• 

• 

Today I’m going to share a recipe that some friends have asked for. But before I jump into the prep and ingredients, let me tell you a little about how this recipe came to be. Meatloaf has been one of my favorite foods as long as I can remember. To me, it’s the ultimate comfort food because I can associate so many happy memories with it. I grew up eating my Nana’s meatloaf, (my sweet Nana passed in 2010) and her recipe was unlike any other I would try as an adult for one reason – She did not top it with a sauce or ketchup mixture, at all. She only mixed in tomato JUICE for the flavor and let the meatloaf stand alone, as delicious as it was without any glaze needed. Her recipe was basically fatty hamburger, green peppers and onions, a handful of crushed cornflakes, all mixed together with a liberal amount of tomato juice and formed by hand into a loaf. She didn’t even use a typical loaf pan or a meatloaf pan. She baked hers in it’s own cooking juices (yummy fats for us KETO folks) in a casserole dish. This recipe of hers is so good, and so nostalgic for me, that I’ve lived my whole life not wanting any other kind, especially not a ketchup-y one. For that reason, I never ordered meatloaf in restaurants. I just made her version, at home.

That being said, when I thought about making a Keto-friendly meatloaf, one pretty cool thing occurred to me. My Nana’s meatloaf was pretty “Keto” as it was, once you took away the cornflakes. (And maybe used a little less tomato juice.) So, I decided to do a little experiment to see if those cornflakes were even necessary at all and also do what I could to make this recipe as low-carb as possible. Another thing I decided to do was omit the onions. For one reason, the carbohydrate content of onions tends to be a little higher than other vegetables.  Also, now, don’t hate me here – but as delicious as I once thought they were – I seem to be losing my taste for them, or at the very least not missing them when I omit them from dishes.

However, since I did decide to skip a few of her original ingredients, I wanted to think of things I could add that would keep it Keto but lend some new flavors. A quick google search had me deciding pretty quick to, (DRUMROLL HERE) stuff my meatloaf with CHEESE and wrap the whole thing in BACON!

• 

• 

Quite a few of the recipes I found online recommended using BabyBel cheeses for this and luckily, I had some that I had purchased because I was able to get a great rebate from IBotta. If you don’t know what IBotta is, it’s a fantastic app that gives you a list of certain items you can purchase at your favorite grocery store and receive cash-back rewards through Venmo or PayPal. (You can also choose to receive gift cards to your favorite retailers and restaurants.) Let the grocery shopping you’re already doing, make you MONEY! I use it every time I shop! If you sign up through my referral code, you can get up to a $20 Welcome bonus. Sign up at https://ibotta.com/r/ovasbor  . If you’d prefer to just download the app from the AppStore or PlayStore, you can still use my referral code for the bonus, just copy and paste it in. My code is –

ovasbor

Keep in mind that this recipe is one you’ll really be able to adjust to your liking. Experiment with other vegetables mixed in or even other bases if you’d prefer not to use the tomato juice. If you’d like, you could probably even top it near the end of the cooking time with some no-sugar-added ketchup. That’s just not for me. (My Nana would cringe and we can’t have that.)

Keto Cheese-Stuffed Meatloaf

Servings: 4

Ingredients

16 oz ground beef (I use 73%)
¼ cup green bell pepper, finely diced
1 cup tomato juice (no sugar added)
Salt & Pepper
3 strips bacon, your favorite
3 Babybel cheeses

Instructions

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Spray a clear, glass casserole dish with Olive oil cooking spray. Begin the prep by mixing the ground beef, peppers, tomato juice, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Once it was all combined well, I formed a loaf-shape and placed it in my glass casserole dish. Then, I made an indentation in the center, running the length of the meatloaf. (This is the valley for the CHEESE!) I sliced 3 Babybel cheeses in half and places those in the center indentation. (See the pics above) Once the cheese is in place, close the meatloaf up, re-forming your loaf shape and completely surrounding the cheese. Basically, just smoosh it all together, covering the cheese while taking care not to push the cheese through to the bottom of the pan. You want it to stay inside the meatloaf during the baking process! The good thing about using a clear, glass baking dish for this is you can peek under the bottom to make sure you didn’t do that. 😊 Last, but definitely not least, cut each of your three bacon strips in half and lay them over your meatloaf horizontally, slightly overlapping and going down the sides. Bake the meatloaf for 40 mins to an hour. The done-ness of your hamburger should be to your own liking. I prefer any ground beef to be pretty well done (a steak is a different story). Once mine is done, I remove it from the dish and place it on a platter for slicing. ENJOY!!!

If you’d like my super SIMPLE recipe for the roasted Radishes pictured as the side dish on my plate above, click here –
https://livingthejoneslife.com/2019/02/22/radishes-a-keto-replacement-for-potatoes-recipe/

This recipe (the meatloaf alone) is approximately 421 calories per serving, 2.9g carbs, 35.5g fat, and 22g protein.  

**The nutritional facts mentioned in this article are approximate, and were based on the most accurate information I could find online and may vary. Always double-check your own ingredients.