Meatloaf, broccoli

This is the best I've done, and the only meat is beef. You might expect the best to be a combination of beef, pork and veal, but this is not that. 

Mirepoix mise en place. 

That's French for a traditional culinary combination of aromatics, onions, carrots, and celery used for a variety of dishes such as stocks, soups, stews, and sauces.

And meatloaf.

This mirepoix includes garlic and it is cooked first so that it shrinks before being added to the meat mixture. 

There is an approach to making meatballs that involves a lot of eggs, and does away with browning the meatballs first. The result is a loose wet mixture that is dropped into lightly simmering sauce so that they solidify into round meatball shapes without disintegrating and absorb the flavors of the sauce. 

Other approaches to meatballs include bread moistened with milk.

This approach to meatloaf combines these two approaches to meatballs. Here, bread is soaked in milk, and two eggs for a fairly small amount of meat produce an exceedingly loose mixture. Too loose to bake in anything other than a terrine. So to correct that additional breadcrumbs are added, dry breadcrumbs this time, Panko breadcrumbs, and allowing time between each light addition for the dry breadcrumbs to absorb, it does take time because the breadcrumbs are incredibly dry. Eventually the mixture stiffens sufficiently without adding too much extra dry breadcrumbs.

You most likely know that Panko is Japanese breadcrumbs.

Panko breadcrumbs are made from bread produced by passing an electric current through bread dough. It results in an airier and drier crumb without any crust that resists absorbing oil when fried, so crispier crusts on things coated with them like tonkatsu and fried chicken. I mention this because it makes a difference. Completely dry Wonder bead will absorb moisture much faster than Panko breadcrumbs.

Additional ingredients include

* sake

* soy sauce

* Worcestershire sauce

* crushed red chile flakes

* fennel seed

Catsup on top. This catsup has a lot of cayenne powder mixed into it. The whole jar does. A giant jug. From Sam's Club, a warehouse thing. Two giant jugs of catsup are taped together, that's how they're marketed. It's not possible to have only one giant jug. They figure you're already living large. I do not much care for regular catsup so I alter the whole jug, significantly, with more than a reasonable amount of cayenne powder.

It bears repeating the reiteration repetitively whilst delicately avoiding being redundant; this is the best meatloaf I've ever made.