I tried to make an Azerbaijani-style meat loaf (apparently also known as blood bread) as shown in a YouTube video (turning on CC on the video will give you ingredients, but not quantities or cooking/resting times). Here’s how I reverse-engineered the recipe (scaled down for some 2 servings):
- 250 g beef, ground
- 250 g mutton, ground
- 125 g lamb tail fat, cut into 5–10 mm cubes
- 2 eggs
- Garlic powder, ground black pepper, dried mint, cumin, paprika, salt
- Breadcrumbs (6 bread ends, over a week old and completely dry, ground up)
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 250 ml milk (instead of cream and water as I didn’t have cream)
- 50 ml sunflower seed oil (didn’t have corn oil)
I made the kind with the cheese and egg topping shown in the video. I made one single pan, with two tomato quarters, some 70 g cheese, an egg and 80 ml sour cream for the topping. I baked everything at 200°C for an hour, using a stainless steel pan.
I already noticed the dough was quite runny and did not hold shape as well as in the video when making the pit for the topping. When comparing my results to the video, the blood bread in the video seems to have gotten more thermal energy than mine – the meat on mine hardly browned (though the egg mixture did). Most importantly, mine was drowning in liquid (which looked like a mixture of water, fat and coagulated proteins). Also, the meat in my recipe looked quite crumbly (basically like cooked ground meat) whereas the original has formed a dough that solidifies when cooked.
What has gone wrong?
- Too little heat? (If so, what would be a good temperature?)
- Baking time too short? (If so, what time would have been required?)
- Too much liquid? (If so, what amount of cream and water would I use for 500 g meat?)
- Not enough breadcrumbs? (What ratio is recommended?)
- Do different characteristics of milk vs. a roughly 1:1 mixture of cream and water have an impact on moisture retention? (Which?)
- Did I get some of the ingredient ratios (eyeballed from the recipe) wrong?
- Something else?