I Made Chrissy Teigen’s Spicy Meatloaf & Here’s What I Thought

While I didn’t always love spicy food, I very much love it now. So when I saw Chrissy Teigen’s meatloaf recipe titled as “spicy,” I was immediately into it. Most meatloaf recipes are simple, savory affairs, but hers calls for a mix of hot Italian sausage and ground beef, so I was intrigued.

My gut told me it was going to be great — adding sausage would bring a whole lot more flavor. I took to the kitchen feeling pretty hopeful, but unfortunately things didn’t turn out quite like I wanted them to. Here’s how testing Chrissy’s meatloaf went.

You’ll start by preheating the oven to 350°F. While the oven heats, you’ll toss a few slices of stale bread in a food processor and grind to make breadcrumbs. You’ll place the crumbs in a large bowl with some milk to soak, and finely chop some mushrooms. Add the mushrooms to a bowl, along with carrots, onion, ground beef, hot Italian sausage, egg, Worcestershire, red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper.

Next, you’ll shape the mixture into a loaf and place it in the prepared pan. Spread a mixture of ketchup and brown sugar over the top, then put it the oven for about an hour.

I was really excited about this meatloaf because of the addition of hot Italian sausage. I had a feeling it would give it a big flavor boost and make it almost meatball-like. While it definitely did both of these things, I’m sad to say that I didn’t end up loving it as much as I thought I would.

For one thing, this meatloaf is very spicy. While I love spicy things, it was too spicy for me. In some ways, the heat masked the other flavors and I found it to be too stark of a contrast to the sweet ketchup topping. (Although I think you could easily solve this problem by swapping sweet sausage in for the hot sausage — more on that below.)

I also appreciated the sneaky addition of all the vegetables. The mushrooms added heartiness and the carrots softened nicely. This is a great meatloaf to make if you’re trying to add more vegetables to your plate while still pleasing the meat-lovers at your table.

1. You might want to tone down the spice. If you’ve got kids at your table or are sensitive to spice, this meatloaf could be too spicy. In this case, I’d swap sweet Italian sausage for the hot Italian sausage or either cut out the red pepper flakes or reduce them to a pinch or so.

2. Grate the carrots yourself for best texture. While you can buy shredded carrots at the grocery store, these will be too coarse for the meatloaf and won’t soften enough inside. Instead, grate whole carrots yourself on the largest holes of a box grater.

While I liked the idea of Chrissy’s sausage-spiked meatloaf, the end product was too spicy for me, and the heat masked the flavors of everything else.

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