Köttbullar (Swedish Meatballs)

Name: Köttbullar (Swedish Meatballs)
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Swedish
Ingredients: 300 g Minced pork; 300 g Minced beef; 50 g Fine breadcrumbs; 120 ml Whole milk; 1 Onion, very finely chopped; 1 Egg; 1/2 tsp Ground allspice; 1.5 tsp Salt; 1/2 tsp White pepper; 60 g Butter for frying; 2 tbsp Plain flour for the sauce; 400 ml Beef stock; 200 ml Double cream; 1 tsp Soy sauce; 4 tbsp Lingonberry jam to serve

Small meatballs of pork and beef bound with milk-soaked breadcrumb, fried brown and served in cream sauce with lingonberry and pressed cucumber.

Source

Recipe by Swedish home kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · Husmanskost — plain household cooking. Potatoes, cream, pickled things and dill, in portions built for a long dark winter and a short bright summer.

Swedish · husmanskost — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. Both `Swedish_meatballs` and `Köttbullar` redirect to `Meatball`, so that is the article linked; its Swedish section confirms the pork-and-beef mix, the cream sauce, the lingonberry and the pressed cucumber. That the article is the wider one is stated here rather than glossed over. Quantities and method are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Sweden Fed by Sab DW Food

⏱ 60 min🍽 4 servings🔥 640 kcal🇸🇪 Sweden

Nut-free

Steps

Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk for 10 minutes until they have drunk all of it.
💡 This soaked crumb is called a panade and it is the whole reason Swedish meatballs are soft. Skipping it gives you rubber.
Fry the onion in a little of the butter until soft and completely cool it. Do not add it warm.
Mix the meats, panade, cooled onion, egg, allspice, salt and pepper and work it with your hand for 2 minutes.
Roll into balls the size of a walnut — about 30 — with wet hands. Chill 20 minutes.
Fry in butter over medium heat, shaking the pan so they roll and brown all over, 8 minutes. Do them in two batches.
💡 Shake the pan, do not turn them with tongs. Rolling gives an even brown crust; tongs give you two flat sides.
Lift them out, stir the flour into the pan fat, cook 1 minute, then whisk in the stock and cream. Add the soy, simmer 5 minutes, return the meatballs.

💡 Tips

Lingonberry is not optional and not a garnish. Its sourness is what the cream sauce is built against.
Serve with boiled potatoes or mash, and pressed cucumber — cucumber sliced thin, salted, sugared and left to weep for an hour.
Small is the point. Thirty walnut-sized balls, not twelve golf balls — the crust-to-middle ratio is the dish.

Photo coming soon

Beginner

French