After eating a lot of meatloaf in my life, both at home and in restaurants, I have strong opinions about what it should taste like. Many people think it’s dreadful and that is probably because of all the junk we tend to mix into it or put on top of it. I’ve even read some bison meatloaf recipes that recommend mixing in ground pork with your expensive bison. Mixing swine with my expensive bison meat is out of the question. I set out to make some meatloaf that is about the meat and not a confused jumble of common flavors and textures.
My bison meatloaf is inspired by a fantastic plate I had at Denver’s Rocky Mountain Diner. The market in Denver is fairly competitive with the buffalo meatloaf and buffalo burgers so I had no success in getting the waitress to give me the recipe. The focus was the bison meat, not other flavors or textures. With this in mind, I chose to grate my onion rather than dice it and I also decided to keep the seasonings very simple: celery salt, black pepper, and a small amount of garlic. I also decided to ditch the Americana ketchup that seems to be on most of the diner offerings. In place of the ketchup/mustard mix, I brushed on a small amount of olive oil.
I started with 2 lbs of lean ground bison meat. Remember that the flavor of the bison meat is the focus here, not swine or ketchup. I used one fresh brown egg from our family’s chickens as the binder along with one cup of store bought unseasoned breadcrumbs. I grated 1/2 a cup of onion and cooked it briefly in about a tablespoon of butter with a teaspoon each of celery salt and black pepper. After a few minutes I folded this into the mixture of bison meat, breadcrumbs and egg. I formed the loaf on a pan on some parchment paper and cooked it on 375 degrees for 45 minutes.
The resulting meatloaf was a beautifully dark creation that smelled good and tasted even better. We did serve it with traditional sides: mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes with a light brown gravy.
I’d like to summarize the most important ideas in making a good buffalo meatloaf:
- Don’t use ketchup for a topping. Leave it in the refrigerator or in the bag of leftover fast food packets in the kitchen. Why ruin expensive and sweet tasting meat with it?
- Let the ground bison meat do the talking. Don’t overwhelm the meat with complicated seasonings or dominant vegetable textures. Grate your onions and mince your garlic. Limit your seasonings to celery salt and pepper or just salt and pepper. If you’re using seasoned breadcrumbs, go easy on the salt.
- Try a gravy instead of a topping. Making a gravy with the scraped stuff on your meatloaf pan would be great.
- Don’t use one of those loaf baking dishes that is made for meatloaf. Use a flat tray to allow your meatloaf to breathe from all sides and develop a crusty texture.