SMOKIN'

I bought my husband an entry level smoker for Christmas and the weather has finally warmed up enough for us to use it. For our first foray we decided to try smoking something relatively easy - Meatloaf. On a recent work trip to upstate New York my husband had tried some and was eager to see if we could make something as good at home. I think that we did. I used my standard meatloaf recipe that uses stuffing mix. I have made countless meatloaves in my day using a myriad of recipes and, to date, that stuffing recipe is still my favorite. To shake things up a bit and use up stuff in the fridge we wrapped this meatloaf in speck and then basted it with barbecue sauce. After about 2 hours in the smoker we blasted in it a 400 degree over for about 20 minutes to crust up the outside. Definitely a good idea. The resulting meatloaf was fabulous! Although, I do think the speck kept a lot of smoke flavor from permeating the meat. I will have to try is again sans speck to see how the flavors change. I found it to be just smokey enough.