Smoking a Meatloaf - What Meats to Use?


 
J

James Harvey

TVWBB Pro
Hi All,

I'm planning a meatloaf smoke in the next few days.I'm curious as to what meats anyone would suggest outside of the boring old generic ground beef.
Also,any input on temps for cooking? Am I good with the mid 200's or should I push it up to 300?
Finally, I have sugar maple, cherry and pecan chunks. Thoughts?

Thanks,

James
 
James, I've never done meatloaf, as I don't want to compete with my wife.
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However, I do know that you want to go light with the smoke, like if smoking ribs or chicken. The temp won't matter, really. The wife always just uses ground beef, but I'm sure some ground pork mixed in couldn't hurt.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by James Harvey:
Hi All,

I'm planning a meatloaf smoke in the next few days.I'm curious as to what meats anyone would suggest outside of the boring old generic ground beef.
Also,any input on temps for cooking? Am I good with the mid 200's or should I push it up to 300?
Finally, I have sugar maple, cherry and pecan chunks. Thoughts?

Thanks,

James </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Take a look at this thread. http://www.bbq-brethren.com/fo...owthread.php?t=92563

Tons of good ones to pic from. I myself did the Griff Loaf and it was great. I would go easy on the smoke wood as ground meats really soak up the smoke. Beef, pork and lamb seem to be the meats of choice.

Here is a link to one I made a while back.
http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/...=600103996#600103996
 
We regularly use a mix of ground beef and pork. Experimented once with ground beef and ground turkey and it was very tasty too.

Used cherry wood for this before - it has nice flavour and imparts a lot of color too.
 
Equal parts Beef, Pork, Veal are the 'classic' meatloaf but whatever you want to use is fine as long as it has a nice fat percentage.

But, if you're going to smoke/sauce it heavily, it probably doesn't matter cuz you're unlikely to notice anything but the smoke/sauce.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by James Harvey:
boring old generic ground beef.
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>
That's me.
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We use 80/20 ground chuck and it isn't boring. Makes a fine loaf. I like cherry for the wood, but only a little. Ground meat will soak up a lot of smoke quickly. As for temps, I like 275-300 which has been working pretty good for me.
 
What the other guys said. Beef, pork, lamb, ground turkey and sausage. Or just plain beef its all good. Especially when you wrap it in a bacon weave.
 
Thanks All. I'm actually more interested in the composition of the meat mixture (ie - beef chuck, pork shoulder etc...). I know this isn't really a BBQ question but I thought I would ask.
 
I like a beef/pork mix, but beef/pork/turkey is ok too. Just don't use much wood; meatloaf soaks up the smoke. You'll love it!
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Like others have said, be very careful with the wood. I usually think the burning charcoal itself adds enough smoke. I've done beef, beef/pork, beef/pork/veal, and just plain turkey. You can't go wrong.
 
Like the Minion Method is the standard for lighting your smoker ... Griffloaf is the standard for meatloaf! You can not go wrong.
 
I made one the other day with 35% buffalo, 35 % USDA prime sirloin, 15% elk breakfast sausage and 15% pork country ribs. Fantastic.

It all comes down to fat percentage and seasoning, imo.
 
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