Ginger-Miso-Green Onion Meatloaf with Soy-Lime Sauce

Ann is pretty good about surfing the internet looking for food that she wants to eat. One afternoon a couple of recipes showed up in my inbox courtesy of her, one for chicken meatballs flavored with ginger and miso and the other for a soy-lime dipping sauce that looks very suspiciously like a classic Vietnamese sauce, nuoc tuong.

I don't need or really even use recipes. All I need is the basic gist of an idea and I am off to the races. Ann sends me recipes for ideas and I really appreciate that: coming up with what to cook for dinner is a universal struggle among cooks.

Ginger-Miso-Green Onion Meatloaf with Soy-Lime Sauce

For a quick dinner, I don't really want to roll out and cook meatballs, so I opted for a meatloaf flavored similar to a filling for pot stickers along with broccoli that would roast at the same time as the meatloaf was baking. You could make meatballs out of this very same mix, but I was feeling lazy.

Mise en Place

Here are all my seasonings and the finished soy-lime sauce to spoon over both the meatloaf and the roasted broccoli. The seasonings for the meatloaf are soy sauce, shiromiso (white miso), garlic, ginger, and green onions.

I have been loyal to one brand of soy sauce since I was a kid: superior soy sauce from Pearl River Bridge, a lighter 100% soy Chinese-style soy versus the heavier and darker 50% soy, 50% wheat Japanese-style (tamari) embodied in Kikkoman or San-J, a fine sauce made in Virginia. 

Soy-Lime Sauce

For the sauce, I mixed in a small bowl:

one quarter cup soy

one quarter cup lime juice (juice of one large lime)

one clove garlic, minced

one teaspoon minced spicy chile (my stand-in for a fresh Thai bird chile)

one teaspoon agave syrup

I use agave as a sweetener in sauces because as a liquid, it mixes in to the sauce better than a granulated sugar. Adjust this sauce to your taste. If you find it too acidic, you can add more sweetener to balance the acid and/or some water to dilute it a touch. After you've made a couple of similar sauces, you'll get the hang of it for your palate.

Ginger-Miso-Green Onion Meatloaf 

Meat Loaf Ready for the Oven

Mixing up a meatloaf is child's play. First, you mix the liquid and seasoning ingredients in a bowl. Then you add the meat and binder and mix well, but gently, until all the ingredients come together. Then you drop the meatloaf on a sheet tray and shape it. After a quick bake and a brief cool-off period, dinner's done.

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoons white miso

1/4 cup chicken stock 

4 green onions, sliced

1/3 cup minced fresh ginger

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 pound ground turkey

1 cup rolled oats

Mix the soy, miso, and chicken stock well until the miso is dissolved. Then add the green onions, ginger, and garlic and mix well. Finally, add the turkey and rolled oats and mix gently, but well.

Mound the forcemeat on a sheet tray in an even rectangle. The thicker the rectangle, the longer it will take to cook. This one took about 25 minutes, maybe 30.

Bake in a moderate oven at 350F until a meat thermometer registers 160F in the center of the loaf. Remove from the oven and let stand for 5-10 minutes. As the meatloaf cools, it will continue to cook in the center and will finish at 165F or higher.

As a chef, I don't always follow USDA Food Code guidelines about temperatures (they often want you to char your meat in the name of safety), but with poultry, I don't fool around. They say ground poultry must be cooked to 165F to kill any pathogens and I am with them in this regard. If you don't have a thermometer, go buy one and learn how to use and calibrate it before you embark on this recipe.

I use rolled oats in preference to other binders (such as panko or other breadcrumbs) because oats are relatively healthy for you.

You'll notice that there's no salt in this recipe. The soy and miso have plenty of salt to compensate.

This dinner was delicious, like eating a plate full of pot stickers without the pastry. I know that the pastry around those dumplings is awesome, but not when you're trying to lose your accumulated COVID gut!