If you like comfort food then this recipe is for you.  It’s a favorite winter weekend dish in our house.  A kicked up version of traditional meatloaf we use turkey instead of the more traditional ground beef to cut back on fat and because after years of substituting turkey for ground beef we now prefer the taste.  To help make it somewhat less bad more nutritious we also add in spinach.

For such a flavorful dinner the prep is extremely easy even wannabe cooks with no kitchen skills (like myself) can do it without supervision. 😉

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lbs of ground Turkey
• 3 cups of shredded low moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 6 oz Stuffing mix or bread crumbs (I prefer the chunkier texture of stuffing mix)
• 2 cups of chopped fresh baby spinach tails removed
• 4 cloves of garlic minced
• 1/4 cup of onion diced
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 1 cup of your favorite sauce
• 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese
• Italian seasoning
• Ground Black Pepper

Assemble all of your ingredients together

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Dice up your onions and mince or dice your garlic and add it to a large bowl

Add in your egg

Then your chopped spinach

Measure out your stuffing mix and break up any extra large clumps if you find it necessary then add that to the mix too.

Then add 3/4 cup of the sauce reserving the other 1/4 cup, 2.5 cups of the mozzarella and the parmesan cheese.

Lastly add the ground Turkey and seasonings to your liking (don’t taste there is raw egg and meat in here – gross). All of the directions up until this point could have simply been “Combine all ingredients with exception of 1/4 cup of the sauce and 1/2 cup of mozzarella. However, if your like me and I wrote it like that you would dump in everything or forget something.

Then mix it all together with your hands. Go ahead get in there and make sure its all good and mixed. (I hate this part – I usually ask Ken to do it for me, if your less of a chicken you can handle it yourself)

Put the mixture into a sprayed loaf pan, pack down and form into a loaf-like shape.

Put in your pre-heated oven uncovered and bake for 50 minutes. Remove from the oven and top with the sauce and cheese you saved.

Return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes to allow the cheese to melt and ensure the loaf is cooked through.

Remove from oven and let cool a few minutes. If you cut right into it when it’s super piping hot it will most likely fall apart. (I do this all the time, I can’t wait. It still tastes the same just doesn’t look “pretty”)

Serve with your favorite vegetable and dig in!

I’d love to hear if you give this recipe a spin and what you think.