Meatloaf is a family favorite for good reason; it’s filling, delicious, and easy to get on the dinner table. Of course if you can’t — or don’t want to — eat gluten, you’ll have to adapt your traditional meatloaf recipe to your new needs.

In addition to getting the grains out of your diet, ditching the breadcrumbs or wheat germ for a more fiber-packed and low sugar substitute like coconut flour can be a huge win.

The trick to substituting coconut flour into any recipe is to remember that coconut flour is very absorbent. You don’t want to use the same amount of coconut flour as you would wheat flour in a recipe. In fact, using only 10 to 30% as much as your recipe calls for is a safe bet. And adding in more eggs to your recipe is the best way to keep your loaf moist, and bound together.

Here’s how you can make a healthier version of meatloaf.

Ingredients:

½ cup organic coconut flour

3 eggs

1 cup finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

⅛ teaspoon thyme

⅛ teaspoon marjoram

1 pound ground beef

1 16-ounce can tomato sauce, or you can use your own sauce

 Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine coconut flour, eggs, chopped onion, salt, black pepper, thyme and marjoram in a bowl.

3. Add ground beef and 1 cup of tomato sauce and mix well.

4. Shape mixture into a loaf and place in a baking dish. Pour the remaining 1 cup of tomato sauce over the top of the loaf.

5. Bake for 1¼ hours.

Makes: 6 to 8 servings.

Image credit: naotakem/Flickr

About Deborah Gordon, MD

As a physician, I know that the basis of all health is a nutrient dense, well-prepared diet and that the foods of modern civilization are poison to many if not all people. At times even serious disease can be reversed through adoption of a primal/paleo diet, and certainly many minor diseases, acute and chronic, are not pharmaceutical deficiencies but rather nutritional deficiencies and toxicities, and will benefit from an improved choice of foods.

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