Brown Sugar Meatloaf

Recipe:

PREP TIME	20 Min
COOK TIME	1 Hr
READY IN	1 Hr 30 Min

SERVINGS & SCALING

Original recipe yield: 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 3/4 cup finely crushed saltine cracker crumbs

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 5x9 inch loaf pan.
2. Press the brown sugar in the bottom of the prepared loaf pan and spread the ketchup over the sugar.
3. In a mixing bowl, mix thoroughly all remaining ingredients and shape into a loaf. Place on top of the ketchup.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until juices are clear.

Review:
I made tons of changes to this, but I really don't think I would have liked it much more if I followed the original recipe. I didn't change the sauce any and I think that's what killed it for me. It was just too sweet for me. I'm used to a more savory meatloaf. It was rated quite high by many people, so I'm sure some people would love this. It just wasn't for me.

Here's my changes: First, I used ground turkey rather than ground beef because I like to keep things as healthy as possible and eating ground beef all the time isn't my idea of healthy (ground turkey also tends to me a little more naturally moist than beef, so the texture ends up being more dense -- this doesn't usually bother me, but I wasn't a fan this time). Also, I only used one pound (one and a half just seemed like too much food) and kept everything in the meatloaf mostly the same. I used about half a small onion, chopped fine, and I didn't have saltines, but surprisingly had Chicken in a Biscuit crackers. I used 3/4 cup of them finely crushed but the meatloaf still wouldn't hold together, so I added about 1/3 cup more of bread crumbs. I also kept the sauce mostly the same but put it on top of the meatloaf like reviewers suggested (added a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce -- also recommended by reviewers). The biggest change I made was to "bake" it in a Crockpot on high for four hours instead of the oven. Since summer has decided to show up and things have heated up quite a bit, I didn't want to heat up the house any more than necessary.