniform “loaf”)
11. Lay strips of bacon across the top of the meatloaf (You may need to cut the strips of bacon up so that they fit to your loaf pan and are able to lay flatly across meatloaf mixture)
12. Place meatloaf into oven & cook for about 45 – 50 minutes
13. Remove meatloaf from oven once it’s done cooking & carefully pour liquid contents that accumulated at the bottom of the pan into a glass container – save these contents at room temperature to cook veggies in throughout the week
14. Put meatloaf back in the oven on the top shelf, set your oven to “Broil”, and Broil the meatloaf for about 8-10 minutes so that the bacon on top crisps up
15. Let Meatloaf sit for about 10-20 minutes and then slice up into individual slices for dinner that night or to enjoy for the remainder of the week!

– Meatloaf can also be frozen in individual servings to de-thaw/heat up later on if you don’t think you’ll be able to eat it all within the week

Pictures:

Some of my meatloaf meals:

Quite the heart-y meal