Isn’t it great when you find a delicious recipe that is fast, easy and works really well as a freezer meal? Well Mrs. Hillbilly and I found just such a recipe in these tasty little mini meatloaves. They were a snap to prepare and a snap to freeze, which means they’ll certainly be a snap to pull out and cook on a busy night! Oh and did I mention they were delicious? We served them up with some mashed potatoes and veggies for complete nutritious and delicious meal! Yum.
Freezer Meal Idea – Mini BBQ Meatloaves
Ingredients
Scale
- 2 pounds ground Italian sausage or ground beef {you can do half and half (, too!})
- 1 cup grated carrot
- 1/2 cup green onions (, thinly sliced)
- 1/2 cup panko or plain dry bread crumbs
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 2 eggs (, lightly beaten)
- 1 cup barbecue sauce
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Coat 2 muffin tins with cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except BBQ sauce. Divide mixture evenly among 16-24 cups {depending on how large you want your mini loaves}. Press your thumb into the top of each loaf and top with a few teaspoons of barbecue sauce. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until center is 160F.
- If you want to make a freezer meal out of it, place the cooked and cooled loaves {still in the pan} into the freezer until frozen. Then pop them out into a Ziploc bag and place in the freezer.
- When you’re ready to cook, completely thaw. Place meatloaves on a baking sheet and bake at 350F for 15 minutes, or until thoroughly heated. You can brush with some extra BBQ sauce before heating if you’d like.
Links to freezer pans I commonly use:
- Aluminum Foil Pan Containers with Lids 8.5″ x 6″ x 3″
- Aluminum Foil Deep Pans 9″ x 13″
- Round 9 Inch Aluminum Foil Pans with lids
Find More of My Freezer Meal Recipes
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Eileen says
Sounds good! I was wondering why you don’t go ahead and bake them and then freeze. What are the pros and cons of freezing prepped-ahead meals vs. cooked meals? And yes! Lucy looks adorable-then AND now!
Susan says
I have been making these for years! I precook them to use on those days when you need a quick meal.
Leftover soups are another muffin tin favorite. 2 or 3 pucks make a meal! 🙂
Nancy says
I make a similar version, only add some taco seasoning mix to the meat. Instead of topping with BBQ sauce, I sue salsa. Yum!
Nancy says
Actually, I don’t sue salsa, I use salsa.
debbie in alaska says
Yum!!
Amy L says
I made a similar recipe this week but with ground chicken and ketchup instead of BBQ sauce. Very tasty. The recipe went into my “What to do with Ground Chicken” very slim recipe pile. I am constantly on the lookout for tasty ground chicken recipes but rarely find a good one. At my grocery store, you can periodically get ground chicken on sale with an additional markdown cheaper than ground beef but I am hesitant to buy it because I am not that comfortable cooking with it. The hubs does not like ground chicken in tacos or sloppy joes and he rarely will eat any kind of chili.
Carrie says
I was thinking of trying this with ground turkey or chicken. Glad to hear you’ve had success. We try to limit our beef consumption for environmental/health/cost reasons. I like burgers and steak so I keep my one beef meal per month for those! My FIL hunts so I’d like to try this with deer meat too.
I use ground chicken or turkey in spaghetti sauce. Add Italian seasoning to the meat while browning.
Mavis says
I bet substituting either of those meats would be delicious!