Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over high heat and sauté the onions, celery, peppers, and optional jalapeños. You just want the onion to get translucent and soften the peppers somewhat. Remove them from the heat and let them cool.
Place bread chunks in a medium-sized mixing bowl and add buttermilk. Set aside, allowing the bread chunks to soak until the milk has absorbed.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground beef, sausage, 3/4 cup of BBQ Sauce, cooled onion, celery and pepper mixture, Worcestershire sauce, soaked bread chunks, eggs, and soup mix. Mix ingredients together, then place in the refrigerator for one hour.
Light your grill or smoker and set up for two-zone cooking, maintaining the temperature at 235°F. Place a wood chunk on the hot coals to establish steady clean smoke.
Remove the mixture from the refrigerator, divide in half equally, and place both halves on a sheet of parchment paper or tinfoil. Shape into loaves and transfer them to a wire rack for smoking. I usually shoot for loaves about 2” thick in a 4”x 6” shape.
Place the wire rack with loaves on the smoker and insert a reliable leave-in thermometer in one of the loaves.Close the lid and allow the loaves to cook until an internal temperature of 150°F.
When the internal temperature reaches 150°F, glaze the top of the meatloaf with remaining BBQ sauce and crank the heat up in the cooker to 350 degrees. Cooking at a higher temperature the last 10-15 degrees of cooking allows the sauce to set up and get slightly tacky.
When the internal temperature of 160 to 165°F is reached, it’s time to pull the loaves off the cooker and let them rest for 5-10 minutes. Then slice and serve with garlic mashed potatoes or mac n cheese.
Notes
If you’ve ever had adry meatloaf, I’m going to give you the secret to solving that age-old problem in this blog.Meatloaf isn’t often something associated with outdoor cooking. This classic comfort food has had entire cookbooks written about it, but nearly all of those are designed for a meatloaf pan and an oven.