Steamed meatloaf is quick and easy meal that can be prepared ahead of time. Water chestnuts add some crisp, crunchy textural contrast.

Time: 2/5
Less than half an hour from start to finish

Effort: 2/5
Mix stuff up and stick in a steamer

Wholesome Fast Food

I remember reading about Western meatloaf being baked in the oven, and being perplexed by the concept. For me, all the meatloaf I had growing up had been steamed.

I feel that steaming is an under-utilised cooking method outside of Asia. Besides being great for cooking ingredients like scallops without adding any oil or fats that may obscure subtle flavours, it is also great for cooking structurally delicate food like fish gently, in a way that doesn’t involve stirring or otherwise moving the ingredients.

Chinese-style meatloaf is made with ground pork. At least, coming from the Cantonese part of China, I’ve never come across meatloaf that wasn’t made with pork. Common additions include diced up dried squid (super savoury), or pickled Chinese mustard (梅菜 Mui choi / Mei cai – sweet, kind of fruity, and with a very subtle funk).

What I was craving this day, however, is a water chestnut and shiitake mushroom meatloaf. Water chestnuts (馬蹄 Ma tai / Ma ti, literally “horse’s hoof”) are the bulbous stems of a plant that grows in marshes and wetlands. They have a nice, crisp crunchy bite and a mild, slightly sweet taste. They are great for adding textural contrast to dishes that are otherwise monotonous in mouthfeel (like meatloaf!). Shiitake mushrooms, of course, add a lot of umami and have a satisfying meaty texture as well.

Meatloaf is quick to make and quick to cook. It’s great as a make ahead meal that you throw into the steamer when you come back in the evening. It’s also a great weeknight meal if you cook right away, because this sort of recipe doesn’t really need any time to marinade. Ground meat has a high surface area to volume ratio for absorbing flavour, and you can mix the seasoning into the inside of the meatloaf itself.

I found out later that, by convergent evolution, I have stumbled upon one of the ways my mom managed to put home-cooked dinners on the table for my dad and herself, every weeknight without fail, all while holding down a very demanding full-time job. Steamed meatloaf was part of the regular rotation, and it worked very well for fitting hearty, healthy meals into their busy lifestyle.

A word about economies of scale. Most of my recipes are meal prep friendly, but steamed meatloaf is not one of them. While steaming is a great cooking method for delicate ingredients or subtle flavours, steam is not a very efficient means to transfer heat. You’ll see later that because of this, the meatloaf needs to be quite thin. You might be able to make enough for leftovers tomorrow with a very wide dish, but don’t count on eating a single batch all week.

Dramatis Personae

Pork – 100-200g pax

Make your own decisions about how lean of a cut to use. The fattier the meat, the juicier the meatloaf and the more calories you need to contend with. Pork shoulder (also called butt, I never understood why) is a good all-purpose cut in general and works great in meatloaf, and it’s what I used (or so I think. The package didn’t say).

We will be mixing it vigorously until it becomes a paste. If we were making, say, Italian-style meatballs, you’d call the meat over-mixed. This is intentional. Agitating the meat gives the meatloaf structural integrity, allowing it to stay together once its cooked. We want meatloaf that we can divide into pieces and pick up with chopsticks, not something that falls apart when cut into.

Water chestnuts – one or so pax

They look like these brown bulbs in their natural state. Peeling them reveals the crunchy white flesh underneath. Fortunately, the store near me carries pre-peeled water chestnut, and I will happily pay extra for that added convenience.

We’ll be dicing them up and adding them into the meatloaf mixture for some crunch and textural contrast. Use less than you think you need, because a water chestnut looks deceptively small but gives you a lot of volume once diced up.

I mean this culinarily speaking; I know that isn’t true from a physics standpoint but I don’t know how to put it. An ingredient that occupies many small spaces in the volume of a finished product has more of a presence than if it occupies a few big spaces. We want to make meatloaf with water chestnuts, not water chestnut loaf with meat.

Shiitake mushrooms – a couple

De-stem and rehydrate. Keep the stems for broth, and keep the rehydrating water! Add the mushroom water to the meat to make the meatloaf extra savoury and juicy.

Corn starch or potato starch – a teaspoon or so pax

For some structural integrity. It also forms a slurry with the liquid that come out of the meat as it cooks, and captures that juiciness instead of letting it evaporate off.

Soy sauce and sugar – about a teaspoon each pax

Soy sauce for salinity, sugar for balance. The sweetness playing against the savoury adds a lot of complexity, and you will sorely miss its absence if it is omitted.

Optional toppings

Several slivers of julienned ginger are a common topping, as is salted fish. My SO’s mother just made some salted fish for us – she covered fish in salt and hung it outside her window to dry. I’ll be steaming our homemade salted fish right on top of the meatloaf as a nice addition, for some extra umami.

Vegetables – 100-200g pax

Always eat your veggies! The weather’s been cold recently so the choy sum (菜心; also known as Cai Xin) harvest has been really great. Very sweet, nice and tender. I did a very simple stir fry of choy sum with nothing more than salt and a little bit of Chinese rice wine to let the flavour of the quality harvest shine through.

Executive summary

1. Rinse off dried shiitakes and rehydrate them a couple of hours in advance.
2. Dice up water chestnuts and shiitake mushrooms.
3. Mix all the ingredients together, including the shiitake soaking liquid, until the ground pork is a slightly sticky paste.
4. Spread meatloaf out thinly in a wide, shallow dish. Add toppings if desired. Refrigerate until ready to cook, or cook right away.
5. Get rice going, and set a pot or pan of water to boil (do this before step 2 if you’re cooking right away).
6. Place meatloaf on a steaming rack in the steamer. Steam on high heat for 8-10 minutes, or until cooked through. Cook vegetables while waiting for meatloaf to steam.
7. Serve with rice.

Play by Play

De-stemming shiitakes. You know you got good shiitake if they’re nice and dry, and the stems snap off easily. Hang on to the stems for making broth in the future.

Giving the shiitake a nice rinse. Check out all the grit that came off in the photo on the right – this is why we rinse before we soak. Otherwise, all that dirt is going into our food when we add our shiitake water into the meat!

This is all the knife work that’s required for this recipe! These shiitake have been rehydrating for several hours, but you can still see that narrow band of dryness still persisting. This can be a problem if we’re cooking them whole, but they’re in small enough pieces that it shouldn’t cause an issue. Rehydrate overnight for best effect.

I learned from past mistakes, and used a bowl big enough to mix the ingredients in without stuff flying out of it. Your fingers really are the best tool for this. Mix until the meat takes on a pasty consistency. Don’t forget to add the shiitake water! It forms a slurry with the corn starch, which will keep the meatloaf juicy.

I put my meatloaf mixture into a shallow stainless steel dish and refrigerated until I was ready to cook. Stainless steel works better than ceramic or porcelain for steaming, because it’s better at transferring heat to the food.

A visualisation of how thin you want your meatloaf to be. Even with meatloaf mix piling up on the sides of this trench I excavated, it barely comes halfway up one segment of my small man-child finger. A thin meatloaf cooks quickly, allowing the center to be done before the outsides become tough.

Water is at a vigorous boil. Top meatloaf with salted fish and place inside the steamer. Cover, and let it steam over a vigorous boil. Try not to open the lid before you are ready, because that drops the temperature inside the steamer before heat can conduct to the middle of the meatloaf. Check the doneness if you must, however; you will learn to manage the timing intuitively with experience.

Looking quite delicious! Most of that liquid is actually water dripping down from the lid as it steams. It’s called 倒汗水 (dough hon sui ; “dripping sweat”) and is pretty much unavoidable if you’re cooking with steam.

A cozy, comfy dinner.

A good look at the texture and the cross section – see how it mostly holds together? It would have come out even better if I mixed the meatloaf even more, but I’m still very happy with the results.

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