Authentic Swedish Meatballs

Swedish meatballs – a dish internationally known, served worldwide, and yet something I never grow tired of. Served for all main holidays in Sweden, served traditionally with potatoes, gravy, lingonberry jam and pickles, as the kids’ favourite with pasta and sauce, or any way you feel!

You can always spice up this recipe by adding other flavours and change up the meat you use – how about a lamb-rosemary-feta meatball? or a basil-flavoured meatball for use in a bolognese? This recipe has so many ways it can be customised to taste – and it is a staple in our home.

I generally make a big batch and freeze in portion sizes for an easy lunch later on. They can be cooked from frozen and still taste great! Just fry up – or add to soup – and serve!

For bigger family gatherings like Christmas, I believe I made around 3 kg of meatballs – and there was none left! No better recommendations to be had when the young in the family eat their fill!

I learned to pre-boil my meatballs from a restaurant chef while I was working in a kitchen at a kindergarten. It made the meatballs retain more moisture, made for a great step before freezing them (gotta love batch cooking for later use) and gave me a wonderful broth to start gravy or soup with later. This was how they did big batches of meatballs at restaurants to make life easier for the chefs.
As long as you have enough flavour or stock cubes (and salt!) in the water when you boil them, the meatballs will retain all the flavour you’ve already put in.

Authentic Swedish meatballs

Swedish meatballs the way my mother and grandmother always made them. To be eaten traditionally with potatoes, gravy, lingonberry jam and pickles, or more modernly with pasta or why not try them in a sallad?

Servings 100 meatballs

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Optional pre-boiling 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 5 minutes mins

Equipment

• Bowl
• Grater
• Wooden Spoon or Danish whisk
• Pot
• Frying pan

Ingredients

• 750 g minced meat
• 1 grated yellow/brown onion
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ dl bread crumbs ca. ½ cup
• 1 ½ dl milk ca. ½ cup
• 3 tsp salt
• allspice
• black pepper

for boiling (optional)

• 2 stock cubes
• water

for frying

• olive oil or butter

Instructions

Creating the mixture

• Start by grating the onion finely (this can also be done in a food processor if you don't want to grate by hand)
  1 grated yellow/brown onion
• Add in the bread crumbs and mix with the onion to soak up the juices. Add in the milk and egg and stir into the breadcrumbs. Let it sit for a little while to saturate the bread crumbs.
  1 egg, 1 ½ dl bread crumbs, 1 ½ dl milk
• Add in the spices you want to use. Allspice is a must, as well as pepper and salt. But then you can get somewhat creative if you want to have some other flavour in it as well. It is hard to put in an absolute measurement of spices as that is very much dependent on the person and taste.
  3 tsp salt, allspice, black pepper
• In the last step, add the minced meat and mix it until everything is evenly mixed and you get flavour in every part of the mixture.
  750 g minced meat

Pre-boiling (optional) – restaurant version

• Add water to the pot and put in 2 stock cubes and let it dissolve. Put the heat on high.
  2 stock cubes, water
• Roll the meatballs. Make sure you wet your hand in cold water now and then (you can have a small bowl with some water nearby) so that the mixture doesn't stick to your hands.
• Once you've rolled 10-20 meatballs. Put them in the boiling water. They will sink down to the bottom. As they get cooked through they will start to float. Once they start to gently bob at the surface – let them bob for 1-3 minutes, then fish them up and put in a casserole dish/heat proof container.

  At this point, you can now freeze them as they are or add them to soups. Or you can fry them for a crunchy exteriour with lots of flavour.
• Repeat with the rest of the meatballs until all are boiled.

  Top off with more water when needed. You can save the broth that's left over from the boiling to later make soup with or start of the gravy. Reduce it down and freeze it if you want to store it for later.

frying the meatballs

• Add oil to a frying pan and put on medium heat. Put the required amount of meatballs into the pan once it has reached temp, and fry them until they have become dark golden.

  Make sure to shake (or stir) the pan now and then to evenly fry the meatballs.
  olive oil or butter
• Serve warm.

Notes

50-50 beef and pork makes for the best meatballs. But can be any kind of minced meat. Generally 100% pork will be juicy but slightly bland (need more flavour), beef tend to have more flavour but dries out quicker when frying. Why not try to make a lamb variant with some mint and hide a piece of feta in it? 

You don’t have to boil them first. My mother generally doesn’t. 
I like them boiled first as they are juicier – while you also know that they are thoroughly cooked, even before you fry them, so you just need to get the outer surface fried. 

It’s not necessary to grate the onion – I know a lot of folks that don’t want to do this step. However – I would say that if you have kids at home, or you like meatballs that don’t fall apart – it is almost essential to grate the onion in my opinion. But this is one to experiment on! 

Dipping your hand in cold water every now and then when you are rolling the meatballs really help in the rolling process.

Course: Main Course, Traditional

Cuisine: Nordic, Swedish

Keyword: Batch cooking, Meat

Did you make this recipe?

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