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.
Also, if you have some ground organ meat, this can be blended with the ground beef and kids probably won't notice.