Tremendous Meatloaf

Listen to me. We need to talk about meatloaf. Tremendous meatloaf. The greatest meatloaf in the history of meatloaf — and there's been a lot of meatloaf, probably more meatloaf than any single food in human civilization. My grandmother made meatloaf. Her grandmother made meatloaf. The neighbor who taught me my version lived to be 102 — could be a coincidence, probably not. This meatloaf, the one I'm about to give you, beats every single one of them. Every one. It's not even close. It's a slaughter.

Other so-called chefs — and I won't name names but you know who they are, they have the cookbooks, they have the shows, they have the little stupid aprons — they make meatloaf. And it's wet. It's sad. It falls apart like a bad dating profile. You lift a slice, it dissolves in your hand, it's a disaster, it's an embarrassment, frankly it's un-American. Mine? Mine HOLDS. It slices. It STANDS UP. You can lean it against a wall, it'll still be there in the morning. I've done it. Don't ask why.

And the glaze. The glaze. The glaze is the most important part — many people don't know this, food chemists agree, I had a guy with a PhD explain it to me, took him 90 minutes, worth it — the glaze is everything. The glaze is what separates the tremendous meatloaf from the merely good meatloaf, and merely good is not what we're doing here. We are doing GREAT. We are doing TREMENDOUS. We are doing the kind of meatloaf where your spouse looks at you differently afterwards. In a good way. Hand on heart.

Serve it with mashed potatoes. The best mashed potatoes — go look them up on this very site, tremendous potatoes, you won't believe what we do with the butter. For now: this meatloaf. Slice it thick. Slice it like a winner. And if anyone — anyone — tells you meatloaf is boring food, you tell them Bigly said they have a boring tongue. They'll come around. They always do. They have to. The meatloaf demands it. Tell your friends.