Kalle Bergman on how to make the ultimate mother-approved Swedish meatballs. By Kalle Bergman – Photo By Mads Damgaard
Swedish Meatballs. The King Of Swedish Cuisine. The Classic Of Classics. Titan Of Titans, if you will.
This ultra classic has a very special place in the hearts of most Swedes.And why shouldn’t it? It is after all a miniature version of the entire Swedish cuisine. It tastes like Sweden, and it has all the classic ingredients that we see all across Scandinavian food culture. Pickled cucumber. Lingonberries. Mash. Cream sauce. Powerful and smooth at the same time. Sweet and sour. Simple but refined.
There are as many Swedish meatball recipes as there are Swedish mothers. All with their individual secrets and tweaks, and all claiming to the be “the original”. Most use a bread and milk mixture to make the meatballs smoother, others mix pork and beef to make them lighter. Some season with everything from allspice to nutmeg. I use a little cream, dark beer, onions and stock to make the meatballs slightly lighter, chunkier and juicier. And they are Mother approved.
Start by preparing the pickled cucumber. Mix water, sugar, salt and vinegar in a large bowl. Whisk until sugar and salt is disolved completely. Finely slice the cucumber, and add to the bowl. Make sure they are completely covered by the fluid. Add bayleaf, and put in the refridgerator for at least one hour.
For the lingonberry jam
Rinse the lingonberries thoroughly and put them in a bowl. Pour in the sugar, and gently stir until sugar is disolved. Store in the refridgerator until serving.
For the meatballs
Peel and grate the onion coarsely. Then gently fry it on a medium warm pan together with a little bit of butter until golden brown.
In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, heavy cream, beer and stock. Set aside for 5 minutes.
Place the ground beef in a large bowl, add the browned onions and the beer / bread mixture . Season with salt and pepper, and mix together well. Leave for 10 minutes.
Roll the meat into small balls with a diameter of roughly one inch. Fry them in batches together with a little butter or sunflower oil. They are ready when they are slightly crispy on the outside. Set aside while making the sauce.
For the sauce
Deglace the frying pan with a littlewater and add the stock. Reduce by half, and then add the cream. Bring to a simmer, and thicken with butter and corn starch. Let it simmer for 5 minutes.
Taste and season it with salt, sugar and white pepper.
Add the meatballs to the sauce, or serve them separately.
For the potatoes
Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water until soft. Pass through a sieve into a large bowl to get the finest and smoothest mash. Add the butter, and then the milk slowly as you whisk the potatoes. Do not add ALL milk at once, you might not need more than just a few drops, depending on what potato you are using. Season with salt and add more butter if you want a creamier taste.
Plating
Garnish with dill
Notes
If it’s completely impossible to get a hold of lingonberries, or lingonberry jam (usually found in that Swedish furniture store) – you can substitute red currant jelly. It’s not the same, but it works.
Prep Time:20 mins
Cook Time:30 mins
Kalle Bergman
Kalle Bergman is a food writer and media entrepreneur who is the founder of Honest Cooking and PAIR Magazine. As a food writer, his writing has been regularly featured in publications like Gourmet, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and Serious Eats. He is obsessed with simple food, more often than not from his native Scandinavia.
The sauce for Swedish Meatballs is a creamy gravy that is made with butter, beef broth/stock, thickened with flour and made creamy with cream. But the most important flavour for the a really good creamy gravy is the pan drippings after searing the meatballs.
Italian Meatballs vs Swedish Meatballs: Swedish Meatballs are typically smaller in size than Italian meatballs and they are usually made with a 50-50 ratio of ground pork and ground beef.
Roll the finished meatballs in plain flour before frying. This is, hands down, one of the easiest ways I've discovered to prevent meatballs from falling apart when cooking.
The pork in the meatballs lends saltiness and moisture while the beef is where that hardy flavor and uniform texture comes from. Following that are onions, water, egg, salt, pepper, allspice, and potato starch - and the last two are those 'secret' ingredients.
It's lingonberry season and the small sour berries that thrive best in cold climates are ready to be picked. Swedes love eating the jam made from lingonberries with meatballs, mashed potatoes and cream sauce.
Swedish meatballs, or köttbullar, must be prepared, above all, with love. This is why homemade meatballs are a widespread concept in Sweden, and there are many different favourite recipes – with and without meat.
While both varieties include ingredients such as grated onion and panade (milk-soaked bread) or bread crumbs, plus the usual salt and pepper, Swedish meatballs traditionally use spices like allspice, nutmeg, white pepper, and sometimes ground ginger as flavoring.
LONDON — The furniture giant Ikea joined a growing list of brands that have been touched by Europe's food scandal on Monday and withdrew its signature Swedish meatballs from its markets and cafeterias across most of Europe after one batch was found to contain traces of horse meat.
Meatballs are as quintessentially Swedish as it gets. In their most traditional form Swedish meatballs ('köttbullar') are made of ground pork and beef, cream, egg and onion, and are served with creamy mashed potatoes, a thick, brown gravy, lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber.
Egg and breadcrumbs are common mix-ins to add moisture and tenderness. Another binder option that people swear by is a panade, which is fresh or dry breadcrumbs that have been soaked in milk. “The soaked breadcrumbs help keep the proteins in the meat from shrinking,” as food writer Tara Holland explained in the Kitchn.
I have done them with panko, crusty bread, crushed Ritz crackers, and once a few packages of Cheese sandwich crackers because I didn't have anything else that night. All of them add different characteristics to the end product but all came out good and unique. Try both and see how you like it.
Iconic Swedish cream sauce: Melt 40g of butter in a pan. Whisk in 40g of plain flour and stir for 2 mins. Add 300ml of bouillon (or consommé) and continue to stir. Add 150ml double cream, 2 tsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of (Dijon) mustard.
Meatballs are not a sauce, they are balls of meat. A sauce has to be runny, or at least flowing. Done correctly, a bolognese sauce isn't particularly meaty. The meat is meant to be finely ground and incorporated into a standard spaghetti sauce, and the meat so fine it should stick onto the pasta in little specks.
Flavored with nutmeg and cardamom, these little beef-and-pork meatballs are best served with a Swedish meatball sauce—a rich roux-based and beef stock gravy, spiked with sour cream and a little lingonberry jelly.
Mix ground beef, ground pork, egg, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger with onion in the mixing bowl. Lightly mix in bread crumbs and cream. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Pinch off about 1 1/2 tablespoon meat mixture per meatball; form into balls.
Introduction: My name is Francesca Jacobs Ret, I am a innocent, super, beautiful, charming, lucky, gentle, clever person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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