healthy for your kids
and healthy for you

Meatloaf with veggies

Meatloaf is perfect for mixing in vegetables without detection. We use peas, cauliflower and carrots in our recipe, but you can puree vegetables of your choice.

Ingredients

1 lb meat (ground meat, it can be beef, veal, lean pork, chicken or turkey)
1 egg
1⁄2 c bread crumbs
2⁄3 c vegetables (already cooked, chopped or puréed)
1⁄2 c onion (finely chopped)
1⁄4 c ketchup (tomato ketchup)
1⁄2 t black pepper (ground)
1 pn salt

Instructions

Get ready

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Puree the vegetables

Steam 1 carrot and 2 large cauliflower florets. Microwave 1/4 cup frozen peas. Cook the vegetables until they are soft.

Chop the vegetables for school age kids. For toddlers and older babies, add the cooked vegetables to a large mixing bowl and use hand blender or place them in the blender jar. Keep blending until it's a smooth puree.

Chop the onions

Chop the onions. Chop them finely for less texture, if that's your preference. You can use a food chopper.

Measure and add all the other ingredients

Add the onions, ground beef, egg, bread crumbs, ketchup, pepper and salt to the mixing bowl.

Use your hands to combine all the ingredients completely.

Get ready for baking

Bake in 350° F oven, for about 1 hour or until meat achieves an internal temperature of 160 F. Allow to set for about 10 minutes before cutting. Serve with mashed potatoes, homemade fries and of course, some more vegetables!

Yield
4 servings
Cooking time
60
Preparation time
30
Total time
1 hour, 30 minutes

Notes

Serve the meatloaf sliced for school age kids, finely chopped for toddlers and purée a little meatloaf with steamed vegetables a a little broth for older babies.

How smooth your puree actually gets will depend on how much moisture the vegetables have. For example, sweet potato and squash will create a much smoother puree than the vegetables given in this ingredient list.

If you prefer a more crispy outside, you can form a loaf shape with the meat and vegetables mixture and bake it on a baking sheet. Or you can do it the traditional way, by forming the loaf inside a loaf pan.

Variations

Use any vegetables of your choice, like broccoli, peas, sweet peppers or pumpkin.

We steamed the cauliflower and carrots and microwaved the peas, but feel free to choose your veggies and cooking method. The goal is to get 2/3 cup of puree.

Onion makes meatloaf juicy and yummy, but you can omit it if your veggie-avoiding dinner guests will get squeamish.