1 lb ground meat. Beef or turkey. (we usually use turkey because its seasoned enough that you can’t tell, and its less heavy and greasy than beef)
1 lb Yukon or yellow potatoes
1/4 cup Italian style breadcrumbs
1 egg
2- 4 tbsp butter for the mashed potatoes
1 small onion or half a large onion (dice up small)
15-20 garlic cloves, or 4 tsp minced garlic (half for the meat, half for potatoes)
1/2 can (3 oz) tomato paste
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1-2 tsp basil, season to taste
1/2 -1 tsp oregano, to taste
1-2 tsp of salt, to taste
1/2-1 tsp of pepper, to taste
1/2 – 1 tsp paprika, to taste
6 babybel cheese, or other cubed or shredded cheese of your choice. Babybel is our favorite, and melts really well
ketchup and steak sauce for the sauce on top (add habanero paste for a kick)
Yea, you read that right. Meat. Muffins.
It’s a personal pan sized meatloaf … stuffed with cheese.
About the muffin tray selection, we use a large muffin size which makes 6, the size of a baseball (which holds the whole babybel cheese inside). A standard cupcake sized tray would make large meatball sized portions (and you’d have to cut up the babybels). Honestly we’ve never made the small ones, because why? I'm mentioning this because I don’t know how many you’ll be able to make in a smaller size cup. I'm assuming it's twice as many so, make sure your cupcake tray is at least 12.
You can also make a meatloaf with this same recipe, using a bread pan, there's exactly enough space to put the babybel cheeses in 2 rows of 3 in the center, and you can make a cheese stuffed meatloaf to slice and serve as well. We just really like the personal size servings, and meat muffins just sounds cooler than loaf, right?
To make the meat muffins
Press/mince the garlic and dice up the onion, brown together in a pan with olive oil. Half will go into the meat, the other half should be set aside for the potatoes.
In a large bowl mix the egg, tomato paste, salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, basil, and Worcestershire sauce together add the ground meat and the breadcrumbs and mix it all together evenly. I find it's easier and more effective to use my hands
Keep in mind if you add extra worcheshire like I do, you may need a little more breadcrumbs to keep the meat together. Same goes for tomato paste, if you like more tomato flavor in your meatloaf, go for it! Just balance the wet/dry ingredients so the breadcrumbs don’t overpower the meat, but the meatloaf mix isn't too wet to hold a muffin form in the pan. I don't measure seasoning when I do this, I eyeball it and then taste, and usually add more. I use more than what's listed for this recipe, but the amount here is what you need for it to have flavor, so start here and adjust as you like!Spray the muffin tray with a non stick spray or use olive oil. Fill each cup about halfway with the seasoned meat, place a cheese in the middle, press gently into meat and put more meat on top, press together a bit so it stays in a muffin shape.
The sauce on top is just ketchup and steak sauce mixed together, more steak sauce than ketchup. Put it on top of the muffins 15 mins before you take them out of the oven if you like more sauce, add when serving. We like to mix a little habanero paste into our sauce.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. A minor downside to using a muffin pan for meat ... there will be the usual grease from cooking the meat, but no edge around the outside to keep it from dripping, so I highly recommend placing the muffin tray on a baking sheet wider than it, before placing it in the oven, to avoid a messy oven cleanup later.
Meanwhile, about those mashed potatoes ...
Clean and cut up the potatoes and cook them in boiling water until they are soft enough to be smashed with fork.
Drain, return to same pot with butter while it's hot and mash them up, when they are mostly mashed add a dash of cream, the browned garlic and onions, some salt and pepper and stir it all up into delicious mashed potatoes. Feel free to add cheese to the potatoes too.
