How to Make Turkey Meatloaf with Ketchup-Brown Sugar Glaze with Becky and Julia

Turkey Meatloaf is often bland and dry, but Becky shows Julia her tricks for amping it up.

Get the recipe for Turkey Meatloaf with Ketchup-Brown Sugar Glaze: https://cooks.io/2SAmhEL
Buy our winning rimmed baking sheet: https://cooks.io/2U7kQP2

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We develop hundreds of recipes here in the test kitchen but before any of them get published or put on tv we send them out to a small group of home cooks for a trial run these folks make the recipe then fill out a survey with questions like could you find the ingredients did

You have the right equipment or did you make any substitutions we learned a lot from these surveys and it’s made one thing very clear lots of folks like to swap ground turkey for the ground beef and they’re disappointed with the results take this turkey meatloaf for

Example this was a beef meatloaf we just put in ground turkey and it is a brick i mean is this a meatloaf or a boston paver and here let’s take a look on the inside oh i can barely get my knife through that oh it’s dense i mean look at this

It just crumbles right apart almost like white fish salad i mean horrible this is terrible we can do so much oh good we tweaked the recipe from top to bottom you can’t just swap in turkey and call it a day they’re different animals yes literally they really are

So let’s get going we’re gonna make something much much better all right i have three tablespoons of butter melting over low heat now we’re adding butter because unlike pork or beef turkey has very little fat so we’re going to add back some of that richness with the butter that’s right because usually when

You make meatloaf you saute some aromatics but it’s just in a little bit of fat this is substantially more fat in the pan that’s right and i’m adding a little bit of baking soda just a pinch we’re creating an alkaline environment that helps the onions break down a lot

Faster i have half an onion it’s chopped up fine our onions are going to cook in only about five minutes whereas they would take about 15 minutes and a quarter teaspoon of salt and we’ll cook these for three or four minutes just until they start to soften

And take on a little bit of brown color all right it’s been about four minutes you can see our onions are starting to get a little bit brown there nice and soft nice and soft in a quick amount of time because you don’t want crunchy onions and a

Meatloaf that’s bad no you just want to kind of fade away into the background but give you that nice little flavor here’s one garlic clove minced up classic stuff that goes with meatloaf teaspoon of fresh thyme you want to cook that garlic down a little bit let the flavor start to bloom

Smell it already mmm you can okay so it’s been a minute mm-hmm that garlic’s very fragrant yes so good and now i’m adding two tablespoons of worcestershire sauce packs a punch in terms of flavor that’s right it goes into beef meat loaves as well because it is so full of

Flavor yeah and actually worcestershire sauce is mostly vinegar but has lots of other things in it like sugar molasses garlic clove anchovies tamarind and then it’s aged for a few months before it’s strained and bottles and that’s why it has such a punch yeah you get a lot of

Bang for your buck yeah we’ll let this reduce down for a minute just to concentrate those yummy flavors all right that looks good and smells good smells potent so let’s put this in a bowl we’ll let this cool down for a few minutes then we’ll come back and mix up

Our meatloaf our onion mixture is nice and cool i’m going to add two egg yolks that’ll add some nice richness to the lean meat that we were talking about and it’ll also help to bind the meatloaf together now two tablespoons of dijon mustard that’s a lot of dijon it won’t

Make the meatloaf too spicy because red is two pounds of meat so it’ll be just the right amount mix that in okay now i have my secret weapon for turkey meatloaf three tablespoons of quick oats now this is very unusual right now we wanted to kind of break up that dense texture that

We saw in that horrible meatloaf yes we tried everything we tried bulgur we tried ground nuts we tried couscous turned out that quick oats were the very best they break up that texture you can’t identify them as oats in the meatloaf and they work really nicely and

They just cook right in the meatloaf that’s right now if you can’t find quick oats or you don’t have them you can use old-fashioned oats you just want to chop them up really fine just don’t use steel cut oats okay they’ll stay kind of pebbly they won’t cook all the way

Through i’m also adding two teaspoons of cornstarch the cornstarch helps to trap all the nice juices that the turkey has so it bakes up nice and moist also three quarter teaspoon of salt and half teaspoon of pepper okay so let’s put our oat mixture in the secret bowl of ingredients that’s

Right don’t tell anyone now i have a third of a cup of chopped parsley that’s not so secret but adds a nice little bit of color and flavor half a cup of parmesan cheese now parmesan has a ton of umami flavor and turkey doesn’t have a lot of that so the

Parmesan is going to give us that nice savoriness that turkey lacks that’s a lot of flavor packed into that little bowl it sure is plus some texture from those oats that’s right so now it’s time for the turkey it’s turkey time so i have two pounds of 93 or 85 turkey

And i’m going to use my hands to mix this together there’s no better tool you just want to get in there and have fun so let me get going on that when you go to the supermarket to buy ground turkey you usually have two choices a light

Colored turkey and a dark colored turkey now the light colored ground turkey is usually labeled 99 lean and it’s made almost entirely with turkey breasts that means it has less fat less flavor and it cooks up to be very dry now this darker colored ground turkey is usually labeled

Either 85 or 93 percent lean and it’s our favorite because it’s made with the thighs the dark meat so that has a juicier texture and makes a better meatloaf my hands are cleaned up let’s make up a quick glaze to go on top of the meatloaf ooh i love those sweet

Ketchupy glazes right on the top i know it’s almost the best part it kind of is let’s do some medium heat here i have a cup of ketchup quarter cup of brown sugar two and a half teaspoons of cider vinegar just for a little bit of tartness and fruitiness you know cider

Vinegar has that nice fruity flavor and just a half teaspoon of hot sauce just a smidge just a tiny bit just to you know give it that certain something okay so we’re gonna let this bubble away for five minutes you keep an eye on it for

Me you bet all right so i’m gonna shape this meatloaf i have a little bowl of water here i’m gonna wet my hands just so the meat doesn’t stick too much to my very clever we also have a wire rack here we’ve lined it with aluminum foil

The foil will be for easy cleanup the rack is just going to promote even cooking all right let’s get this onto the aluminum foil so no loaf pan here just a nice freeform shape yeah we’re going freeform today we’re going wild will you get more surface area with the freeform shape

Yeah that means more area for the glaze that’s right and everybody wants more glaze at least i do when it comes to meatloaf right all right so we’re going for 9×5 how do you think i did i think you nailed it i think i did too let’s just double check

It seems a little bit much to have a ruler out here but if you take your time to make a perfectly shaped meat loaf it’s going to cook evenly makes sense right so it’s been five minutes you can see our glaze thickened up nicely here that

Even smells like meatloaf to me i know right it’s that distinctive glaze smell it sure is i’m going to brush half of it on the meatloaf now i just have a pastry brush here i’m just going to do some painting and we want to paint the sides too not

Just the top because we want that yummy glaze all around this is another advantage of doing freeform is that you get more glaze so we’re going to bake this in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes then we’ll take it out and add the rest of that glaze

Lacquer it on the top yeah we want that first layer to set and dry so we can add even more glaze nice and then we’ll return it to the oven for another 35 to 40 minutes all right that is looking pretty good to me i think that’s about half

I’ll get the oven door for you thank you we’re doing the upper middle rack here 350 degrees for 40 minutes all right oh that’s looking good that looks awesome all right so let’s take its temperature here we want it to be 160 degrees that looks like a proper meatloaf it

Does doesn’t it that looks so good and we are right where we want it nailed it let’s let this rest for 20 minutes and then it’ll be time to dig in it’s been 20 minutes all right let’s do it eating time oh so good

Do you like the end piece i do i love the piece it’s kind of a small piece though right maybe you want one more i’ll never turn it down you can see right away that this is a very different meatloaf than the one we saw at the beginning that was like a

Brick oh yeah this is light has a much easier texture the fork actually goes through it it’s gonna be nice and juicy i love the glaze too oh little sweetness little tartness nice and sticky it’s really good you know this isn’t just a great turkey meatloaf this is just a great meatloaf

You actually never know that was made with turkey it’s true for the ultimate turkey meatloaf start with sauteed onions and flavor them with worcestershire and parmesan add quick oats for texture and be sure to use dark ground turkey brush twice with glaze and bake the loaf

On a foil-lined wire rack and there you have it from our test kitchen to your kitchen turkey meatloaf with ketchup brown sugar glaze you can get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website americastastkitchen.com so good oh i love it

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