There are certain recipes that just feel like home to me, and none more than Mom’s Homemade Meatloaf!
As the temperatures outside fall, I always look forward each year to being able to fire up my oven again and fixing great oven-baked comfort foods. Living in South Carolina, it’s just too hot during the summer months to use the oven. It warms up my small house too much! I stick to meals that are stovetop, slow cooker, or Instant Pot based from May until September. One of my favorite cold-weather comfort foods is classic meatloaf. My Mom has been fixing this recipe for as long as I can remember and it always makes me feel good. I actually find myself craving this as the temperatures begin to drop each fall.
I’ve taken Mom’s classic recipe and have changed it up so that it uses primarily whole ingredients. It has now also been made gluten-free. The Picante sauce that goes on top has a nice sweetness that really adds to the savory dish. The original recipe called for brown sugar, and I’ve just swapped that out for Sucanat, which has that brown sugar taste and it works really well. I’ve also used coconut sugar and that’s turned out well too.
Serve it with some freshly mashed potatoes and some steamed veggies with butter, and it makes for a great, easy meal. Leftovers are just as yummy, and it freezes very well too!
Need a smaller version? There is a Mom’s Homemade Meatloaf version for two!
Mom’s Homemade Meatloaf
Ingredients
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1/2 cup ground oatmeal or breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1/4 cup onion chopped
- 1/2 tsp salt
- black pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp turbinado sugar sucanat or coconut sugar
- 2 tbsp ketchup
- 1/2 tsp ground mustard
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a medium mixing bowl, add the ground oatmeal or breadcrumbs.
- Add the milk and allow the oats to soak for a couple of minutes.
- Add the ground beef, egg, onion, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
- Add to a loaf pan.
- In a small bowl, mix sugar, ketchup and ground mustard and mix thoroughly.
- Spread evenly over top of meat mixture.
- Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
