The recipe (from a 1940's era book called "Mushroom Cookery") calls for the shrooms to be sliced thin using that thing on the side of a cowbell cheese grater. That works okay but I prefer them fully grated -- it allows the whole thing to hold together better. I forgot to add that the recipe also calls for onions, which I caramelize once the shrooms are cooked down.

A good meat loaf is hard to beat when it comes to comfort food, especially at the end of a cold overcast day. Enjoy yours, Nano! I have a 10k tomorrow morning, so it's spaghetti for me.

I make a bison/Stilton meatloaf that is rather good. I use milk soaked cubed baguette, mushrooms sautéed with some amontillado, sautéed onions, and sautéed celery. I learned the hard way to be careful with the amount of cheese, less than a 1/4 cup of Stilton now. I think too much makes it a little bitter in addition to over powering the loaf. The top gets covered with Polish bacon, of course that's more fat than I should have in a year or two.

Sounds delicious, but I'm still wary of the bleu cheese and could leave that out altogether and want for nothing. But, that's just me. I might be convinced.

Now mine, OTOH, is pretty basic and almost simplicity itself: just chopped onions and red bell pepper, salt, black pepper, dried thyme, Worcestershire sauce, ground chuck, eggs, oatmeal (rolled, not cut), and *bam* - mix 'em all together, just like that. I usually use a loaf pan, out of habit more than anything. This is one of the few dishes I wouldn't consider putting garlic in; the onions rule, here. I incline now to not soaking the oats: if the mix seems dry, then maybe add a drop of milk; or maybe just do it anyway for the hell of it. Bake it at 350F untill the top browns, beketchup the top, sprinkle a bit more oatmeal on top of that for pretty, and finish baking 'til done. I have no idea how long that will be; today's meatloaf is a big one.

Ooh, the house smells good. Question for you across-the-Pond folks: do you have meatloaf among your down-home dishes?

Sometimes I wonder why I read through these topics. However, tonight I learned what surely has been missing from my meatloafs. It's bam. I should have known that. I realize that the bam is most likely a typo, when the writer probably meant "spam", else he has been watching too much daytime TV.

What ever else goes in our meatloaf the meats are always 1/3 beef, 1/3 pork, and 1/3 veal.
And we like a ketchup crust...nom, nom.
(Garlic Mashers? Boy-Howdy!!)

On the whole....no.
I've heard it mentioned on US tv programmes all the time but I don't really know what it is........well...until now that is.

A country without meatloaf. I never would have thought.

I'm gonna try that mushroom thing too. My wife would like that more than me but I bet it adds flavor. Maybe I'll make a mini mushroom loaf for her and an oatmeal one for me and we'll sample.

Nope. My wife is a fan of yer man with the music and the motorbike, but we wot not of the alleged foodstuff. In fact, we only know the recipe from the Rosanne episode where she tells the kids how to make it. Possibly we have sausages instead. Youse guys don't have sausages the way we have sausages. Actually, when I was in Scotland I saw a thing like a block of meat made out of sausage meat. I can't remember what it was called - Big Davy might say, if he sees this. You would buy slices of it from the butcher. If you're ever in Scotland, watch out for the Scotch Pies. They were already mentioned here a while back. If you're feeling adventurous, try one.
Do youse guys have black pudding?

NB - I've been a vegetarian for years and I don't eat this stuff.

Oh ... sorry ... I didn't recognise "you across-the-Pond folks" as referring to me.

I remember quite seriously standing for some minutes in confusion a few years back when I arrived at Cairo airport. They had four lanes to queue in: "Arabs", "Greeks", "Other Egyptians" and "Foreigners". But they didn't have a lane for me.

Meatloaf really is a type of sausage. Sausages have always been big in our family and Wisconsin is a great place for sausages, a large number of sausage makers next to a city, Chicago, with lots of sausage makers. My mother likes brain sausage and black pudding. A kielbasa in the middle of a meatloaf wrapped in woven bacon is a great way to have sausage.

The only reason I know what a meatloaf is at all is because of this, by B Kliban (one of my personal faves):

It may be a Polish way to have a meatloaf, I'll give you that. I've never seen this.

Not long ago a Scots friend introduced me to a comfort food of his, mince and tatties. Yank meatloaf is fundamentally not all that different from mince apart from being baked in situ with the binding agents, and the result becomes something akin to a terrine epecially if it's in a loaf pan. This is optional; the loaf may be hand-formed on a baking sheet, too. In fact, by now you'll have noticed that pretty much everything about it is optional in some way; you can range from dead-simple to sublime to ridiculous. The only things that never change are 1) ground meat, 2), binding agents, 3) baking, and 4) its being in loaf form.


The abovementioned Caledonian and I have agreed to vehemently disagree - probably for eternity - as to whose are the better. His culinary nationalism is charming to behold, but when it comes to sausages I brook no nonsense. There's no convincing him, but that doesn't stop me from trying.


You can get them here - brown sauce too, thank you - at certain fairs and cultural events where the haggis and squalling bags may also be found. Of course I eat them. My arteries harden just thinking about it.


Not culturally; it's available but hard to get apart from dining out in certain pubs, usually Irish. You're more likely to get some form of Continental European style blood sausage at a butcher shop.

Yes, it makes one go pale, doesn't it.