The Best Pizza Meatloaf

We love pizza and meatloaf, so we’ve been working to perfect the Best Pizza Meatloaf! 

Everyone in our family loves this easy meal because the meat is so tender. The sauce keeps the mini meatloaves moist and the cheese and pepperoni add great flavor! 

If you enjoy this recipe you may also enjoy our Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf!

Pizza Meatloaf Recipe

We love pizza!  We also enjoy the flavors of pork, so we knew that mixing Italian sausage and ground pork would be perfect for an easy pizza meatloaf.

Sausage is a winning meal ingredient in our house because it is so easy for the kids to chew.  Kids often have trouble chewing and eating big pieces of meat.  Grinding meat is actually a way to help tenderize it.  Thus ground meat is tender when cooked properly and often easier for everyone in our family to enjoy.

Minimum cooking times and temperatures can really affect how tender meat is and how easy it is to chew.  I always reference the USDA Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart when I have a food safety question.  Ground meat like sausage and ground pork used in this recipe need to be cooked to an internal temperature of 160ºF.  Cooking the meat very much past 160ºF can dry it out.

I have an economical, yet reliable digital meat thermometer that I use to ensure that my meat is properly cooked.

How To Make Pizza Meatloaf

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and cover a baking sheet with foil for easier clean-up.
2. In a mixing bowl beat egg and milk with an electric mixer until smooth. 
3. Add the croutons and mix well.  Let stand for about five minutes so the croutons can absorb the liquid.  Start the mixer again and beat until all of the crunchy pieces are gone.
4. Add Italian sausage, ground pork, cheddar cheese and half of a can pizza sauce.  Mix well.
5. To create evenly sized mini meatloaves Divide mixture in half.  Divide each half into quarters to get a total of eight mini meatloaves. 
6. Cup hands and shape each portion of meat into a mini meatloaf using your hands. 
7. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes.  Remove from oven and use a meat thermometer to check the temperature in the center of each meatloaf.  
8. Add a tablespoon of pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni to the top of each meatloaf and return to the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and the internal temperature reaches 160ºF.

Food Safety on the Farm

When people hear that I live on a farm sometimes they have questions about food safety on the farm.  Producing safe food is one of the tasks that many farmers I know take great pride in.

My husband actually worked at a feed mill on a large farm before we got married.  I wrote Large Farm and Small Farm Comparison – Making Animal Feed and We Take Pride in Feeding 4-H Animals that share more details about pig feed.

While working at Cooper Farms on the Indiana and Ohio state line, he was responsible to help develop and implement a very extensive program to increase the safety of the animal feed.  The program is called Safe Food Safe Feed.  The end goal of this program is to improve the traceability of everything that is fed to the animals.  Safe Food Safe Feed is another checkpoint that all Food and Drug Administration rules are being followed and works to eliminate any potential outside contaminations to animal food.

All of this time, effort and expense is invested in delivering safe pork to all of us.  This is just another example of how farms support the We Care Ethical Principles.

So it’s good to know that there is a lot of thought and work that goes into food safety before we pick-up our groceries at the grocery store.  This makes my meals taste even better!

More Easy Dinner Recipes:

Here are a few of my family’s favorite meals featuring pork:

• The Best Taco Meatloaf
• Twice Baked Potato Casserole
• Sausage Bubble Up Casserole
• No Peek Pork – Country Style Ribs in the Crock Pot
• Slow Cooker Country Style Ribs with Mushroom Gravy
• Margarita Monday Shredded Pork in the Crock Pot
• Basic Oven Baked Pork Chops
• Smoked Sausage & Cheesy Potato Casserole
• Sausage and Potato Skillet

We hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we do!

This post is sponsored by Indiana Pork, but all opinions are my own!

Printable Recipe for the Best Pizza Meatloaf