Gluten Free Meatloaf

If you follow me on facebook, you know that last week I needed to make a gluten free dinner for another family. I of course am not gluten free, so I really had to think when it came to what to fix, without having to buy a lot of ingredients I'll only use once. This meal also needed to be dairy free, so a gluten free pasta dish was out as well. I came up with meatloaf. After looking at many recipes, I ended up using this one below. It does have an egg in it, which was fine with my friend. But, you could easily make this totally dairy free if you needed to with an egg substitute. I got an email from my friend this week raving about the meatloaf. (I of course couldn't try it out since I was taking to to someone else.) She said it was so flavorful and she couldn't believe it was made with ground turkey. So, her good review meant it could go on the blog. Even if you're not gluten free, this recipe includes a lot of veggies and no bread, so it has got to be healthier. The theory is that the finely chopped mushrooms serve as the bread crumbs in the recipe. I guess the theory was proven right in this case! I served this with oven roasted green beans and oven roasted red potatoes with peanut butter cookies and strawberries for dessert.

Gluten Free Meatloaf
from The Simple Gluten Free

Ingredients:
1 lb lean ground beef or turkey (I used ground turkey.)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon dried thyme (or to taste)
freshly ground cracked pepper, to taste
1 egg
2 cups of mushrooms, finely chopped (I used my food processor to make them really finely chopped.)
1 teaspoon oregano
½ bell pepper, any color (I used green.)
2 cups onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
Ketchup or barbecue sauce to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 F. Heat saucepan, cook onions for roughly 10 minutes or until they are starting to brown, then add mushrooms and bell pepper. Make sure there is no additional liquid in the pan—this will have more of a boiling effect on the mushrooms, which is not ideal. Once cooked, combine with remaining ingredients in a larger bowl, finally form a loaf shape in a cooking pan or place in a loaf pan.

Cook for 45 minutes or until meat is fully cooked. If you prefer a sauce on your meatloaf, throughout the cooking process glaze with a light layer of ketchup, I did not do this.

This recipe is linked to It's a Keeper Thursday, prairie story, Tidy Mom, Potluck Sunday, and fat camp friday