Mini Turkey Meatloaves w/ Honey Garlic Sauce - Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ryan and I have been incorporating turkey a lot more into the dishes we make. It’s supposed to be healthier than red meat and we actually enjoy the taste of it. Sometimes we can’t even tell the difference when we’ve substituted it for ground beef.

Ryan likes meatloaf and I think I’ve made it one time for us during the 8 years we’ve been together. When I stumbled across this recipe for turkey meatloaf, especially since it has mini loaves, I thought now’s the time to try making meatloaf again. And of course I was sold on the honey garlic sauce. One of the other main selling points to this recipe is that the mini loaves can be frozen after they’re baked (much cleaner and easier than one large loaf).

I wanted to make a side to go along with this dish so I chose to make baked sweet potatoes. At first I was going to make one baked potato for each of us until I found the recipe below for baked, bite size sweet potatoes with seasonings.

The meatloaf recipe calls for some ingredients that I would not expect to find in a traditional meatloaf, however I guess you could say that this meatloaf has a twist. One of the ingredients that really threw me for a loop were the water chestnuts. These did not sound appetizing to me at all, especially in meatloaf. After reading online reviews, I noticed many people left out the water chestnuts and instead substituted diced carrots. I came super close to substituting with carrots, however at the very last minute I decided to stick with the original recipe and use the water chestnuts. You’ll notice that another ingredient is evaporated milk. This type of milk is sold in a can and can be found down your grocers baking aisle. 

The steps for assembling the meatloaf are easy as everything is combined together and put into muffin tins. I altered the recipe a little bit so that it contains less sodium. Many of the reviews complained the original dish was too salty and offered their suggestions of how to fix this, which I followed. When everything is combined, you’ll notice the mixture is very wet. This is okay, this is what makes the mini loaves so moist. There is one thing I must warn you about….DON’T fill the muffin tins to the top. I thought I’d fill them to the top so I wouldn’t have to dirty another pan, and I regret that decision. When the loaves were baking, they started to overflow a little and some of the grease dripped in the oven. I ended up putting a baking sheet on the shelf below the muffin tin so that it would catch the dripping. All this can be solved by filling the tins ¾ of the way full. My muffin tins might have been a little on the small side too, which is why they may have overflowed. In the end I had some very messy tins (fingers crossed they come out of the dishwasher nice and clean). There’s a tip I learned on TV, after the fact, that would have been helpful in this situation. Grease the top of a muffin tin with some oil before putting into the oven. This way if muffins or whatever you’re cooking overflows it will be very easy to clean the pan as the extra/overflow can just be wiped away. 

  

The potatoes were super easy to make as well. Just be careful when cutting the sweet potatoes. They’re tougher to cut through and the knife can easily slip. I actually had my first accident in the kitchen because of this and sliced the top of my index finger. I kind of panicked when it didn’t seem to stop bleeding under the water. Luckily Ryan was at home so I was able to yell for him to come help me. In the end it was okay, but now I’m going to be much more careful when cutting. 

When everything was finished cooking, and I put together the dinner plates, they looked amazing! Even Ryan, who didn’t know what I was making, was impressed by how tasty they looked. We dug in and both agreed the mini turkey loaves were very good. They were very moist and the sauce tasted excellent on top of them. I also proved myself wrong. The water chestnuts were a great addition to the meatloaf. I didn’t taste their flavor, however they added a really nice texture to the meatloaf. The potatoes tasted very nice as well and were a great side dish to have with meatloaf. 

Mini Turkey Meatloaves with Honey Garlic Sauce
Adapted from Recipe #57770 by * Pamela *, food.com
Yields: 12 mini loaves
Prep time: 15 mins.
Total time: 45 mins. 

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs ground turkey 
• 1/3 cup water chestnut, chopped fine
• 3/4 cup fine breadcrumb
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 3 tablespoons lite or reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup green onion
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon low-sodium instant chicken bouillon*
• 1 garlic clove, minced 

 *These are not bouillon cubes, these come in a jar and are ground up granules 

Honey Garlic Sauce:

• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons lite or reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic

Directions:

1. Combine all meatloaf ingredients into a large bowl.
2. Mix with large spoon to thoroughly blend. Don’t use a mixer this as the mixture will become too fine.
3. Divide mixture into ungreased muffin/cupcake tins. Fill only ¾ of the way full.
4. Bake at 350˚F for 30-35 minutes.
5. During the last 10 minutes that the loaves are cooking, combine all sauce ingredients in a small sauce pan. Cook and stir on low heat until hot and bubbly.
6. When loaves are done, remove from pan and serve with honey garlic sauce
7. Note: If you’d like to freeze some of the loaves, wait until they have cooled before placing into a Ziploc bag to freeze.

Baked Sweet Potatoes
Adapted from recipe by Jenncook, allrecipes.com
Serves: 3
Prep time: 10 mins.
Total time: 1 hour 10 mins.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 large sweet potatoes
• 2 pinches dried oregano
• 2 pinches salt
• 2 pinches ground black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Lightly coat the bottom of a glass or non-stick baking dish with olive oil.
2. Wash the sweet potatoes. Skins can be left on, but if preferred without skin, peel. Cut into medium bite size pieces.
3. Place cut sweet potatoes in the baking dish and toss with spoon until they’re coated with some of the olive oil.
4. Sprinkle the oregano, salt and pepper over the potatoes (tossing potatoes while sprinkling to coat).
5. Bake for 60 minutes or until soft.