Southwestern Meatloaf

I asked the husband to find a meatloaf recipe and he picked this one out.  He made a good choice!

Recipe courtesy of: Chrissy (at allrecipes.com)

Original recipe located at:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Meatloafa-Little-Southwest-Style/Detail.aspx

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs (I used regular bread crumbs and added a teaspoon of Italian seasoning)
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup barbeque sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt (a few reviewers suggested that this would be too much salt, which I agreed with —especially if you use celery salt, but even BBQ sauce and ketchup have a high sodium content…so I only added 1/4 teaspoon salt)
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon celery salt (I ommitted this, as I didn’t have any celery salt.)
• 1/2 teaspon cumin (not in the original recipe)
• 1/2 small green bell pepper, finely diced (I had one on hand that I wanted to use up)

Topping: About 1o minutes before it was done, I mixed a bit of BBQ sauce with a couple tablespoons of crumbled French’s fried onions, sprinkled them on top, and for good measure added two slices of cheese).  I love cheese.

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Mix the ground beef, eggs, onion, bread crumbs, salsa, ketchup, barbeque sauce, salt, pepper, and celery salt together in a bowl; transfer to a loaf pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown on top, about 1 hour.

I think it would make awesome burgers, but I’m not sure if it would hold up very well (I used 92% lean ground beef, which may have something to do with it).  We both enjoyed the meatloaf, it was something a little different and was nice and flavorful.