I Would Do Anything For Loaf… Especially If There’s Cheese

This was Meat Loaf’s lesser known hit about my Cheesy Turkey Meatloaf. Ok, maybe I just made that up. But it could’ve been if he’d ever tried it. Moving along now…

Hi! I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I just haven’t been in the mood to do much cooking lately, mostly because I’m training to run a 10 mile race in a couple weeks, therefore, I’m pretty hurty and angry a lot. I do not advise anyone to take up running. Seriously. I’m not kidding about this. Anyway… Yesterday was Mother’s Day! And although I’m not a Mom, I felt inspired to make some Mom-like comfort food in the form of my soon-to-be-famous-this-side-of-the-Mississippi-or-maybe-just-in-my-book-club Cheesy Turkey Meatloaf! It’s just like regular meatloaf, except way better, because it’s mine, so it just is. And there’s cheese involved. Don’t fight it. Just go with it.

Mmmm… Cheese.

A few notes here:

1. I use 93/7 ground turkey, because once you add all the melty delicious cheese, this sucker’s got plenty of fat. Trust me. But feel free to fatten it up with ground beef if it makes you happy. This is comfort food, not sad, skinny person food.

2. Most people use bread crumbs in their meatloaf, but not this girl. Nope. I pound the shit out of pretzels and use those. Trust me. It sounds weird, but it gives it a little somethin’ somethin’. Again… Just go with it. I’m totally an expert here. I have a Girl Scout badge somewhere in a box, along with my Debbie Gibson cassettes.

3. You may be tempted to just grab a bag of shredded cheese and toss it in as a shortcut. DON’T DO IT, LAZY!!! Sorry I yelled. But really, you need the chunks o’ cheese to create melty cheese pockets, and also, any straggler cubes that end up at the top of the meatloaf when you put it in the oven get all caramelized and delicious, and I don’t know about you guys, but I would strongly consider marrying caramelized cheese were it legal. It’s totally not weird. Also, feel free to use any type of hard cheese you’d like. I use Colby-Jack because I like my cheese like I like my men: Sharp and flavorful. And easy to pop into my mouth after chopping. Whoa. That sounded wrong. Onto the recipe!

Paula’s Cheesy Turkey Meatloaf

Prep time: 15 minutes or thereabouts

Cooking time: 1 hour

Stuff you need:

• 2 pounds ground turkey
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups pretzel crumbs
• 3/4 pound Colby-Jack, or whatever kind of cheese tickles your pickle, chopped into cubes

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Dump first 4 ingredients into large bowl. Super easy, right? At this point you can either mix with some sort of super strong spoon, or you can do what my momma always taught me- Just dig into that meat with your bare hands, like the cavemen did when they made meatloaf. That happened, right? Grunting noises optional. But way fun.
3. Once mixed, fold in cubes of cheese until distributed evenly throughout.
4. Throw it all into a loaf pan, and pop into the oven for 60 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and let rest for 5 minutes, just so all the delicious fatty juices soak back up. Fat is yummy.
6. Slice n’ serve!

Shit, I’m writing this at 8:00am, and now I want meatloaf for breakfast. This could be a bad situation.