I don’t like the term meatloaf. It makes me uncomfortable. I feel as though those two words should not be intertwined. While growing up, people seemed to always blast meatloaf for being a log a sketch meat and a ghetto meal that can be packaged into a can and served like dog food. You don’t agree? I don’t care, that’s the picture that was embedded in my mind since birth. My mom never made it for me, thanks a lot mom!! Kidding. But my views were suddenly altered when my badass girlfriend Joanna introduced me to Paleo Meatloaf that she had found from CrossFit Verve. It’s ridiculously simple, cheap, and it’s freaking topped with bacon…anything topped with bacon is good, it’s science. I even made my own BBQ sauce to top it off with. If you think meatloaf is dog food too, thanks for supporting my viewpoints, but seriously try this. It’s a paleo food staple and should occur often in your meal plans.
Oh, and by the way, I’ve been playing around with BBQ sauce recipes, but none of them seem to taste like actual BBQ sauce, more like a sweetened tomato paste, but it’s still flippin good so don’t hate! Play around with it yourself with maybe adding a bit of honey or something else to sweeten it up!
Bacon Meatloaf
Ingredients
For the Meatloaf:
- 2–2.5 lb grass fed ground beef
- 1 cup almond meal/flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 3 tablespoons garlic powder
- 3 tablespoons onion powder
- 11 sliced uncured bacon, 2 sliced cooked and diced
For the BBQ Sauce:
- 1 (6oz) can tomato paste
- 1 onion, minced
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup water or broth
- 2 tablespoons apple butter (optional)
- 1 tablespoon ground mustard (no sugar added)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon allspice
- pinch or two of ground cloves
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- splash of hot sauce, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Dice up your 2 pieces of bacon and throw in a frying pan to cook up for about 5-7 minutes.
- While the bacon is cooking, mix together all other ingredients (except for your 9 slices of bacon) in a large bowl. Once your 2 pieces of bacon are done cooking, add them to the bowl and fully incorporate into the mix.
- Now grab 2 bread loaf pans and add an equal amount to both. Top the meat off with bacon.
- Cook for 45 minutes.
While the meatloaf is cooking, make your BBQ sauce!
- In a large frying pan, add some olive oil (or other fat) and brown the onion–about 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic and stir together to cook a bit more.
- Add all other ingredients and mix together, then let simmer for 10-15 minutes (or longer if you have time-I usually want to eat as quick as possible).
- Now plop that sauce on top of your meatloaf and store the rest in a cute Tupperware container in the fridge.
I made this for Super Bowl Sunday. It was so easy to make and was delicious!!! My family loved it! Definitely going to make this more often. Tonight I’m making the Basil Chicken meatloaf. 🙂
I LOVE this meatloaf.
in fact, I love it so much that I don’t know if I can eat meatloaf any other way.
YUM!
I am so sad to say that this was pretty terrible. The meatloaf was bland and the sauce was way to pungent. I should have known when salt and pepper weren’t listed in the ingredients for the meatloaf.
I’m going to try and salvage the meat for meat sauce I think.
WHY DID NO ONE REPLY TO THIS?
I am making this right now and almost didnt add salt.
how much I should add?
Made this last night!! Didn’t change a thing! Incredible flavor! The BBQ sauce was a amazing! Thanks for sharing!
Great recipe. To add more flavor to the meatloaf, I added a tbsp. of oregano, 7 fresh basil leaves (chopped), and a tbsp. of rosemary. And to cut the sharpness of the sauce, I added 4 tbsp. of coconut milk, and a cup of Paleo cinnamon applesauce. 5 minutes before the end of the baking time, I covered the top of the meatloaf (and bacon) with the sauce and put it on broil for the rest of the time, which helped the bacon to cook faster and the sauce to almost carmelize.
Thanks for the awesome recipe! As my husband says, bacon is the onlynfood so good that you have to wrap it around other food!
Love all your meatloafs! If we wanted to freeze one pan, should we freeze before or after baking? And when we want to bake the frozen one, what temp/how long? Thanks!!
I’m so excited to try my first real paleo meal!! I am hoping to keep up with it as we need to turn our house into a “cleaner eating” one. I put these both in disposable bread load pans, froze one and eating one tonight!! I let the BBQ sauce simmer too long (forgot it after 15 mins) so I was able to save a little. It tasted a bit spicy while cooking so I added some extra water to thin it out a little and maybe calm the spice, we will see!
Not gonna lie, I was too lazy to make the bbq sauce after a marathon day of cooking in the kitchen. Plus I didn’t put the bacon layer on top. Instead I’ve just been throwing spicy tomato sauce on it before eating. It’s really good! I think next time I’ll use slightly less almond flour and a bit more bacon inside but I love the flavor of the bacon!
Great recipe!! I also looked at some of the other comments and added liquid smoke to sauce as well as organic honey. I added rosemary, oregano, and some salt and pepper to meatloaf. Awesome!!