It's really only about half turkey but it has almost the texture and density of "real" meatloaf. Been trying different iterations on this for the past year or so. There's no written recipe, though I took some ideas from recipes published online, and I haven't written it down util now. It doesn't really taste like your classic beef or pork meatloaf, but close enough, and very satisfying. This batch came out really good. I'm not big on measuring things, so a lot of it is just eyeball and judgement.
Ingredients:
1.5 lb ground turkey. This is the stuff I get from Costco. Conveniently sold in 1.5 lb packages.
1 medium onion
3 medium sized carrots, peeled
2 large celery stalks
0.5 lb mushrooms. In this case I used cremini, or mini portobellos, because they're readily available at the market. I've used wild mushrooms before - doesn't make a whole lot of difference
1 medium sized eggplant. Believe it or not, there are a lot of Italian meatloaf recipes that incorporate eggplant.
1 cup Coach's Oats. I get these at Costco. Probably any steel cut oats would work. Maybe even Quaker oatmeal.
Not pictured:
4 eggs
Ketchup
Soy sauce (I use the low sodium Kikkoman stuff from Costco)
Italian seasoning
Worcestershire sauce
EVOO
Preheat your oven to 375 deg. Dice up the onions, celery, carrots and mushrooms into really fine pieces. You don't want the veggies to be chunky.
Put a couple of tablespoons of EVOO in a skillet and sauté the onions until they start to become a little translucent. Then add the celery and carrots.
Sauté those for a few minutes and add the mushrooms (sorry I don't have a pic of that step).
At this point you can peel and dice the eggplant. It doesn't have to be completely peeled, in fact you can use all the skin if you want. Also, the pieces don't have to be as small as the other veggies because it gets really mushy as it cooks.
Once the mushrooms have started to cook down, maybe five minutes, add the eggplant.
At this point I opened a bottle of Central Coast pinot noir.
As the eggplant cooks down (maybe ten minutes - you want it really soft) add some salt to taste and a few sprinkles of Italian seasoning. Add plenty of salt, but not so much that it tastes too salty. It will be diluted when you add the mixture to the turkey.
Once the eggplant has cooked down, take it off the heat and let it cool for maybe 15 minutes.
Once it's cooled, add it to the turkey in a large bowl, along with 1 cup of oats, four beaten eggs, a good splat of ketchup (maybe 1/3 cup?) a couple of teaspoons of soy sauce, and a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire (I just added this in because I put it in my beef meatloaf too). Also sprinkle on some more Italian seasoning, maybe two teaspoons.
Mix it all together until it's well incorporated. It's fastest if you use your hands but if you don't want to get them messy, you can do it with the spatula.
Get out your baking dish (this one is about 9.5" x 13.5". You can use a loaf pan if you want but I find that this is easier to cut into pieces when it's done. Oil the inside. I have a sprayer that I use to apply some EVOO.
Spread the mixture evenly in the baking dish. Make sure it's packed down well. Then take your finger, or whatever appendage is handy, and add some diagonal indentations in the surface. Fill those with ketchup.
Cover the whole dish with aluminum foil (shiny side down) and put it in the 375 deg oven for 45 minutes.
Sorry I don't have pictures of the next couple of steps, I got busy with something else, but after 45 minutes remove it from the oven and remove the foil. If there's a lot of liquid on top you can put it back in for a few minutes until it's absorbed (the oatmeal soaks up a lot of this), or (carefully) pour off the liquid.
Take some soy sauce and splash a little between the lines of ketchup.
Put it back in the oven and bake for another 15 or 20 minutes until it starts getting brown on top. I actually turn the temperature up to 400 deg to speed this along a little.
Remove it from the oven and let it sit for 15 minutes or so.
Slice it into whatever sized pieces you want. I get eight pieces out of this.
Serve it on a plate with some salad or whatever else you want to eat. I make a kale Caesar salad out of lacinato kale (also called black kale, elephant kale, Tuscan kale, or whatever). I can't stand the curly kale. I use some commercial Caesar dressing like Girards, or Brianna. Not that much like authentic Caesar but OK for this. I add a little lemon juice to it, some freshly grated Parmesan and croutons. You can also add tomatoes, avocado slices, or whatever floats your boat.
A little ketchup on the side for the meatloaf doesn't hurt, either.
When it's well cooled, you can wrap the leftover meatloaf in individual pieces and freeze for later.
To reheat, thaw it out and gently heat it in a non-stick skillet sprayed with a little EVOO, top side down first and then turn it over. I also cover it and add a couple of teaspoons of water to speed up the heating and keep it from burning.
OK, that's today's lesson in modern healthy (sort of) cooking.
