What If You Put a Meatloaf in Your Smoker?

The intersection of America on a plate
Photo Credit: TH

The Recipes First
Smoked Meatloaf
- One (1) lb. 80/20 ground beef
- One (1) chorizo link
- Four (4) garlic cloves
- One (1) egg
- One (1) slice white bread, soaked in whole milk
- One-half (1/2) orange pepper, diced
- Salt, pepper, and onion powder to taste
- hickory wood chips

Place ground beef into bowl. Squeeze chorizo out of the casing into the meat. Add the egg, diced pepper, and saturated bread. Using a garlic press, crush the cloves into the mixture. NOTE, if you don't have a garlic press, chop garlic finely before adding to mixture. Season ingredients and then mix thoroughly with your hands until you no longer see large clumps of chorizo or bread within the mixture. Form the meat into a loaf and place into the smoker, using dry hickory chips as the smoke source. Set temperature no greater than 250°F. Begin checking temperature after two hours. When the internal temperature at the center of the loaf is 165°F, the loaf is finished (165°F is the safe consumption temperature of pork/sausage). Remove from the smoker, and allow to rest for at least five minutes before slicing and serving.

Garlic-Cheese Whipped Potatoes
- Four (4) Yukon gold potatoes, diced in cubes no larger than one-inch size
- 20 garlic cloves
- Two (2) oz. sharp white cheddar
- Two (2) oz. Norwegian-style Swiss cheese
- Whole milk
- Salt and pepper to taste

In a large stockpot, boil potatoes and garlic until soft. Drain, and then place in a blender. Add the cheese and seasoning and pulse, adding milk along the way to get to the desired texture.

Photo Credit: TH

There's nothing that sits at the intersection of "American" and "benign" than barbecue. Smoking meats, vegetables, cheeses, or anything edible is the landmark contribution to world cuisine. On that same note, one of the stereotypical landmark American dishes is the meatloaf, but with a different amount of acclaim than most barbecue comes with. Meatloaf has such a tarnished reputation because it was the go-to dish on 1950s sitcoms, and it was almost always the butt of any food-related joke. Growing up, I never got the sense that meatloaf had to be some throwaway dish that you were forced to eat. My dad's meatloaf was always tasty and juicy, which can be chalked up to the fact that even when he didn't wrap it in bacon, he always used high-fat beef always and sausage most of the time. My wife never used sausage, but her meatloaf consistently is tasty and moist as well. Maybe television writers just don't have people in their lives who know how to cook.

Anyway, no matter how iconic or delicious a dish is, it's always fun to riff on it. That's the thing that sets food apart from other fine arts, that whimsy is not only acceptable but almost required. On the Fourth of July weekend, what better way to show that whimsy than by taking that great but maligned American staple and cooking it the way that highlights the best parts of America? I'm far from the first person to attempt throwing a meatloaf in a smoker, but again, smoking meats, cooking in general, isn't meant to be homogenized and standardized anyway. As long as it's safe to eat, go nuts.

My take on smoked meatloaf drew inspiration from my dad. The idea was to get as much flavor into the meat before putting it on smoke just so it would leave no doubt in your mind it was a dish worth eating. Salt and pepper should be in every savory dish, at least the salt should. I opted for fresh garlic and onion powder as the combo. Using both powders or both fresh works too. I wanted to keep the unnecessary water levels down, especially since I was also adding bell pepper. I love the flavor that bell peppers give to meatloaf. I've been using them as an ingredient for as long as I've been making it the traditional way. You don't necessarily have to use orange; red and yellow are fine too. I'd just stay away from green peppers, unless you're making a Cajun meatloaf and require the holy trinity. Do not under any circumstances mess with Cajun cooks/chefs. Louisiana food is sacred, from Emeril Lagasse all the way down to Popeye's.

The end result of smoking is always to have the juiciest possible meat with flavors amplified by the smoke. Not only was this the moistest meatloaf I ever made, having it cook over hickory smoke gave it the hint of bacon flavor that comes with wrapping the loaf in said meat without having the extra fat. The fat from the beef and the chorizo was more than enough to keep the loaf from drying out. That's why for meatloaf, more than anything else, checking temperature fastidiously is a must. I was fine opening and closing the smoker door more than a few times towards the end, but I'm also a doofus who has anxiety. If you want to be smart about it, get one of those digital temperature gauges where you can thread a wire between the small opening in the smoker door and monitor temperature without having to open anything.

Photo Credit: TH

As for the sides, nothing goes better with meatloaf than mashed potatoes. My favorite play on the side is from Chima, a Brazilian steakhouse franchise that has a location in Philly, among other cities. The potatoes are less a mash than they are a puree. The texture is velvety and luxurious, and it's also easy to replicate in a home kitchen. I know what some of you are thinking already; the above recipe calls for no butter. Preposterous! The best mashed potatoes have loads of butter! Well, I am here to tell you that I didn't add butter not by choice, but because I forgot. It didn't matter anyway. The potatoes with just the milk, cheese, and seasoning, had such a lovely texture with decadent but subtle flavor that allowed it to pair well with the meatloaf but not overtake it as the star on the plate.

Finally, moving onto the vegetable, asparagus is such an easy thing to cook and have taste good. You don't need to oven-bake it or make any kind of creamy sauce. All one needs are the goods, the seasoning, the right apparatus, and a microwave oven. It's not time intensive at all, and when you're done cooking it in six minutes, it is as tender as if you steamed or roasted it for a longer period of time. Basically, all you do is snap off the woody part of the stems. I recommend doing this by individual piece, making this the most time consuming portion of the prep. Put the prepped stalks into a microwave safe dish like Pyrex, douse with enough olive oil to lightly coat all of it, season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, cover with plastic wrap, and microwave the dish on high for six minutes. I hate calling techniques like these "hacks," but this is the kind of shit they tell you to do on those kinds of videos. You will feel like a genius chef.