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Recipe: Not Very Swedish Meatballs
By estar | March 20, 2007
Ask any Singaporean to name a Swedish dish and the likely answer would be ”Swedish meatballs”. The most successful Swedish import to Singapore after ABBA and IKEA, Swedish meatballs may not have a 4-letter acronym but are still typically Scandinavian, ie. minimalistic. Apart from meat, flour, egg, salt and pepper, little else goes into a traditional Swedish meatball recipe. Boring. My ‘Not Very Swedish Meatballs’ is a more Italianised version, spiced with onion, garlic and herbs.
IKEA uses equal amounts of beef and pork in their meatballs but I like a stronger beef taste, so I’ve used a 2:1 ratio of beef to pork in this recipe. You can use 100% beef, but I find that pork gives a nice balance to the sometimes overpowering ‘meatiness’ of beef. Lamb can easily be substituted for beef too.
These meatballs are best served with spaghetti in a tomato-based sauce (as shown in above picture). This classic marriage never fails to make me think: *On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed*.
Not Very Swedish Meatballs (Makes 24)
Ingredients
300g minced beef
150g minced pork
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 large onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
1/4 cup cream
1 egg
1 tsp dried rosemary (Dried mixed herbs or dried thyme would also work)
1 tsp paprika
Cracked black pepper
Salt (I find 1 tsp is just right)
Olive oil
Directions
1. Place all ingredients except olive oil into a large bowl and mix well.
2. Using damp hands, shape the meat mixture into balls roughly the size of ping-pong balls. You should get 20-30 balls.
3. You can choose to either panfry the meatballs at this stage, or bake them. I always bake them for the sake of Daniel’s *expanding* waistline.
4. Preheat oven to 200°C and line a baking tray with greased baking paper.
5. Place meatballs on tray and brush the tops with olive oil. Bake for 25min.
The cooked meatballs can be frozen.
Topics: Recipes, Scandinavian, Western |