Leaner Smoked Meatloaf with Chipotle Glaze

• 160 g plain dry breadcrumbs
• 180 g whole milk
• 907 g (2 lb) ground sirloin, 93/7
• 120 g carrot, finely grated on the small holes (about 2 medium)
• 2 large eggs (about 100 g), beaten
• 2 tsp onion powder
• 2 tsp salt (12 g)
• 1 tsp pimenton de la Vera, dulce
• 1 tsp fennel seed, toasted and ground
• 1/2 tsp ground sage
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 170 g tomato paste (one 6 oz can)
• 30 g cider vinegar
• 27 g brown sugar (2 tbsp)
• 2 chipotles in adobo, minced, plus 1 tbsp (15 g) of the adobo
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 30-45 g water, to thin the glaze

Method

1. 1
   Hydrate the panade

   Stir the 160 g breadcrumbs and 180 g milk together in a large bowl and let them sit 10 minutes. Dried commercial crumbs drink slowly, and skipping this rest is what makes the raw mix read as slop. It should look like thick paste, not batter, before anything else goes in. Don't add more milk than this, even though the meat is lean: fat and water are not interchangeable, and the carrot brings water of its own during the cook.

2. 2
   Season and mix

   Add the carrot, onion powder, salt, pimenton, fennel, sage, and pepper to the panade and stir to combine. Add the beaten eggs. Add the ground sirloin and mix with your hands until the meat turns tacky and holds together, then stop. Salt plus mixing pulls out myosin and that is most of the binding, but past tacky it turns springy like sausage. Lean meat tolerates this better than a burger would because the panade is already doing the job the fat would.

3. 3
   Shape and rest

   Turn the mixture out onto a sheet pan lined with butcher paper and form a tight loaf, packing firmly so there are no air pockets. Two smaller loaves cook faster and take more smoke if you'd rather. Refrigerate 20 minutes so it transfers to the grate in one piece.

4. 4
   Smoke

   Preheat the smoker to 225F, super smoke on if available. Hold the loaf on its paper over the grate, pull the paper back toward you and let the loaf land directly on the grate, then remove the paper. Cook about 2 hours (less for two loaves), probe in the center, until it reaches 160F. That is the ground-beef safety temperature and it is not negotiable the way a whole-muscle pull temp is. Free-form on the grate rather than in a loaf pan gives more smoke surface and lets what little fat renders drip away.

5. 5
   Glaze

   Whisk the tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, minced chipotle, adobo, and garlic powder together with 30-45 g water until it is brushable. Brush over the loaf during the last 20 minutes of the cook.

6. 6
   Rest, weigh, slice

   Rest 10 minutes. Weigh the whole cooked loaf before slicing and register it as a batch from that weight: the raw mix is about 1,850 g including glaze and the per-serving numbers below assume six equal cuts, but the cooked weight is what makes a 150 g slice loggable.