Meatloaf

Do you ever wish you had your own personal smoker? But maybe you don’t have the money to buy or build your own. Maybe you don’t have easy access to mesquite chips. Or maybe you don’t live in the country and have a spare shed out back in which to string up sausage links.

I’ve stumbled across a quick, low-cost option that works even for people who live in a big-city apartment. First, bake something with a high fat content—say, a meatloaf made with two pounds of ground round from the Florence Meat Market. Then neglect to consider that as the meat cooks for an hour in its sexy red Le Creuset loaf pan, it will sweat hot grease faster than John Travolta. This is key: you will want to have neglected to line the oven rack with tinfoil or to have placed the loaf pan in a shallow baking tray. Because then grease will pool on the bottom of the oven and start smoking like a tire fire. Soon, everything in a large radius will be coated with an acrid, sort-of meaty film, whether it’s ham, love seats, shirts, hair, etc. There you have it: your own walk-in smoker in a few simple steps.

Incidentally, the meatloaf turned out superbly despite a pause with 20 minutes of remaining bake-time in order for me to run out and purchase scouring pads and a cheap foil roasting pan to catch any remaining grease. I could have pressed on without these items but I was weeping uncontrollably from the billows of gray smoke and I didn’t want to set off my neighbors’ smoke alarms.

This is my Mom’s recipe, which means it’s pointless to reproduce it here in that everyone swears by his own Mom’s meatloaf recipe and every Mom’s meatloaf recipe is different. But for me it’s a delicious taste of home that I’m hoping to continue to associate with good times and not grease fires.