Well, it’s finally here! The Vincent Price Cookalong is in full swing and we can finally unveil our dish:
Un-Wealthy Wellington!
- 2 lbs ground round
- 2 boxes pie crust mix (or enough for two pie crusts)
- 2 T bitters
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 onions, chopped
- 1 8 oz can mushrooms, chopped
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- 2 eggs
- Prepare pie crust mix and roll out to a 10 x 14 inch oblong.
- Saute onions and mushrooms and let cool slightly. Add to them the bread crumbs, eggs, bitters and salt. Mix with ground round.
- Place mixture on pie crust and shape into a loaf. Moisten edges of pie crust and wrap completely around meat, leaving a 1/2 inch hole in top of crust.
- Place seam side down on cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.
When Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers sent me this as my chosen Vincent Price dish I was very excited. I am not sure exactly what my problem is, and I don’t think I want to know, but the idea of wrapping a meatloaf in a pie crust is really exciting to me.
Maybe it is something in my DNA. According to family legend, my grandmother’s signature dish was a roasted chicken that was stuffed with a meatloaf.
You heard me: Chicken. Stuffed with meatloaf.
I have seriously been looking for a recipe similar to that forever. So, if you have any recipes in your family chest for meatloaf-stuffed chicken, email me. Until then, I guess I am just going to have to be content with wrapping a meatloaf in a pie crust and calling it a day.
So, true to my streak of not reading recipes completely until I actually start cooking them (which is another idiotic inherited trait) I bought the wrong pie crust. I should have bought a pie crust mix, and I ended up with pre-rolled pie crust.
But it all worked out well in the end. I just moistened them and rolled them together, and ended up with my oblong! And since Vincent Price meant this to be an easy recipe, I am sure he would have approved.
At this point, Tom wandered in with the baby.
“Hey are you going to feed this baby? She seems hungry.”
“I’m kinda busy. I have to wrap this meatloaf in a pie crust.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Also, why does this kitchen smell like a cocktail?”
“It’s the bitters in this meatloaf. It’s pretty much the main seasoning in this thing.”
“Awesome. Just…tell me where the clean baby bottles are.”
And now, some before and after shots of the whole wrapped package! I even cut a few little doodads and things for the top, trying to be all fancy, just like the pictured meatloaf.
We lost some structural integrity because the um…meat…steam…vent was clogged. With meat. Cause, I guess that is something you need to watch out for. Who knew?
I guess that is what I get for trying to be as fancy as Vincent Price.
But the finished product didn’t look too bad.
“This is surprisingly good!”
“Really? Even though it is basically just meat, onions and bitters?”
“Really. I even like the taste of the bitters.”
The Verdict: Delish
From The Tasting Notes:
Actually pretty good. The meatloaf itself was greasy, and ours was greasy even though it exploded a bit and some of the grease drained off. But the grease went to good use and made the pie crust extra delicious (think vintage-McDonald’s-beef-tallow-french-fries delicious). You couldn’t really tell that the crust was a pre-rolled pie crust from a box. The bitters gave the meatloaf an interesting taste – and for some reason it ended up tasting a bit like pate, which was good. However, the bitters taste stuck with us for hours after dinner as a strange aftertaste. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if we would have had another zippy bloody mary to round everything off.
If you enjoyed this fun Vincent Price cooking adventure, make sure you check out the whole list of blogs that made Vincent Price dishes over on Silver Screen Suppers! Rumor has it that a lot of fun stuff is being cooked up, including a beef heart! So go check it out!
Looks like you had great fun. Your photos are super.
That sounds super-good.
All these Angostura recipes make me wanna bust out a Manhattan tonight. I should buy some Maraschino cherries.
Ruth! You have done a SUPERB job – your Unwealthy Wellington looks divine. I was kinda thrilled that this recipe got the A-OK symbol from your man. I’ve been following you for a while and it is the first time I’ve seen that… I really laughed at “I’m kinda busy. I have to wrap this meatloaf in a pie crust.” Ha ha – insanity, but good insanity. Thanks for participating in the Vincent Price Cookalong – I created a monster, but a very good monster!
This looks great! I love things stuffed in other things too! I made a Pork Pie a few years ago – basically pork and ham cube meatloaf inside a slightly different crust and baked in a loaf pan – and it turned out fabulous! I highly recommend looking into that. And I totally want to give this recipe a whirl!
I’ve been following the cookalong on various blogs and am coming out of lurkdom to say this:
You could have done a whole lot worse.
I bet if this was in puff pastry instead of pie crust, it would be a favorite in my household.
This looks DELISH! And my parents had a hand crank food mill attached to the kitchen table during 3/4 of our childhoods. What they ate – we ate. Hmm meatloaf in pie dough BABY FOOD.
Never mind the wellington – dig the t-shirt!
I love the idea of an unwealthy wellington. It looks great, I have to say much more work than my fillet steak dish which was a 20 minute job. Well done Love your blog BTW. GG
Meat vents! I am dying from laughter. Love your rosette!
Well, I have to admit that’s the first time I’ve seen Angostura bitters used to season meatloaf, but it looks good. Love your pastry decorations. Too bad the steam vent got blocked!
I feel better now: I’m not the only parent who’s neglected a child in order to do something insane to food! This looks really, really tasty, and so much simpler than a “traditional” Wellington. What a great Cookalong!
Wow, I think it looks very good and very tasty—and the rosette is such a nice touch, too. Marvellous! I may have to try this myself just for fun. I mean, Wellington with bitters in it? With a rosette? Yes.
Also, we’ve had beef heart ’round here a few times, and it is actually pretty good. The only difficulty is that it’s a big piece of meat, and that’s a lot for two people to consume. I’ll have to spring it on my parents some time without really entirely explaining to them what it is.
I think I need your chicken stuffed with meat loaf recipe……!!!
I’ll have to try this one! But I think that instead of his movies, I’d put on the soundtrack to the musical he did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYgOrK9xkH0
You may find this amusing: When I was visiting a friend and we were having drinks, I saw he had a bottle of bitters and said “I’ve got this recipe I’ve been meaning to try that calls for putting that in a meatloaf!” So we looked it up to see how much was required, and I went home with a little jar containing 2 tablespoons of the stuff.
I know this is a year after you posted this recipe, I hope you still monitor this page. Let me make this fast.
THANKS! Back in the ’70s I was a dweeb/nerd teenager who was too awestruck to wander over and say hello to Mr. Price when I had the opportunity to do so.
Fast forward forty (plus) years. Vincent Price’s Un-Wealthy Wellington is in the oven and the whole house smells like a little pie-crust loaf of paradise. Thank you (and Mr. Price, on whatever plane of existence you happen to be.}
Too bad my beloved is a freaking vegetarian. Heh. It’s his fault for not kicking me to the curb years ago.
Best Wishes,
-Dan
Your hubby is right, it’s pretty damned good.Sorry, my spelling is going to get really bad. I keep reaching over and eating a bite of it.
I had to substitute some stuff:
2lbs of Low (10%) ground beef.
2 Tbs of butter to saute the mushrooms and onion.
8 oz of *very* finely chopped fresh mushrooms, rather than a small can of the same.
1 *very* finely chopped onion
My vegetarian partner can wear his big boy, beef eating Basque ancestor pants and take a bite.
Dan!!! So funny, and I am so glad that you enjoyed this recipe! We actually make it quite often. 🙂 If you are feeling the Vincent Price recipes, make sure you try the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving!
Hello! I read this post a while back, and came back to it again via your recent Valentine’s Day menu post, and saw that no one had ever posted a meatloaf-stuffed chicken recipe!
This might not be your grandma’s recipe, but meat-stuffed chicken is a traditional holiday dish here in the Philippines, so there are a number of recipes available online, like this one: http://www.yummy.ph/recipe/chicken-galantina (I admit I’ve never tried that particular recipe, but at least I recognize the magazine/website). The stuffing for chicken galantina looks a lot like the local version of meatloaf (aka “embutido”), which as you can see features mid-century goodies like pickle relish and processed meats – brought over by American GIs after World War II.
I hope that helps somehow, or at least gave you something diverting to read for a bit 🙂