Yes, that is a carb with a carb. We had leftover peas and rice from Sunday and I wanted to use them up. Actually, peas, rice and mashed potatoes mixed together is pretty tasty!
These freeze very well...just leave off the sauce. You can put layers of waxed paper in between them, place in a large freezer baggie and using a straw, suck out as much of the air as you can. You can thaw them before cooking or you can cook the frozen meatloafs a little longer. They are also good on the grill!
Little Cheddar Loafs
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar
1/2 cup cooking oats
1/2 cup chopping onion
1 tsp salt
1 lb lean ground beef
Sauce:
2/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp prepared yellow mustard
Place all ingredients, except sauce ingredients, in a bowl and mix well. You might as well use your hands because they are gonna get messy making the loafs anyway. Shape mixture into 8 little loafs and place in 9x13 pan. Stir together sauce ingredients. Spoon over meatloafs. Bake uncovered at 350 for 45 minutes.
You can leave the sauce off if you don't like it. Or you could use plain ketchup. The sauce tastes like a sweet BBQ. I think it's good and my kids LOVE it.
Now, here's a little trick I figured out. Use the leanest beef you can afford. I usually buy ground chuck for everything, especially for this. But not matter what, when you pull the pan out of the oven, there will be grease on the bottom. Rather than letting the little fellas sit in the grease, move all the loafs to one side of the pan and prop that end up with something (a wooden spoon, a trivet, anything that can handle the heat). All the grease will drain to the other end and your meatloafs will be safe at the top! That's about as healthy as my cooking gets folks! :)
See all the grease pooled at the bottom side
Definitely in my top 10 and probably top 5 favorite foods is mashed potatoes. So yummy!!! Greg's Mamaw made mashed potatoes with almost every meal. I think we even had mashed potatoes with lasagna. You didn't find me complaining though! But I did complain about the onions. Fraley men eat onions like some people eat apples. They slice them into wedges and eat them raw. Ewwww!!!! I like onions, but raw onions, by themselves, as a treat?!?! Glleeeeeech! And you can imagine the breath afterwards.
But back to the yummy potatoes! Mamaw always made mashed potatoes in a pressure cooker. The only pressure cooker that my mom ever used was for canning and I did not know the wonders of the pressure cooker at that point. But, Mamaw, being the wonderful, caring woman that she was, decided that I needed a pressure cooker so that I could make mashed potatoes too. And when Mamaw decided that you needed something, you got it! So, next thing I knew, I was the proud owner of a pressure cooker and she was teaching me how to make my beloved mashed potatoes!
If you've never made mashed potatoes in a pressure cooker, then you're missing out! Or, if you're like my dear friend, Amanda, and have a pressure cooker that you've never used because you weren't sure how, well, now's the time to break it out!!! The biggest benefit to pressure cooking potatoes - TIME!!!! Other benefits are that you can easily make a HUGE batch at once, all the potatoes cook evenly without burning or sticking to the bottom, you don't have to cut the potatoes into tiny chunks and you don't waste any of their yummy goodness in the water that has to be poured off when you boil them in a regular pot.
My other secret to the yummiest mashed potatoes every is CREAM CHEESE!!!! Mmmmm...don't they already sound yummy?!?! Show me a recipe with cream cheese in it and I'll show you a recipe that I love!!! My Aunt Melanie turned me on to this trick and I've never turned back. Along with the cream cheese is butter and salt. So basically you take a naturally fat free (I think) food and add a bunch of fat to it so it tastes delicious (note how I used a descriptor other than "yummy", even though yummy pretty much sums it up)!!!
I'll write this recipe as if you have a pressure cooker, but have never used it. If you know how to use a pressure cooker then just pick out the good parts. If you don't have a pressure cooker, then just use the cream cheese trick for the yummiest mashed potatoes EVER!!! You can even add it to instant potatoes - would Sandra Lee qualify that as "semi-homemade"?
Mashed Potatoes
Potatoes - as many as your pressure cooker will hold - mine holds 8 lbs
Water
Salt
Pepper
Butter
Cream Cheese
Milk
Most/All pressure cookers have some type of disk that fits into the bottom of the pan. This is to keep the food from burning on the bottom of the pan. Place the disk in the bottom of the pan and fill with about 1" of water. You can use more water if you want, but you don't have to. Peel and slice the potatoes. Here's awesome thing #1 - all you have to do is cut the potatoes into slices about 1/4" thick. No tiny little even chunks. Just quick slices. Some pressure cookers have a "max fill" line, others like mine can be filled right up to the brim. If you are going to go to the trouble of making potatoes, why not make as many as you can, right?
After the pan is full of sliced potatoes add a generous amount of salt and pepper right on top. Close the lid - it will have a seal and somehow lock into place. Mine has an arrow that you line up and then twist the lid onto the pan. There is also the valve cover thing - make sure this is in place properly. Most/All of them sit on top of the valve and are just held in place by weight.
Cook the potatoes over high heat, with the lid sealed shut. As pressure builds, many cookers have a locking mechanism so that you cannot open them and get hurt. If water is boiling out the sides then you do not have it sealed properly. Let it cook until it's unlocked (or run under cold water), fix the seal and try it again.
OK, here comes the next great thing - after the valve cover things starts to jiggle, turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for 5 minutes! That's all - just 5 minutes under pressure!!!
After the 5 minutes of cooking is done, CAREFULLY place the entire pot under cold running water until the pressure is released, the locking mechanism releases and if you tip the valve (carefully) no steam/pressure escapes.
Open the lid. Drain the potatoes - I use the lid to hold the potatoes in while the water drains.
Now, to mash - you can do this by hand in the pan or with a mixer. I use my Kitchen Aid mixer and a full load just barely fits into the bowl. Mix, on low speed, adding butter, cream cheese, milk and more salt and pepper. The amounts are up to you. For an 8lb bag of potatoes I use a full stick of butter, 8oz of cream cheese, enough milk to get the right consistency and salt and pepper to taste.
I split 8 pounds of potatoes into 3 batches...had one for dinner and froze the other 2 in gallon ziplock freezer bags.
Gallon Ziploc Bags are great for the freezer -
they lay flat, stack nicely and take up minimal space!
yummy! Look delicious!
ReplyDeleteMade these little meatloaves. Loved 'em. :o)
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