Mushroom Bacon Swiss Meatloaf

I was doing some research on Once A Month Cooking a few days and stumbled across a recipe that looked pretty good. I'm not sure if I'll ever try OAMC (as it is referred to), but I definately wanted to try this. I adapted the recipe a bit, and I used ground turkey instead of ground beef.

When I make meatloaf, I like the fat to drain off as much as possible. So the thought of cooking it in a loaf pan (letting it swim in its own grease) always seemed yucky to me. I eventually came up with my own way of cooking it. I form it into a ring on a broiler pan. The result is something like a meatloaf bundt cake. Then the fats and grease drip into the bottom part of the broiler pan. I had always done this with my ground beef meatloaf recipe with excellent results. I substituted ground turkey this time and the mixture just seemed too fragile for this sort of treatment. I was sure that there was no way it would hold up on its own. In order to avoid having one big flat turkey patty, I cooked it in a loaf pan. The turkey was low fat (97/3) anyway, and so there wasn't much grease.


Mushroom Bacon Swiss Meatloaf

1 lb ground turkey
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup crushed crackers
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 button mushrooms, chopped
1/3 cup cooked and chopped bacon
1/3 cup shredded swiss cheese
A few squirts of ketchup

If you have just cooked the bacon, remove the grease from the pan, reserving 1 tablespoon. If not, then add one tablespoon of oil to the pan. Saute the onions and mushrooms for about 2 minutes. Combine all ingredients except ketchup. Mix thouroughly. Pat into loaf pan. Top with ketchup, and spread evenly. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour