Chef Mik's Tasty Tidbits: Chef Mik's Swedish Meatballs

Ah, Swedish meatballs, is there anything more iconic or synonymous with the Swedish food? I can’t think of any, in fact the closest I come are pancakes but that’s another story for another day. As for meatballs, served with lingonberries and pickled cucumbers, I mean what could be better, or simpler for that matter? In my humble opinion meatballs are the original ambassadors of the Swedish kitchen. Sure there are a lot of imposters out there and a lot of misinformation, that’s why I’m here to set the record straight! To that end, the base for Swedish meatballs is typically a combination of ground meat more often then not beef, veal and pork with the addition of eggs, milk, onion, breadcrumbs, salt and white pepper. That’s not to say that they don’t very from place to place back in Sweden, some examples would be the substation of game meat, potatoes in place of breadcrumbs, or additional seasoning such as all spice, or even the juice from a can of Swedish style anchovies, debates over raw verses sautéed onions are quite common place as are debates over pan frying verses baking first and then there is the question of whether they are best served on their own or in sauce. But by the time they hoped the pawn they must have went through a massive overhaul, and become hardly recognizable as that simple but oh so wonderful little treat they once were! I say this from personal experience having sampled ground meat haphazardly shaped into balls flavored with canned mushroom soup no less under the heading “Swedish Meatballs” which had me doing a double take and scratching my head in disbelief! For the record, Swedish meatballs are not the size of soft balls, and never, and I mean never are they served with egg noodles! Well, ok sometimes they will be accompanied my stuvade makaroner which are elbow macaroni either cooked in milk flavored with onion and nutmeg or macaroni finished is sauce béchamel (think Swedish mac and cheese) although that’s normally reserved for kids, for the rest of us potatoes in some form or other is the typical starch de jour. But I digress; Swedish meatballs are a classic no matter how you slice it and a must on the Swedish Christmas table known as “Julbord” or smörgasbord but can also be enjoyed all year round and make a great party treat simply served with a tooth pick and pickled cucumbers. We serve these little gems everyway imaginable and present them in at least as many.

Chef’s tips: Today I am only using one type of meat, namely Angus ground beef 15% fat, I will say the finer the grind the better it is for this type of cooking, also if the meat is to lean there is the chance the meatballs will dry out during the cooking processes as a good quantity of liquid is expelled. Having said that, I don’t want to have to add a lot of milk so to that end I am puréeing my onion to create as much juice as I can in order to circulate a nice onion flavor and help keep the meat moist.

Resist the temptation to overwork the meat less it become thread like, break up the meat first add all components and quickly mix to combine and add more bread crumbs as needed. When done take just a little and pan fry up quickly to sample flavoring and consistency before forming balls

Back in school many, many years ago we experimented with seasoning the breadcrumbs and adding them to the meat, we also experimented with soaking the breadcrumbs first in milk then adding it to the meat. The idea being a more equal distribution, how ever side by side test results did not warrant this extra step, the idea is to add just enough breadcrumbs so that the second you can form a ball your done, because of this I tend to season the meat first, then finish with dry bread crumbs. If you like experiment yourself and see which result works best for you.

Shopping List

Ground beef

Onions

Eggs

Milk

Bread crumbs

Salt

Pepper

My Mad Method