I would like a recipe for making the meatballs and the sauce. I'm not afraid of mushrooms.
Here I have been lurking in the background this week, but I can't resist. My Swedish grandma used to make these in her roaster oven. Note: No mushrooms, no cream of mushroom soup.
She'd take equal parts of ground beef, ground pork, ground veal. If she had leftover mashed potatoes, she'd use those (how much, well, I'm guessing about 1/3 of the amount of meat--it was a "by feel, by golly" thing). If she didn't have leftover mashed potatoes, she take some (about 3-4) slices of homemade white bread and soak those in cream/whole milk. Let that soak for at least 10 minutes. Squeeze 1/2 of the milk out and set aside. Saute 1/2 onion, chopped, in butter. Combine the meats, bread (kinda torn up in pieces), the milk/cream. a beaten egg (or 2--depending on how much meat you had, how dry it was, and how big the eggs were) and seasoning. She'd use dry dill weed, celery salt, dried parsley, a bit of powdered ginger, nutmeg, salt and pepper. She'd mix everything together, adding some dry bread crumbs if it was too wet. She'd form the meat into balls, roll them in seasoned flour, and brown them. She'd then put them into the roaster oven with some beef stock, and let that cook for about 30 or so minutes at about 300 in her roaster oven. She'd remove the meatballs and thicken the sauce with the set aside cream/milk and some flour to make the gravy, adjust the seasonings, and add some lingonberry/pincherry jelly or cranberry sauce (about 2T) and some grated gjetost cheese.
There are at least a hundred different ways to make Swedish meatballs. This is as close as I can get to my grandma's recipe to share it--I do it by taste and by golly and they end up just like Grandma made.
Even if you don't like nutmeg, don't leave it out.
This is a "duck knows how to swim in water" recipe. I can't really describe it, it is almost instinctive because it was one of the first things grandma taught me to make when I was 8/9 years old (and I'm a lot older than that now).
The best recipe I've ever found for them is in Cooks Illustrated, Jan 2009. It's been reprinted in some of their consolidated books, and I think it's on their website. They also use a panade, but their technique is something I had never seen before.
I'm pretty sure I've saved the recipe in Living Cookbook, so I can pull it out later if you're interested.
Thanks, Silversage! I looked and I have a Cook's Illustrated cookbook from 2011 with a Swedish Meatball recipe. I'll try that one, too!
Are mushrooms ever used in the gravy for Swedish Meatballs?
They might be tonight
I was just wondering if it changed the recipe to something else and I couldn't call them "Swedish Meatballs", the food police might get me.
Sauce ingredients:
3 dl of gravy
1 stock cube
2 tbsp of wheat flour
1 dl of milk or water
1/2-1 tsp of Chinese style soy sauce
2-3 tbsp of cream
Intructions:
Put hot water in the frying pan after finishing frying the meatballs, to make the gravy. Put the gravy in a pot, and add the stock cube and let it dissolve. Mix the flour and the milk or water. Add that mix to the pot while stirring. Boil for about five minutes. Put in the soy and cream to your taste and season if needed.
If there is something unclear don't hesitate to ask me. English is not my native language, and I had to look up some cooking terms. Please tell me if I am making language mistakes. HTH!
Ezil, first, Welcome to DC! You English is fine.
you say 3dl gravy, above...does this mean the liquid left in the pan from frying the meatballs?
Thank You
Exactly! You put some hot water in the pan to "make" some gravy. But the sauce can also be made without gravy. A stock cube is usually enough to get taste. If you want to make it without the gravy you can just put water instead. I often make it like that.
We call that "deglazing the pan." You add the water and use a spatula to scrape up the delicious browned bits (fond) from the bottom of the pan and incorporate them into the sauce
Ezil, your English is great.
I will point out that we usually call a sauce a gravy if it is thickened, usually with something starchy like flour or corn starch. There is a notable exception. Red gravy is the term used by some people to refer to what the rest of us call tomato sauce.