Ground chicken makes a tender and juicy meatloaf that is fabulous and tasty — once you use a couple of secret ingredients, that is. Read on to find out how to prepare this super-easy chicken meatloaf, using only 4 ingredients!
How to make this 4-Ingredient Super-Easy Chicken Meatloaf
This super-tasty chicken meatloaf is really easy to make: just mix all ingredients, shape into a loaf, and bake. That’s it! If you ever need a super-simple dinner — or if you don’t have much experience cooking — this recipe is a real savior.
There are a couple of ingredients that make this dish a real success. First of all, you need plain, thick full-fat Greek or Turkish yogurt. With full-fat, I mean preferably 10% fat content. Yogurt is the key to juiciness.
This recipe uses Montreal Steak Spice that is a wonderful all-around seasoning. If you don’t find any, you can prepare your own copycat — or simply use another seasoning mix. More hints in the “Tips for Variation” section at the end of the post.
That’s it, so let’s take a look at how to prepare this marvelous meatloaf.
Take 1 pound (450 g) ground chicken and place it into a bowl.
Add 1/4 cup (60 ml) thick, full-fat Greek or Turkish yogurt…
…1 teaspoon Montreal Steak Spice…
…and 1 teaspoon onion powder.
Knead…
…until smooth dough forms.
Place the dough into a glass or ceramic baking dish.
Shape into a loaf with oiled fingers.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (175 °C) for 40 minutes, or until juices run clear.
Remove from the oven.
Let rest for 10 minutes, and serve.
How I came up with this easy chicken meatloaf recipe
When pondering what to develop and post as this week’s recipe, I initially wasn’t thinking of any main course, rather something sweet for Valentine’s Day. However, I had some ground chicken in the fridge that was going to expire soon. My plan was to make the usual creamy chicken sauce for my son, however, I had already baked some chicken thighs for him, and that was enough chicken for one day, I thought.
Suddenly, I realized that the ground chicken would make an outstanding meatloaf. I made chicken meatloaf a long time ago, but it didn’t turn out that juicy. Another version didn’t hold that well together. I remember I added an egg to that version.
It’s strange how meatloaf — or burgers or meatballs — made from beef cry for egg, but anything from ground chicken just doesn’t turn out well if you add egg (and don’t use thickeners like psyllium).
Anyway, I needed something to make the chicken meatloaf juicy. I was thinking of sour cream. Its creaminess might be just perfect to complement the low-fat chicken.
After checking my fridge, I noticed I didn’t have any sour cream — but plenty of Greek yogurt. That might work!
I also needed seasonings for the meatloaf — preferably a seasoning mix to make the preparation easy, not paying too much effort to add many types of seasonings.
When taking a glimpse on my pantry, my eyes stopped on a big jar of Montreal Steak Spice that my dear reader Gladys from Canada has once sent for me to try out. I immediately knew that Montreal Steak Spice was worth trying for my juicy chicken meatloaf. I’ve actually used Montreal Steak Spice in this Salmon Ceviche recipe where it worked amazingly well.
In addition, I grabbed some frozen chopped onion, thinking it would lend both delectable flavor and some texture to my meatloaf. I didn’t fry the onion as it would have been just an extra step, but I wanted to add it raw to the meatloaf.
So, now I had all my ingredients and was ready to conduct my first experiment: I took 1 lb (450 g) ground chicken, about 1/4 cup (60 ml) frozen chopped onion, 1/4 cup (60 ml) Greek yogurt, and about 1 teaspoon Montreal Steak Spice.
I knead all ingredients together into a smooth dough. I was surprised how well the dough turned out! It looked smooth and sturdy, but not too dry.
I placed the dough into a glass baking dish and shaped into a loaf with hands. The surface of the loaf was quite sticky, so I oiled my hands well and patted the surface until it was glossy and smooth. It worked well, and the loaf looked just perfect!
Then, I baked the meatloaf for about 40 minutes until I noticed it’s done. Excitedly, I removed the meatloaf from the oven and cut the piping hot first slice. After letting the slice cool a bit, I tasted it. I was extremely delighted: the meatloaf was tasty and juicy — really delicious! I was surprised how well the chicken meatloaf experiment turned out.
Well, I did have an idea to improve the recipe even further: to make the meatloaf even more palatable and easier to prepare, I was planning to replace the frozen onion with onion powder. The onion chunks were okay, but they did not necessarily provide the best mouthfeel, so onion powder would be a better and smoother option here, both taste-wise and texture-wise, I concluded.
After trying a version with onion powder, I was totally sold: the meatloaf was tasty and juicy, and the texture was awesomely smooth. What a perfect — and super-easy — dinner!
Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:
4-Ingredient Super-Easy Chicken Meatloaf
Ground chicken makes a tender and juicy meatloaf that is fabulous and tasty — once you use a couple of secret ingredients, that is. Read on to find out how to prepare this super-easy chicken meatloaf, using only 4 ingredients!
Ingredients
- 1 lb = 450 g ground chicken
- 1/4 cup = 60 ml plain thick full-fat (10%) Greek or Turkish yogurt
- 1 teaspoon Montreal Steak Spice
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C).
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
- Knead until sturdy dough forms.
- Transfer into a glass or ceramic baking dish. Shape into a loaf with oiled hands.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until juices run clear.
- Remove from the oven, let rest for 10 minutes, and serve.
Recommended Products
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Low Sugar, So Simple: 100 Delicious Low-Sugar, Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Recipes for Eating Clean and Living Healthy -
McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Chicken Seasoning, 23 oz -
McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Steak Seasoning - 29 Ounce -
Frontier Co-op Onion, White Powder, Certified Organic, Kosher, Non-irradiated | 1 lb. Bulk Bag | Allium cepa
| Nutrition information | In total | Per serving if 4 servings in total |
| Protein | 89.6 g | 22.4 g |
| Fat | 23.3 g | 5.8 g |
| Net carbs | 4.2 g | 1.1 g |
| kcal | 591 kcal | 148 kcal |
Tips for variation
If you cannot find Montreal Steak Spice or it’s just not your cup of tea, feel free to use another seasoning mix like Cajun seasoning, barbecue seasoning, blackening spice, Old Bay, poultry seasoning, pizza seasoning, ras el hanout, or garam masala.
Instead of onion powder, you can use 1/4 cup (60 ml) chopped onion (fresh or frozen) and fry it first in a small amount of butter or olive oil. Like this, the texture becomes softer and the taste milder and more delicious.
For an even more moreish meatloaf version, fill the meatloaf with a tasty filling like fried mushrooms and onions — or other fried veggies — tomato paste or marinara, or sun-dried tomatoes.
General prattling
Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you can spend some quality time with your loved ones.
This week has been quite cold, and the weather has been really beautiful. I came to the summer house to finalize the translation of my keto book. Look, how gorgeous the wintery trees look like:
I have heated the ovens here to save electricity. You can also use the ovens for baking, and I actually used the leftover ground chicken to make more meatloaf versions, which I baked in the large wood-heated oven:
Does the yogurt have to be full fat? Can nonfat greek yogurt work too?
I’m afraid it becomes too dry if you use non-fat yogurt. On the other hand, if you use non-fat yogurt, you might want to add a tablespoon or two olive oil to provide the needed fat.
The recipes offers a simple and good base to prepare a nice dinner, but the ground chicken may result to be excessively dry… or for me it was so: I found that adding just a little bit of bacon (uncured, thin-sliced and chopped mixing it with the other ingredients in the bowl) adjusted it with more juiciness without releasing too much fat. I was wondering if mayo could be another option to avoid dryness… what do you think about it, and how much would you suggest to try to add in the mixture? Thanks!
Hi Roberta, this recipe contains yogurt to prevent dryness and to make the meatloaf juicy. Mayo sounds also a great option. As it’s so greasy, maybe a couple of tablespoons would suffice. And who doesn’t like bacon? I bet it makes the meatloaf even tastier!