Heavenly Ham Loaf

This actually doesn’t look too bad, right? It’s a meatloaf with a stripe of pickle running through it, which is definitely unusual, but I like pickles on my hamburger so hey this is worth trying.

(Yes, I have noticed a strange tendency to over-rationalize some of my recipe choices. Why do you ask?)

Heavenly Ham Loaf with pickle stuffing

Meat Layer:
2 12-ounce cans luncheon meat
1-1/2 cups fine dry bread crumbs
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon powdered thyme
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 eggs
2 cups Evaporated Milk

Pickle Stuffing:
2 teaspoons prepared mustard
1/2 cup Evaporated Milk
1 cup fine dry bread crumbs
1-1/4 cups sweet pickle relish

In mixing bowl, shred luncheon meat into bits by running tines of fork over meat. (Or put through food chopper using medium blade.) Add the 1-1/2 cups crumbs, seasoning, and onion. Mix thoroughly. Beat eggs slightly with fork, then add 2 cups Evaporated Milk. Add egg-milk mixture to meat mixture. Mix thoroughly. Pack half the meat mixture into well greased loaf pan (10-1/4 x 5-1/4 x 3 inches). For the pickle layer, stir mustard into 1/2 cup Evaporated Milk. Add 1 cup crumbs and pickle relish and blend. Spread pickle stuffing evenly and firmly on meat layer. Pack remaining half of meat mixture over pickle layer. Bake in moderate oven (375 F.) 1 hour and 15 minutes. Makes 10 to 12 servings.

I love the generic “LUNCHEON MEAT” and “EVAPORATED MILK” cans here. It’s like the world’s cheapest nuclear bunker supplies!

Now, we actually aren’t using Spam here. (Oh, sorry — “LUNCHEON MEAT.”) There was a lot of leftovers from a recent spiral-sliced ham, so I’m going to just use those instead.

But how am I going to turn those big chunks into shreds, you ask?

This is why I love my food processor. Twenty-four ounces of ham shredded in under five minutes. (Ironically, cleaning the food processor takes slightly longer…)

The shredded ham gets mixed with bread crumbs and onions and thyme.

Then there’s plenty of egg and milk.

For the pickle layer, we add some mustard to the milk first…

And then dump it in the pickles. Which also have bread crumbs in them for some reason?

OK, whatever, let’s just put all this ridiculous stuff into the loaf pan.

Everything then gets baked.

After it came out of the oven, it looked really pale and unpleasant — not so much brown and green, as brown-pink and brown-yellow.

Overall, this was really unpleasant. Too many bread crumbs made it gummy and bland instead of juicy and meaty. In theory, pickles and mustard could have helped with this, but they were also drowned by bread and so the middle layer could barely distinguished from the ham layers. With lots of additional salt (which you’d generally get from canned luncheon meat anyway), it wasn’t as bad, but, sadly, this mostly ended up as dog food.

“Thanks” to Retro Adverto for the recipe… I think.

And a big retro-themed congratulations to Ruth and Tom on the arrival of their own little heavenly ham loaf, who looks much more cuter than anything I’ve ever cooked on this blog.