Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes
Juicy meatloaf with a glazed ketchup crust, served with creamy mashed potatoes and gravy.
- Preparation
- 25 min
- Cook/bake time
- 1 hr
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Calories
Juicy meatloaf with a glazed ketchup crust, served with creamy mashed potatoes and gravy. The trick to avoiding a dry meatloaf is a panade: white bread soaked in milk, which binds the meat juices inside and prevents them from escaping during baking. A Sunday classic of German home cooking, though it borrowed the sweet and sour glaze from American meatloaf, which once crossed the Atlantic with German emigrants.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Soak the panade
Pour the milk over the diced white bread and let it soak for ten minutes until completely soft. Then mash it with a fork into a smooth paste. This panade is the most important building block for a juicy meatloaf, as it holds onto the meat juices during baking instead of letting them run into the pan.
- 2
Sauté the onions
Sauté the diced onions in a little butter over medium heat for six minutes until translucent, adding the garlic in the last minute. Let everything cool before adding it to the meat. Raw onions release water during baking and make the meatloaf crumbly, whereas sautéed ones bring sweetness and depth.
- 3
Mix the meat
Mix the ground meat, panade, cooled onions, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, parsley, and thyme with your hands and season generously with salt and pepper. Work only until everything is just combined. Kneading too long makes the mixture firm and the finished meatloaf rubbery instead of tender.
- 4
Shape and bake
Preheat the oven to 180 °C top/bottom heat. Shape the mixture into a compact loaf about 25 cm long on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Baked free-standing, it gets a crust on all sides, whereas in a loaf pan it would sit in its own fat. Bake it for 40 minutes.
- 5
Glaze and finish baking
Whisk together the ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar, and mustard, and brush the meatloaf thickly with it. Bake it for another 20 minutes until the glaze is shiny and slightly caramelized at the edges. Meanwhile, boil the potatoes, mash them with warm milk and butter, and season with salt and nutmeg. Let the meatloaf rest for ten minutes before slicing.
