Creative Urge in the Kitchen Produces Potato Chip-Peach-Walnut Meatloaf – Dealing with Gluten Allergy – Finding Alternative Ingredients – What’s Your Guess – Failure or Success –

Success. It tasted like meatloaf. Very moist and delicious.

The walnuts remained visible during baking. They tasted nutty and had a soft texture from resting on the top of the meatloaf while baking. The peach added moisture and did not noticeably affect the flavor. The potato chips crushed with a meat cleaver instead of bread crumbs worked well, also.

I am not likely to make meatloaf the same way twice. I have always used ground beef, but that, too, could change. I could use ground lamb or a combination of beef and pork. I will probably always put chopped onion in it. Eggs add moisture and help cause the loaf to congeal. For this reason I always use them. I don’t know a good substitution for eggs.

Ingredients used as filler to make the texture of the meatloaf different than hamburger alone are available in most kitchens. Among the options could be breadcrumbs (wheat gluten), rice, oatmeal, or crushed crackers (wheat gluten). I used crushed potato chips this time.

There are other moisture-imparting ingredients that are interchangeable, like milk, ketchup, tomato sauce, or today’s pureed peach. I often use tomato sauce, but today I substituted half a peach. We happily snacked on the other half.