The Best Swedish Meatballs Recipe - Simply Stacie (2024)

FAQs

What is the sauce for Swedish meatballs made from? ›

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.

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.

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.

How to Thicken Swedish Meatball Sauce. The all-purpose flour in this recipe should do the trick to thicken your Swedish meatball sauce to the right consistency. But if it doesn't, you can add a cornstarch slurry (1 tablespoon of cornstarch to 2 tablespoons of water) to thicken it up.

ANSWER: Usually when meatballs fall apart, it's the binder that is the problem. Most meatball recipes call for using bread crumbs and eggs. But too much bread crumbs make them too loose, and not enough bread crumbs won't help them hold together either.

An egg is usually a good start, as that can help with the tenderness and texture, but the king of meatball binders is breadcrumbs soaked in milk (also known as a panade). Soaking the breadcrumbs first makes them pliable and soggy, which allows them to easily and evenly mix into the ground meat.

Chill your meatballs: refrigerating your meatballs an hour before cooking helps them hold their shape throughout the cooking process. They can chill in the fridge for up to 24 hours before cooking, making meatballs a great make-ahead dish, too.

Egg acts as a binder for the ingredients, but you only need a small amount. One small egg will do for one pound of minced meat. Alternatively, if you're following an egg-free diet, you could soak fresh bread in milk, squeezing out any excess milk, to use as a binder.

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.

IKEA meatballs are quite popular in Scandinavia, known for their taste and affordability.

How do Swedes eat meatballs? ›

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.

Traditional Swedish way: Do not make the cream sauce at all. Serve meatballs over plain or stewed macaroni, plain or mashed potatoes, and lingenberry jam (optional)

Swedish meatballs are typically smaller than the Italian style. Seasonings are different for Swedish meatballs but every recipe for them has variations on spices.

ikea restaurants made them famous all over the world: Köttbullar, or Swedish meatballs. Sweden has now revealed that the recipe for its iconic dish actually came from Turkey. It was brought to the Scandinavian country by King Charles XII, who lived in exile in the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th-century.

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.

Traditional Swedish way: Do not make the cream sauce at all. Serve meatballs over plain or stewed macaroni, plain or mashed potatoes, and lingenberry jam (optional)

It's All About the Sauce

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.

The Seasoning

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.