Meatloaf

Method

1. mix10 min
   breadcrumbs and milk in a bowl, left until pasty
   breadcrumbs + milk, left ten minutes to become a paste. This panade is the whole difference between meatloaf and a large dry hamburger: the starch granules swell with milk and physically obstruct the meat proteins from linking into a tight network as they contract, and the trapped liquid stays in the loaf instead of running out. Dry breadcrumbs stirred in do the opposite — they absorb moisture from the meat
2. sweat10 min
   medium-low, until soft and cooled before adding to the meat
   onion (+ celery) until completely soft, then + garlic for a minute, then cooled. Raw onion in a loaf releases water as it cooks and leaves cavities; it also never fully softens in ninety minutes of gentle oven heat. Cool it before it meets the meat, or it starts to cook the outside of the mixture
3. fold6 min
   hands, everything at once, mixed only until combined
   panade + beef + pork + eggs + cooled onion + Worcestershire + salt + pepper (+ thyme, + parsley), turned together with a light hand and stopped the moment it is uniform. Overworking ground meat develops the sticky myosin that makes sausage springy — desirable in a sausage, wrong here, where it turns the loaf rubbery and dense
4. score5 min
   free-form on a foil-lined tray, roughly 20 x 11 cm, top smoothed
   the mixture shaped into a loaf on a tray rather than pressed into a tin (+ bacon draped over). Free-form exposes five surfaces to dry heat instead of one, so it browns all round and the rendered fat drains away rather than pooling against the sides and poaching them
5. bake40 min
   175°C, uncovered, until about 60°C internal
   for roughly forty minutes, until the centre reads about 60°C. Moderate heat throughout: hotter and the outer layer passes 71°C long before the centre arrives, which is the usual cause of a dry crust around a pink middle
6. glaze20 min
   ketchup, brown sugar and mustard whisked; half brushed on, then the rest 10 minutes later
   + glaze in two coats, returning to the oven until the centre reads 71°C. Two thin coats set into a lacquer; one thick coat applied at the start simply burns, because the sugar in it caramelises and then carbonises well before the loaf is done (+ vinegar in the glaze to cut the sweetness)
7. rest10 min
   on the tray, out of the oven, 10 minutes before slicing
   before cutting. The panade's held liquid and the rendered fat are both mobile straight out of the oven, and a loaf cut immediately falls apart and floods the board. Ten minutes lets the proteins firm enough to hold a slice