Recipe Hijacker

:stands up: Ahem (obligatory throat clear)

Hi, I’m the Unintentional Career Woman, and I’m :gulp: a recipe hijacker. WHEW! Feels good to let that out.

I am a recipe hijacker, though, but it’s a relatively new thing for me. Not that I’ve never cooked- I have. I started cooking early on, actually. But recently I’ve found a new spunk for it- thanks to the Food Network and The Pioneer Woman.

So why am I a recipe hijacker? I love to get new recipes and follow them, but I rarely follow them to the letter. For many reasons I choose to change ingredients or amounts- maybe I don’t have the exact ingredients called for so I find something I think will work. Or maybe the recipe calls for something healthy and vegetable-y that my husband is SURE to not eat, so I either take that out or again substitute something else in its place.

So once in a while I will share a recipe with you that I hijack and make a la' me, and let you know how it turned out. I’ll tell you what I used in my recipe, and what I should have used if I didn’t like my choice and want to save you the horrid embarrassment of your family hiding it in the napkin or feeding it to the dog. We’ll start out with The Pioneer Woman’s meatloaf, which I made last night, and probably would have been a lot better with her exact recipe. You can find the original recipe here.

My version:

1 ½ lbs. of ground turkey (I’m a beef lover, but this is what I had in the fridge)
1 cup of milk (I should have only used about ½ cup)
4 slices of potato bread (don’t think I’d use the potato bread again, and this was too much bread for the amount of turkey I used)
Thick sliced bacon (yum- don’t forget this ingredient)
Black pepper
Seasoned Salt (like Lowry’s- I love this stuff)
Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
4 eggs (again, too much for the amount of meat- maybe needed 2 or 3)

Sauce:
About 1 cup of ketchup
2 tsps. Herlocher’s Dipping Mustard
About a tsp. of brown sugar

Put the bread in a bowl and pour the milk over it- let it soak for a few minutes.

Then combine the bread (try to squeeze out some of the milk- mine got a bit runny), meat, seasonings, cheese, and eggs and mix together. Form the mixture into a loaf shape on a broiler pan (use a pan with a rack- the fat and grease will run off of it and make it much better). Lay strips of bacon across the top of the loaf, tucking the ends under the loaf on each side.

Combine the ingredients for the sauce and mix until it’s smooth. Spread about 1/3 of the sauce mixture onto the top of the meatloaf and put the rest in the fridge to use later. Bake at 350° for about 45 minutes. Then spread another 1/3 of the sauce mixture onto the top, and bake for another 15 minutes. Let the meat sit for a few minutes, then cut and enjoy with some mashed potatoes and veggies! Serve the last 1/3 of the sauce mixture on the side for dipping.

My observations:

The flavor of the dish was really good- better than I expected it to be. The meatloaf mixture itself was a bit thinned out, which is why I stated the above suggestions to my amounts of ingredients. The sauce was AWESOME- I cannot tell you how much I loved the sauce. Even my husband raved about it, and the only condiment he eats is bar-b-q sauce.

Also- the bacon didn’t crisp up on the top, which I thought of a couple of reasons to explain. First- I might put the sauce on top of the meat, and THEN layer on the bacon so that it would be exposed. I also might use the broiler for a bit after it was cooked to brown and crisp up the top before taking it out of the oven.

Overall, it was a success, but I would definitely make some changes to it next time. Oh- and unless you want to be eating leftovers for 3 days afterward- make it when at least 4 people will be eating dinner.