Meatloaf Muffins

Growing up, I would groan at my mother’s announcement that we would be having meatloaf for dinner.  Over the course of the last few years, my eating habits have transformed drastically and so have my taste buds.  Now, I look forward to the next time when I’ll be home and can dine on the comfort of my mother’s meatloaf.  While delicious, my mother’s recipe needed some revamping to make it more nutritious.  With my meal prepper mindset, I thought it would be more efficient to make Meatloaf Muffins, so more could be made at once, prepped to eat through out the week or even frozen to eat at a later date!

This recipe was my first attempt ever at making meatloaf, let alone in the shape of muffins but I am VERY happy with how it turned out!  It was super moist and juicy, a worry of mine was that it would be too dry, but that was not the case!  The recipe below is based off of my mother’s original, but there are a variety of other ways you could make meatloaf muffins, such as swapping out the BBQ sauce and ketchup for onion and seasoning, and maybe even adding some spinach!  It really depends on you like best!  Take an original family recipe and make some healthy swapportunities!  Comment below with any switches you made or if you thought of another Meatloaf Muffin idea!

Meatloaf Muffins
1 lb. ground turkey (makes five meatloaf muffins)
1 whole egg
1-2 slices GF bread* (see below tip)
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 Tablespoon Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey BBQ Sauce (plus one squirt, after I mixed it all)
1/4 Cup Ketchup
Pepper and Garlic Powder to taste
* You will need to use gluten free bread as part of the recipe, *if you use Udi’s or any other frozen bread normally, it is helpful that at the end of a loaf, you save the ‘butts’ in the crisper of your fridge so you always have defrosted bread on hand.  Don’t already do this?  No worries, you can toast a slice of bread and it works just as well.  Be careful with defrosting a slice of bread in the microwave though, I did it for too long once and the bread was not the right consistency to crumble and I had to throw the slice out which is a sacrilege since it’s so expensive in the first place!

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Add ground turkey, egg, garlic, pepper, garlic powder, ketchup and Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey BBQ
3. Crumble GF bread and add to mixture, mix well with your hands
4. Spray/grease muffin tin
5. Roll meat mixture into balls, place into tin, unlike making cupcakes or muffins, you want the meat mixture to coming up out of the tin, since it will not rise
6. Place aluminum foil or a cookie sheet under your muffin tin incase the meat drips
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes, poke holes or cut in half to check the inside
8. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, to ensure that the meat is fully cooked, take out one of the muffin halves and make sure there is no pink on the inside

Pair these muffins with mashed potatoes or mashed sweet potatoes, putting it on top and creating a meatloaf “cupcake” instead!

Tips/Notes
– This was my first attempt ever, so the recipe time is a bit estimated, since while I was mid cooking my oven decided to shut off, effecting the times
– Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce brand is gluten free, if using another sauce, please check the ingredients or company website!
– You can top each muffin with ketchup while cooking, I only tried that with one of the muffins, I am unsure if it made a huge difference

– Cut muffins in half to ensure they cook fully if you are paranoid like me about undercooking meat
– Place muffin tin on a cookie sheet or aluminum foil in case the turkey “drips” to prevent the excess from hitting the bottom of the oven and burning!  No one likes the smoke detector to go off while trying to cook a delicious dinner!

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