What do breadcrumbs do in meatloaf

After all, this is meatloaf! The trick to making gluten free meatloaf without breadcrumbs is all in how we physically make our meatloaf. I add water and fresh chopped parsley, and really mix it up. You want the ground beef to squish through your fingers without issue, and have a very soft texture. The meatloaf without breadcrumbs will still absorb water, it just needs a little hands on TLC from us. This breadcrumb free meatloaf will still be super tender, but stay together without issue.

It is all in the loaf making! Many popular meatloaf recipes include ketchup. Personally, I have never been a fan 0f this, but I get that many people want that sweet tomato flavor with their meatloaf. BBQ sauce is a great substitute for ketchup in meatloaf. This is just because everyone in my family prefers their meatloaf differently.

Thanks for the post! I made this recipe and altered it according to previous reviews: 1 I added Worcestershire Sauce 2 didn't have any fresh onion so I used minced 3 added garlic powder 4 added 1 slice of bread ripped into pieces since it seemed too wet when mixing 5 used a glass baking dish 6 doubled the topping 7 used seasoned bread crumbs. This turned out great and we went back for seconds even when my man is sick and said he wasn't hungry!

I personally thought the topping was a tad too sweet so I would do everything the same next time except reduce the brown sugar some. This was very easy and a big hit. Will definitely make again and again!!! Made this dish for company the other night and WOW! It was a BIG hit! My 6 yr old had 2 huge pieces and my hubby even had leftovers for breakfast the next morning while we were all still sleeping! Seasoned breadcrumbs are a must for this recipe; Would be very bland without them.

Thanks for the great recipe! Hands down, this was the best meatloaf that I've ever made. I used about 2. Following some of the advice of others as well as adding a few of my own tweaks, the meatloaf was perfect.

Here's what I did: 1. It was an abundance of sauce, and a lot of the other reviews said that there wasn't enough sauce, so I spooned a thin layer at the bottom of the loaf, molded half the loaf, then sauced the top, and then added the rest of the loaf on top and sauced it really well.

This was absolutely perfect. Lastly, there was no specification on whether or not to cook the meatloaf covered or uncovered. I used enough aluminum foil to line the baking dish as well as cover the top so I essentially wrapped the loaf in foil and cooked covered for 45 minutes, drained most of any accumulated liquid and cooked uncovered for an additional 30 minutes.

This was super moist and delicious!!!!! Wendy Douglass. I made this meatloaf with my boyfriend. While breadcrumbs are considered an important ingredient in this classic, homey dish, with a little ingenuity you can create a delicious meatloaf without breadcrumbs. The exact origin of meatloaf isn't quite clear, according to Bon Appetit. However, it's agreed that the purpose of the classic dish was to stretch out the main ingredient — protein — and use up any of the leftover ingredients you had in your kitchen, which may have included vegetables and stale bread.

Most of the classic meatloaf recipes include a mixture of beef, eggs, various herbs and spices such as onions and garlic, and of course, breadcrumbs. According to the cooking experts at Kitchn , the breadcrumbs in your meatloaf act as a binding agent for the meat. Additionally, Kitchn recommends soaking your breadcrumbs or stale bread in milk before mixing with your meat to improve the moistness in your finished dish. When searching for substitutes for bread crumbs in meatloaf you need to look for ingredients that provide these necessary elements.

While there are many alternative ingredients you can use in place of your breadcrumbs, to help bind the meat and improve moisture you can simply add one more egg to your classic meatloaf recipe. Inspired by a clean eating paleo meatloaf recipe, this meatloaf recipe without bread crumbs is nearly identical to the original.

You can also use a 5x9-inch loaf pan, but you may need to increase the cooking time to one hour and 15 minutes. Eggs are an ingredient in nearly every meatloaf, and they have two distinct roles. Egg yolks, which are mostly water but contain a good amount of protein and fat, add flavor, richness, and moisture. They also help bind the meat together and get the loaf to set in a stable form without the need to overwork the meat. Egg whites have even more water in them, are devoid of any fat at all, and have a very mild flavor.

Their main role is to add extra loose proteins to the mix to assist the egg yolks in their quest to add structure without overworking the meat or adding toughness.

We'll definitely include them. Milk and other dairy products, like heavy cream and buttermilk, contain both water and fat, adding two types of moisture to our meatloaf. I'm pretty skeptical about this.

Milk is mainly water, with some milk fat and a few proteins thrown in. What could cause it to tenderize meat? What good does that do? Besides, plain old water which is abundant in the meat and all the vegetables you add to meatloaf will perform that function just as well.

Indeed, cooking three batches of meat side by side, one simmered in milk, one simmered in water, and one allowed to simmer in its own juices, left me with three batches of meat that were equally tough. Fact of the matter is, milk does not tenderize meat. The only way to guarantee tender meat is not to overcook it. And that's a simple matter of using a thermometer when you bake the meatloaf.

Milk does, on the other hand, add moisture and fat and is worth including for that fact alone. Heavy cream works better. Better still is buttermilk, which has a unique tang that adds depth and complexity to the finished dish. Bread crumbs may, at first glance, seem like an unnecessary extender—something added just to stretch your meat a little bit further—but they are perhaps the most important ingredient of all when it comes to improving the texture of a meatloaf.

Aside from absorbing and retaining some moisture as the meatloaf cooks, they physically impede the meat proteins from rubbing up too closely to one another, minimizing the amount of cross-linkage and thus dramatically increasing tenderness. In many ways, the physical structure of a meatloaf is much like the structure of an emulsified sauce stabilized with starch. In the latter case, starch acts like a bouncer, keeping fats from coalescing, while in the former, bread crumbs do the job, keeping meat proteins apart.

I found that using crumbs from fresh bread slices ground in the food processor provided better moisture and binding capabilities than dried bread crumbs. Finally, mushrooms, while not necessarily a standard meatloaf ingredient, are an invaluable addition.

Why do I include them under binders and extenders rather than lump them in with the aromatics? Because they act much more like bread crumbs than they do like, say, onions.

Mushrooms are extremely porous and are full of flavorful liquid. At the same time, they are soft and spongy. Just like bread crumbs, they prevent the meat proteins from interlocking, increasing tenderness while simultaneously adding flavor as they slowly release their liquid.

In fact, they're so much like bread that I treat them exactly the same way—grind them in the food processor and add them to the raw mix, no parcooking necessary at all! So, to summarize, we have the following chart:. With the meat mix and the texture of the loaf squared away, I shifted my focus to flavorings. The base of carrots, onions, and celery made sense to me—the three vegetables are a classic addition to meat dishes and sauces for a reason—but when they are simply diced and added to the meat mix, their texture doesn't quite work in meatloaf; I found it interfered with the velvety-ness I desired.

How to deal with this? Easy, just chop them finer and soften them. We've got the vegetables in there, now for a few ingredients to up the meaty backbone of the loaf, namely deploying my trusty umami bombs: anchovies, Marmite, and soy sauce. All three of these ingredients are rich in glutamates and inosinates, chemical compounds that trigger signals that tell our brains we're eating something savory and meaty. They make the meatloaf taste meatier without imparting a distinct flavor of their own.

Mixing this flavor base into my meat produced a mixture wetter than any other meatloaf mix I'd seen. This led to a moister end product that retained moisture with the help of the gelatin , but it proved problematic when shaping the loaf. I could bake it in a loaf pan, but I prefer making free form loaves on a baking sheet to maximize surface area for flavorful browning or glazing.

The solution was to use a hybrid method. I packed my meatloaf mix into a loaf pan, covered it with foil, and then inverted the whole thing onto a rimmed baking sheet, spreading out the foil so that I now had a foil-lined baking sheet with an inverted meatloaf and loaf pan on top of it.

I baked this way for about half an hour—just long enough to set its shape—and then used a spatula and kitchen towels to lift off the pan. The result was a perfectly loaf-shaped meatloaf just right for slicing into sandwiches , with all the advantages of a free-form loaf and its extra surface area. You can leave your meatloaf completely undressed, but I kind of like the old-fashioned, low-brow sweet vinegariness of a ketchup-and-brown-sugar glaze.

Draping the loaf in bacon wouldn't do any harm either. I still haven't tried topping my loaf with bananas as Mr. Nickerson so helpfully suggested. As he could tell you, though, the beauty of meatloaf lies in the almost infinite ways in which it can be customized. So long as your ratio of meat to binders is correct, the sky's the limit as to what you can do.