I love one pot meals. Sure, I admit, I’m lazy, and never seem to have enough time to cook and one pot meals mean less clean up. But also I’m getting older, so I tend to following basic food combining rules – I want to be sure I actually digest the food I spend time preparing. As I understand it, food that is cooked together is simply easier to digest. Combine that with the gentle low and slow far infrared cooking of MEC clay, which also makes things easier to digest and you’ve got one highly digestible delicious meal.
Be sure to check out chef Eric’s options in the notes section.
Clay pot Meatloaf, carrots and potatoes
This will likely be one of your go-to favorites – it's easy and tasty
Servings: 4
Equipment
- MEC clay pot or pan with lid – the large size works well so there is plenty of room for the veggies to brown nicely.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 slices bread torn into pieces; 3/4 cup of rolled oats or broken crackers can be substituted
- 2 tbsp milk
- 1/2 onion finely diced; to be added to the ground beef
- 1 tbsp Italian type dried spices
- 4 Yukon Gold potatoes can substitute sweet potatoes
- carrots can substitute Brussels sprouts, or other roasting vegetables
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 1 onion sliced, to be added on top of the vegetables
- 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1/2 t salt
- 1/2 t black pepper
- 1/2 t garlic
- Optional toppings avocado (our favorite), ketchup, spaghetti sauce, BBQ sauce, grated cheddar cheese
Instructions
- Mix ground beef, bread crumbs, egg, milk, salt, pepper, garlic and Italian seasoning in a large bowl. Form mixture into a loaf and place in a MEC pot/pan.
- Arrange cut potatoes and carrots alongside of meat in the MEC pot/pan.
- Place sliced onions over potatoes and vegetables and add rosemary sprig.
- Cover pot and place in cold oven. Heat oven to 325 degrees. (Meatloaf is usually baked at 350; however, when baking in clay, the temperature is always reduced a little).
- Bake until meatloaf is no longer pink in the center, about 1 hour.
- Let rest about 15 minutes before serving.
- Add toppings of your choice
Sneak in some vegetables such as celery, green pepper, or mushrooms by chopping them, sauteing them and adding them to the ground beef mixture.
Eric Johnson’s variation (an amazing professional chef) –
- He used ground beef and another meat (ground pork?) and ground them together 2-3 times.
- He tenderizes the meat the night before with raw cream and garlic. He kneads the raw cream and crushed garlic into the ground meat. It is a ball when he is done. He puts it in a covered bowl overnight. For a pound of meat, you use about 1/4 cup or raw cream and 3-4 cloves of garlic.
- When ready to cook, he rolls the meat ball out on parchment paper using a pastry roller. Then he applies the alternating stripes of a) spinach sauteed with garlic, b) red sauce. Each stripe is about 2 inches wide and maybe a half inch high. I believe he actually used ketchup for the red stripe. This makes it look very festive and the flavor is amazing.
- With clay, the flavors circulate in the pot/pan; however, it may be helpful to baste before the resting period?
- Notes: Eric doesn’t add bread crumbs, maybe add an egg to the meat mixture. What if you have raw milk and no cream? You can get the cream off the top of the milk. The raw cream/pure fat is what tenderizes as well as the garlic.