Les Petits Chefs make Jamie Oliver’s meatloaf

I’ve had a hankering for meatloaf lately so I figured I would put Les Petits Chefs to work this week with Jamie Oliver’s meatloaf recipe. Since time is of the essence in cooking club (we have an hour from start to pickup), I knew there was no way we would be able to make a full-sized meatloaf so instead we made mini-meatloaves. I did enjoy this recipe a lot – even though we had – ahem – some slight changes (it helps when you remember to put in all the ingredients!) and will be trying it again soon in full size!

We chopped onions and crushed crackers…

Got to play with raw meat and eggs…

Got to mash up the meat, eggs, crackers and onions and then make tiny little meatloaf patties….

Some of us got to cut up the slimy bacon….

And topped our meatoaf patties with the bacon…
Whilst the meat was cooking, we set to making the sauce, adding the mustard and balsamic to the sauce (since I had forgotten them in the meat).

Result?

These were really tasty – I loved the sauce for these and can see it working on pasta or other meat dishes too. And really, anything topped with bacon has got to be good, right?

25 thoughts on “Les Petits Chefs make Jamie Oliver’s meatloaf”

  1. Looks tender, moist and flavorful – great job! I love the pictures with those pristine aprons while making meatloaf! Impressive.

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  2. YES! Anything topped with bacon is awesome!! I even had a maple bacon cupcake from Liberty Village’s For the Love of Cake…and it was soooo good! Your boys are very lucky to have you as a teacher 🙂 You’re teaching a whole new generation of future family men to cook…or at least have appreciation for the kind of work that goes into cooking / baking 🙂

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  3. Sorry, LPC…I have to say, my lunch bucket sampler the next day was a definite “miss”. 🙁

    PERHAPS it was my hectic day, but the sauce was unbalanced, garlic slices raw, and meatloaf seemed dull.

    I’ll try again some evening with a full one, and a bottle of Pirorat. 🙂

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    • Aw so sorry – because I really liked this one. Maybe being so small and reheated they got a bit dry. Surprised you had raw garlic in there – it cooked for a good 10 minutes before we added the tomatoes. And I really loved the sauce.

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  4. Wow, Mr. Neil wasn’t mincing words. Good to know you can get an honest critique, I guess, but finding out in print (or whatever this is) is tough. That said, these do look tasty and I agree wholeheartedly that everything’s better with bacon. My favorite part of the recipe is the instruction to “mash the chick peas until they are no longer obvious.” Even Mooch doesn’t like chick peas, so I didn’t know how they were supposed to go over with the kids.

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    • That was actually my addition to the recipe 🙂 All the boys here eat hummus on a regular basis on the lunch program so I know they do like chick peas and all mashed in, if they hadn’t seen them go in, they might not even have noticed 🙂

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    • Also, it’s not specifically a recipe for kids – I make regular versions of things with the boys to expand their tastebuds and I know that even if the boys taste and don’t like (which is all I ask), the parents will most likely eat the rest 😉

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  5. What a fun class this was for Les Petits Chefs. Great idea to make mini meatloafs Mardi. (should I have written meatloaves?…)

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