Smoked Meatloaf

If you are a fan of meatloaf you need to give this recipe a try. The meatloaf turns out really moist and is bursting with flavor. Add to that the flavor of the rub we will be applying and the smoky flavor from cooking and you have yourself a meal you will want to make again and again.

I have to give credit for this recipe to Kosmos-Q. I have made a few small changes but the majority of this is his recipe. One of the really unique things he did that I love now that i have tried it is freezing the meatloaf before cooking to help you prep it and to help it maintain shape on the smoker. Another thing I really like about this recipe is that you end up making 3 different meatloafs. If you are having a bunch of people over you can choose to cook all of them but if its just you eating you could also just cook one and leave the others frozen until you decide you want to have meatloaf again. Meal prepping at its best! This only takes about an hour to cook so it works out great for a week day meal.

Cooking Basics

You will need to start prepping this meal the day before you want to cook it. First thing you will need to do is chop up the bacon and cook it in a pan. While the bacon is cooking you will need to dice up a large onion. Once the bacon is done set it to the side but leave the grease in the pan. Cook the onion in the bacon grease to add some flavor to it. Once the onion is starting to turn translucent you can pour that into a bowl along with the bacon and allow it to cool down a little bit before mixing in the rest of the ingredients. Once this has cooled down add all of the rest of the ingredients in and mix it thouroughly. Once this is done we are ready to put the meatloaf into some pans and freeze it. I used 3 smaller loaf pans to put this in. Make sure to put seran wrap so you can wrap the meatrloaf in it in the pan this way it wont stick to the pan when you try to get it out the next day. Once I had the meatloaf split up and in the pans I actually stacked the pans on top of one another to help flatten down the tops of the meatloaf. Once this is done you can leave them in the freezer overnight until you are ready to cook.

The next day you will want to take out the amount of meatloaf you would like to cook a couple hours ahead of when you want to eat. Let the meatloaf sit for about an hour so the outside can begin to thaw. This will help the rub stick to it a little better. Once the hour is up you will take the meatloaf out of the seran wrap and apply the rub. I used mustard as a binder. Sometimes I dont bother with this step before applying the rub but the meatloaf is still pretty frozen at this point so i thought I could use a little help getting it to stick. Apply mustard or your binder of choice all over the meatloaf and then apply your favorite rub. I used Meat Church Holy Cow but feel free to use your favorite steak rub instead. Once this is done you are ready to Fire up the Pit!

You will be using inderect heat to cook the meatloaf. Preheat yrou grill or smoker to 275 degrees. If using a smoke tube or a smoker I suggest apple or hickory for your wood type. Once the grill / smoker is up to temp you will put your meatloaf on to cook. I would suggest using a pizza stone to cook this on for a couple reasons. I tried it the first time cooking on a wire rack and had problems with the end of the meatloaf closest to the heat source being a little overdone on the bottom and it was a bit of a pain getting the meatloaf off the grate when it was done. The stone made this much simpler and helped even out the heat on the meatloaf so it seemd to cook more evenly.

You will need to give it a little time for the meatloaf to thaw before inserting a teperature probe. Once you can do this you will just leave the meatloaf on the smoker / grill until it reaches an internal temperature or 165 degrees. If you are cooking all of the meatloaf at once I suggest turning them 180 degrees halfway through cooking to make sure the same parts are not closest to the heat source the whole time. This will take about an hour to get up to temperature. Once they have reached the internal temperature you are ready to take them off and dig in.

Final Thoughts

• Meats - I have tried this recipe a few times and experimented a little bit with it. The first time I tried using 94% ground beef and turkey sausage to try to make it a little healthier. It tasted great but it did not hold together very well. I would suggest not going above 90% as you need a little fat to help it stick together.
• Rubs - I used Meat Church Holy Cow rub for the meatloaf but any steak rub will do. If you don’t happen to have one on hand I would use equal parts salt, pepper, and garlic poweder
• Sauce - I tried this recipe once putting bbq sauce on it while it was cooking and I didn’t care for the results. There seemed to be an overpowering flavor of bbq sauce because you already have some in the mix for the meatloaf as well
• Cooking - If you cook all of these at once you will definitely have parts that are closer to the heat source than others. You should definitely move these around halfway through to help make sure you dont have parts that are over cooked by the time you are ready to take them off the smoker / grill. I liked how they came oput using the pizza stone as well. I will continue to use that when I make these.

Recipe