So! It’s time for the non-vegetarian entry! The stuffed meatroll, a delicious dish my mom taught me, and a heavy yet awesome dish. The one I am going to make is “junior-sized.” It is advisable that, if you have more people to feed, you make a bigger one. Much bigger one (you’ll see, this dish is easy to scale).

So, to start with, the usual picture of the ingredients!

If you are wondering:

• Beef mince.
• Eggs.
• Garlic.
• Fresh parsley.
• Ketchup – or other tomato sauce.
• Grated cheese.
• Mustard. Not shown because I didn’t have any, but it really adds a wonderful zing to the meat.

For the stuffing:

• More cheese.
• Some deli meat (typically shaved ham, turkey or chicken works too)
• Carrot(s).
• Eggs.

First step! You want to mix the meat with the tomato sauce/ketchup, finely chopped garlic (I put two cloves for that much meat), parsley, mustard, and one egg (or more if you have more meat). Be generous, and don’t worry if the resulting mix looks a bit too “juicy” since we’ll fix that in a second.

After the mix is thoroughly mixed (don’t forget the mustard if you have it!), add a lot of grated cheese, and mix once more. We add the cheese at the end for a reason you’ll notice immediately: If your meat mix before the cheese was juicy, after mixing the cheese in it’ll be just perfect. Cheese solidifies the mix quite a bit, and if you had added it at the same time as everything else, you’d have run into trouble trying to make a homogeneous mix.

Once that is done, extend the meat on a piece of tinfoil and put the stuffing ingredients on top. The cheese (could be sliced, could be more of the grated cheese you used before), the deli, the carrots sliced thin and lengthwise, and one (or more) hard boiled eggs. You can be more creative with the stuffing too, you can add bacon – which works really well if you like porky stuff -, you can add capiscum or other “hard” vegetable, it’s really up to you!

As I said before, this is a “junior sized” roll. Don’t hesitate to make the roll thicker, by making the meat extension wider. For that you will need an “extra-wide” roll or tinfoil, or to turn the tinfoil 90° and make a “stubbie” roll – shorter but thicker.

Now, the rolling part is the most delicate part of the operation. You want the roll to wrap around the stuffing well and to completely close over it. To aid yourself in this operation, don’t distribute the meat evenly over the foil. The layer of meat should be thinner in the center, where the stuffing is, and thicker on the edges. When you wrap the meat using the tinfoil, you’ll have to press more or less hard to make the meat come through, and finally, make doubly sure that the roll is properly closed everywhere, specially of course at the top. If you have to add more meat so that it closes, or redistribute the whole thing again, don’t hesitate to do it. If the roll doesn’t close properly, it won’t cook as well!

Finally, your roll is ready for the oven! 180-200°C pre-heated oven, and in we go!

You want to let it cook for about 20-30 minutes (varies with the over, I left mine for 20 minutes), then bring it out and open the tinfoil. With the tinfoil open, lower the oven heat a bit, and put the meatroll in again for another 20-30 minutes (again, I used 20 minutes for my oven). Times will depend greatly on the oven you use, mine is a rather potent fan baking oven, so things cook fast. Leave it more time if you want, it should be juicy enough not to go dry!

And it’s ready! Be careful when taking it out of the wrap. You’ll see that a lot of fat (mostly from the cheese) has come out, which is a good thing. Serve hot or cold, slice it up, make lots of it and freeze the slices in individual portions if you have too much. It freezes and de-freezes well.

As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly a light meal. Put something light like a salad or some steamed vegetables to go with it.

Enjoy!