Swedish Meatballs – Yeah, Baby! Yeah!
Feb 1st, 2010 | By Hank Shaw | Category: Northern European, Recipe, Venison | Comments | 45 Comments |
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Yeah, I am still on my meatball bender. A few days after gorging on my Italian duck meatballs, my mum sent me her mother’s recipe for Swedish meatballs, also known as köttbullar. Also known as crack.
I had made Swedish meatballs all of once before this experiment, and while they were good, they weren’t great; the IKEA ones were better. I never knew my grandmother so I can’t remember her ever making Swedish meatballs, but I do have several strong memories of mum making these little balls of yum long ago, in the…
…Seventies! Of course we ate Swedish meatballs in the 1970s — everyone did. They were right next to the fondue. But even this was simply withdrawal symptoms of the Swede Ball’s heyday a decade earlier. Can’t you just see the chafing dish, the Sterno and the meatballs nestled in that slowly congealing-yet-somehow-irresistible gravy? Groovy, baby, yeah!
Yet of all the crazy throwback foods of that much-maligned decade, Swedish meatballs are high on the list for preservation. If you’ve eaten well-made ones, can any among you honestly say you have not stuffed yourself on them? What the hell is it about these meatballs? I’ve eaten several dozen at a sitting before, only to feel later like an anaconda that swallowed a cow — made of butter.
Butter. Maybe that’s it? Every decent recipe calls for obscene amounts of butter. The gravy is part drippings from frying the meatballs in butter, flour, stock and, in some cases, lingonberry syrup or jelly. Still, I’ve eaten lots of rich things before without succumbing to gluttony.
Maybe it is a Swedish meatball’s size. Small. Bite-sized, to be exact. Dangerous. My Italian meatballs are big, honking brontosaurus balls; you need at least three bites to get one down. These little Swedish meatballs are just a tablespoon. That’s not so much. Maybe I’ll have just one more…
At any rate, after reading gramma’s recipe I just had to make these meatballs again. But I decided to make my own version an homage to the epicenter of Scandihoovia in North America: Minnesota. The idea started with my friend Elise, who has another hunting friend, and he had shot a moose this season, although probably not in Minnesota. Elise gave me a big slab of the moose meat, a slab I had designs on.
OK, I have something of a sick sense of humor, so I was waiting to cook the moose until I got a chance to hunt squirrels this year. I wanted to combine the two in one dish. Maybe a Russian-inspired dish, which would of course be called “Rocky & Bullwinkle.” Don’t get it? You’re too young.
But my torn Achilles tendon put the kibosh on that. So I still had this moose, and when the Swedish meatball urge hit me, it was only natural that I use it for them. It was my first time with moose, and I found it a lot like beef – lean beef, to be sure, but it had a fairly coarse grain and was very light-colored compared to venison. I fried up a piece and it was mild, almost sweet. Note to self: Save money for a moose hunt someday.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
I mixed the moose meat with some pork fat and ground it fine. My mother says Swedish meatballs absolutely need to be ground fine; she’s the daughter of a Swede, so I trust her. The dominant flavoring is allspice, but I diverted from the recipe by adding some caraway seeds, too. I happen to like the combination of allspice, caraway and black pepper.
Even I am not so crazy as to fry these meatballs in pure butter, however. To do so would have required several pounds, and frankly I am on a budget. So I used mostly canola oil, with two tablespoons of butter added for flavor. It worked well enough.
I ate one meatball before I made the sauce. It was a soft, luscious morsel, meltingly tender, with a slight crisp coating of flour and a real hit of allspice flavor; the caraway and pepper wave hello as you swallow the nugget. Yeah, baby, yeah… Yes, I actually said that out loud to myself.
As good as the meatballs themselves were, it was the sauce that put the dish over the edge. Most Swedish meatball recipes I’ve eaten have a nice, thick sauce not unlike Thanksgiving gravy. Nothing special. But mum said köttbullar sometimes has lingonberry in the sauce.
Don’t have lingonberry. Would have to go to a store for that. But thanks to my Minnesota friend Chris, I did have highbush cranberry jelly! I first encountered this northern berry while grouse hunting; Chris told me what they were and I loved their tart, slightly sweet, slightly funky taste. They’re not a real cranberry, they are a member of the viburnum family, but highbush cranberries are an excellent alternative to lingonberries.
So I added a bunch to the gravy, then a little cream. I tasted it. Holy crap! The cranberries added a sweet-tart background to the sauce that absolutely transformed it. It went from gravy to something ethereal – if a sauce with probably 1,000 calories per serving can be ethereal. You know what it was? It was, as my friend Jennifer would say, sex on a plate.
I fed Holly some of these meatballs, doused in the Magic Sauce. She closed her eyes, swooned a bit, and said. “I see them.” What? “Skyrockets.” Huh? “Skyrockets in flight!”
OK, maybe that didn’t happen. But she did say eating Swedish meatballs made her feel like a Dancing Queen. Don’t get it? You’re too young.
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SWEDISH VENISON MEATBALLS
This is a Swedish meatball recipe adapted from one given to my mother from her mother, who was a Massachusetts Swede. They call these meatballs Svenska Kottbullar, and they are traditionally served with a lingonberry sauce. In Scandinavia, the meatballs are sometimes made with reindeer, so I did not think it a stretch to switch to moose. You could use any red meat.
In keeping with the Nordic theme, I switch out lingonberries, which I do not have, with highbush cranberries, which my friend Chris sent me from Minnesota. Moose and highbush cranberries share the same habitat, and there is a golden rule in cooking: What goes together in life can go together on the plate. You can by all means use lingonberries, but you can also click over to Earthy Delights to buy highbush cranberry jelly online.
Serve these little meatballs in the sauce over mashed potatoes. A salad or sauteed greens would round things out.
This is a large recipe, so you can either halve it or freeze extra meatballs after you brown them.
Serves 8-12.
Prep Time: 2 hours
Cook Time: 45 minutes
- 4 slices of stale bread, crusts removed
- 2/3 cup milk
- 2-3 pounds venison (or beef, lamb, elk, moose, etc)
- 1 pound pork fat or beef fat (preferably pork)
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 grated yellow onion
- Flour
- 1 quart beef stock or venison stock
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup highbush cranberry or lingonberry jelly
- Salt
- Butter or oil for frying
- Chill the moose and pork fat until it is almost freezing by sticking it in the freezer for an hour.
- Cut both the meat and fat into 1/2 inch chunks.
- Grind through your fine die in a meat grinder. If you do not have a meat grinder, you can use a food processor, set on pulse. Don’t crowd the processor and chop the meat in pulses until you get something that looks like ground meat — it will not be as good as with a grinder, but it is easier than hand-mincing everything, which is also an option.
- Put the meat in the fridge.
- Pour the milk into a pot and set it on low heat.
- Cut the crusts off the stale bread and break it into pieces. Add it to the pot. It will begin to absorb the milk. When it does, turn off the heat and mash everything into a paste. Let it cool to room temperature.
- In the meat bowl, add the salt and spices. Crack the eggs into the bowl, then pour the bread-milk mixture in.
- With clean hands, gently mix everything together. Do not knead it like bread, and do not squeeze things together. Just gently work the mixture — think cake, not bread.
- When it is mostly combined — you need not get everything perfect — grab a tablespoon and scoop up some. Roll it into a little ball with your palms, not your fingers.
- Gently roll the meatballs in the flour; you’ll probably need about a cup. You may need to re-shape them before putting them onto a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper.
- When the meatballs are all made, get a large pan ready; I use a big, old cast-iron frying pan. Fill it with a little less than 1/4 inch of oil. I use canola oil with a little butter tossed in for flavor. Bring it up to temperature over medium-high heat. When a drop of water splashed in the oil immediately sizzles away, drop the heat to medium and add the meatballs. Do not crowd them.
- You want the oil to come up halfway on the meatballs. Add a little oil if need be; don’t worry, you can reuse the oil. Fry on medium heat for 3-5 minutes. You are looking for golden brown.
- Turn only once. The other side will need 2-4 minutes.
- When cooked, set the meatballs on a paper towel or wire rack to drain. They can be used right away or cooled and then refrigerated for a week, or frozen for several months.
THE SAUCE
- Once the meatballs are cooked, drain all but about 3-4 tablespoons of butter/oil from the pan. Over medium heat, add an equal amount of the flour left over from dusting the meatballs.
- Stir to make a roux and cook slowly until it turns a nice golden brown. Think coffee with cream.
- Add the stock gradually and turn the heat up to medium-high. Stir well to combine and add more stock or some water if need be — you want this thicker than water, thinner than Thanksgiving gravy.
- Taste for salt and add if needed.
- Put the meatballs in the pan, cover and cook for 10 minutes over medium-low heat.
- Add the lingonberry or highbush cranberry jelly to the pan. Let it melt and then mix it in gently. Coat all the meatballs with the sauce.
- Cover and cook another 10 minutes over very low heat. Add the cream and just warm through, maybe 3-4 minutes.
- Serve over mashed potatoes or with German egg noodles.
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Those sound amazing! As the daughter of a hunter (who lived in Alaska for ten years) moose is probably my favorite red meat, elk coming in second. YUM! I have a freezer full of elk so may have to try these out . . . my son (almost three) loves anything in meatball form so these would be perfect!
Thank you!
Best,
Sarah
PS – I think this is my first comment. Discovered you last week when Ruhlman linked to one of your recipes on Twitter. I feel like I’ve met a long-lost brother. You remind me of my dad, and my husband. Both hunters, gardeners, fishermen and I’m the gourmet cook of the bunch. I’m enjoying perusing your blog! Keep it up!
‘the IKEA ones were better’
WTF Hank! I’d swallow pretty much anything I’ve seen you cook up, but I wont swallow that. NO WAY. My son is mad for ikea meatballs (he loves to see his food come in a packet Grrrr) so I’ve eaten shed loads of them and really mate, they’re not all that.
SBW
I’ve been lurking around here and on Holly’s site for awhile. Time to stick my head up. Having done all the cooking for this household for the last 30 years, and being a hunter, I love your site. In the course of culinary flights of fancy often I crash and burn. But, there are plenty of times when through sheer perserverance and dumb blind luck something clicks extraordinarily. When it does I always say “HOLY SHIT!” Usually accompanied by the further descriptive, “You could sell that.” When I read that ” Holy Crap!” of yours, I reflexisvely spit a pomegranate kernel straight into the cup of coffee sitting on my desk. Needless to say, pomegranate infused java ain’t going on the menu. Thanks for the laugh.
laughed out LOUD at Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I knew was coming when I read you were waiting to hunt squirrel before doing the moose.
Hank, love the presentation….Swedish Meatballs would make for a good cocktail party nosh too!
Thanks for the link-luv, I wait your Venison Stifado (sounds delish).
OK – so now I am going to have to go and make Swedish Meatballs a la Hank! They sound delicious and wish I could have been there to enjoy them with you! Recently had a hankering for meatloaf so made that with pizza sauce and beef meat from a farm in ME. It tastes great! Bet it would be even better with Bullwinkle Meat! Loved Holly’s photos too. She does super work!
Absolutely loved the Rockey & Bullwinkle reference! Boris and Natasha would have loved a dinner combo of squirrel kiev with moose based borscht to start. Of course, now I’ve got to make swedish meatballs. It just so happens that I was at IKEA yesterday (no, I did not buy meatballs) and bought a jar of lingonberry preserves. On it’s own, I’m not really a fan, but made into a sauce for meatballs, it may actually be interesting. I usually use nutmeg instead of allspice, but I think I’ll give it a try; I do have to take exception to the idea of caraway seeds, though. Can’t stand them in anything, not even rye bread, so they’re out!
Being a Swede from Sweden, I have had a meatballs made with reindeer. The classical recipe (by late Tore Wretman) calls for 2 parts beef, 1 part veal, and 1 part pork. No spices but white pepper and salt. Fried onion, bread crumbs, cream, egg. No flour. To be fried in butter. Best served with “rårörda” (raw-stired?) lingonberries (not cooked, just stired with sugar) and cream gravy (sometimes with added black currant jelly).
Having read all the bizarre recipes following your links, I just wanted to add one that more resembles the meatballs we eat here in Sweden, even though there is great variation here as well.
Correction: I have _never_ had reindeer meatballs.
I have spent days trying to take pictures of meatballs… so I first must say Kudos for the great photos and then the recipe… OMG… fabulous and perfect for a winters night… my mom made them when I was a kid and I just about forgot about them… thanks for the memories, and the recipe.
Thanks re the photos, everyone! Photographing a brown-on-brown food always fills me with dread, but this assignment was a good excuse to trot out the new plateware. Have I mentioned that being Hank’s photographer has been an excellent excuse for my addiction to cute little bowls and plates?
And yes, these were total crack. I think what I really said when I ate them, after my eyes rolled back in my head for a few minutes, was “Holy $@#$# !@#% $%& **^&%!” But that doesn’t sound as good as some cheesy old ’70s lyrics, does it?
Hank, those look great. However, I think you should have a link on the kottbuller with an audio of how to pronounce it. I was thinking either just you, saying something like, “kottbuller, dumb@$$!”, but I think getting Stephen Hawking to do the audio pronunciation would be better. Probably with the “dumb@$$” part with it, too…
Awesome! I’ve got my Valentine’s dinner figured out. A couple questions on the recipe…I plan to use venison, I butcher my own and it’s as close to 100% lean as you can get. Do I need to add more fat, bread or anything to keep them together? Or should I sub in some ground beef? Also, maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see the sour cream in the directions. I figured it goes in with the lingon berry jam? Thanks
I have to agree with Sarah that Moose is our favorite red meat. We have fond memories of unbelievably delicious tacos made with the moose my husband and a friend got a few years back. Time to enter the moose license lottery again. Wonderful, and inspiring post Hank!
[...] Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog: Swedish Meatballs – Yeah, Baby! Yeah! (LINK) [...]
Sarah: Thanks for the kind words, I am sure elk meatballs would be just as good!
SBW: The IKEA meatballs were better than my first try at Swedish meatballs, not this one. This one blew them away…
Stephen: “You could sell that.” I might have to steal that line.
Tina: Squirrel Kiev? Moose Borscht? Niiiice…. Oh, and as for the caraway, go ahead and leave them out, it won’t hurt anything.
K: Good to hear from a Swede and get another recipe. Lingoberry and black currants in the same dish, huh? Interesting. You are right about the onions, though. I left them out by accident, but it was a happy accident.
Josh: I like the Stephen Hawking idea. I can hear his computer “voice” say, “Dumbass.” LOL.
Nathan: Yes, add fat. Preferably pork fat. You could add ground pork, so long as it is fatty. And the sour cream goes in right at the end — it is stirred in and just barely heated through. And if you don’t have sour cream, regular heavy cream is different but also good.
NHbow Gal: Yep, maybe I will put in for the moose lottery in Maine this year.
Well, the black currant jelly just adds something sweet to the sauce, and we wouldn’t put the lingonberries in the gravy…
Thin slices of sweet and sour cucumber is another common addition to this dish.
The members of ABBA should be so lucky as to have such elegantly presented meatballs. Nice work!
Oh, yeah. My grandma was Swedish, too, and we had these balls on rare occasion. When I make them now, they are good, but not half as good as I remember. Maybe it’s the moose that I need….
What a great post! A fantastic recipe and utterly mouth-watering photography. Please tell Holly that the photography here just gets better and better. Lighting, depth-of-field, composition; wow, she’s got it all goin’ on with that camera. And I’ve got to say, you’ve done some really fascinating stuff since you hurt your foot. Maybe we should give Elise a contract to stop by and whack your other foot (just kidding).
Loved the story,and I look forward to trying the meatballs–the recipe and photos looks delish. I reckon I’ll have to substitute venison (that’s what I have) for the moose, unless I can get my cousin to send moose meat to Texas from Alaska.
The photography is, as always, gorgeous. My question is for Holly–where did you get that fabulous serving piece in which the meatballs were displayed? I LOVE it…and must have one. Thanks!!
Cecilia, the plate came from Cost Plus (now known better as “World Market,” I guess to distinguish it from Costco). I’d say 95 percent of our plates come from either Cost Plus or various stores in San Francisco’s Japantown. Japanese plates and bowls ROCK. I go to Japantown a couple times a year to exercise my credit card in the name of food photography.
And Tom, thank you! I’m blushing
.
Moose! Even more Swedish than usual, I reckon. Those look wonderful and I agree, bite-sized is best.
Thanks for the link-love. It’s weird, 10-20% of all my traffic comes from people Googling Swedish meatball recipes.
Phew
The world is a comforting [meatball] shape once more
SBW
Your Rocky & Bullwinkle idea had me laughing out loud. And the recipe, photography, and food details had me drooling. I can almost taste these little meatballs already. Afternoon delight!
STARLIGHT VOCAL BAND & ABBA tell Holly two of my faves for her description of your Swedish Meatballs!
Best to you!
Heather: Isn’t it weird? I still get lots of traffic from people looking for instructions on how to pluck pheasants.
Michael: Never picked you as a Starlight Vocal Band fan, and definitely not an Abba fan. Go figger…
Dang, Hank–Now I have to go back to Alaska to get darned moose again, because looks so incredible! I don’t think I could do what Sarah said about substituting elk, though I love both, they taste so different, and that moose meat is so much richer, and would have resided as my top of the list if I hadn’t tasted the sweet meat of antelope shot near Casper, WY, and only fed on sage. That moose meat just makes it that much richer a Swedish meatball.
…Let’s see now , $2,500 for a float trip on a raft (cheapest/best hunt still available in AK), a flight up to Anchorage for the first leg, and another $1,000 for a flight out to King Salmon…is it worth it, to come back down and use this recipe? Yes!!! BTW I’ve only been used to the big dinosaur balls, too…the smaller ones must taste that much better with a better sauce to meat ratio.
Oh, and that boar I shot on Sat that we turned into babi guling, ended up making some incredible burritos and an amazing off the cuff sweet Thai curry pork!
Cheers,
Cork
Cork: Nice job on the boar. I normally don’t work with Asian flavors so I bet that was a nice change for Michael and the crew! As for the moose, it may not be worth all the expense just for this recipe, but it very well might be for the 1,000-plus pounds of meat you can bring home…
my swedish nana (very proud of her heritage as she was always around a bunch of italians) made these all the time – obviously not w/ moose meat (although i would’ve eaten them even as a three year old). they bring back great memories.
yumm….these meatballs looks really good!
These were AMAZING. I used ground lamb and bison. so. so. yummy. Thanks!
Swedish meatballs are ALWAYS baked in the oven not fried.
Ingemar: Maybe in your area or household, but not everywhere in Sweden, and definitely not among Swedish American families. That said, baked is fine, too!
As if this debate needed more Swedes pitching in, but what the heck: moose is, as you’ve noticed, fine for meatballs, but so is a bunch of different animals. These days I usually make mine out of 50% wild boar and 50% good, free range fatty pig meat, which is an exellent combo, but I´ve had them in restaurants made from Brown Bear and beaver as well (not in the same meatball). Mind you, both of these variations were more interesting then actually tasty. If it´s meat then you can probably make a decent meatball out of it. Chicken? No probs. Turkey. Great. Venison? Lovely. Aligator? Probably, but hold the lingonberries on that one.
As for the lingonberry debate: anything that is sweet and tart works pretty well. I’ve substituted lingonberries with Cumberland sauce, black/red currant jelly at times, just out of curiosity. It all works as long as the sauce is rich and creamy. I’m thinking gooseberry jelly could be an interesting variation, if the sauce is adapted accordingly.
Thyme adds some lovely flavour to the sauce, as do most wild mushrooms, I tend to use black trumpet mushroom or funnel chanterelles. Brilliant combo.
If you need to bake them in the oven they’re too big.
If you don’t mind going overboard with big, big flavours and take it easy on the jelly/lingonberries, a truffle-infused potato mash/purée is to die for with swedish meatballs.
Butter all the way.
Sweden has tons of great bands: Abba is not the be-all and end-all of the music scene (admittedly my kids love them, but they love Michael Jackson as well…), I recomend Katatonia for long winter nights, of which we’ve had quite a few this year.
Josh: Pronunciation. I wish I could remember the phonetic alfabet they taught us in school but here goes: the K is soft; Kott is pronunced kind of like “Chet” (the name) but with instead of the e use a high, open mouth U-sound. As for “bullar” it´s not too dissimillar to how you would pronounce it, but you need to tense the lips a bit, and pronounce everything higher in the mouth, think british upper class, and you should be there.
– JC
These look awesome. I think I am going to try something similar with some good old Pennsylvania white-tail deer meat. New game recipes are exciting!
[...] Swedish Meatballs – Yeah, Baby! Yeah! [...]
Hey Hank, Made the meatballs for Christmas…Awesome! Thanks for the recipe. Substituted venison for moose and Ikea’s lingon berry jam. The jam was pretty blah, but everything else was great. If you happen to be up in Oregon in early July, there are red huckleberries that grow in the coast range which are very similar to the lingon berry and make fabulous jam. Also, I’m not real familiar with the Sierra’s up your way, but down here on the Stanislaus NF, lion’s mane were blooming the 2nd week of December the last two years. I’m out doing deer counts then and have been able to harvest a few. The lion’s mane I’ve found have all been on living black oaks, growing out of scars in the 2500-4000′ elevation range.
Thanks for sharing the recipe. Been looking for a recipe of this Swedish meatballs because my husband has been requesting me to cook this for him. I’ll be surprising him with this meatballs during our first anniversary. Wish me luck!
[...] hamburger. I’m planning to use Hunter Angler Gardener Cook Hank Shaw’s swoonworthy moose meatball recipe, maybe for an upcoming very special birthday party? (Yes, [...]
[...] using wild elk and smoked trout captured and prepped by my brother-in-law in Montana. I adapted Hank Shaw’s moose meatball recipe for a slighly more saucy and less photo-perfect [...]
In my case, it’s Swedish meatballs with venison.
There’s always, it seems, a very limited amount of available wild venison and a few favorite ways to prepare it…and this is one of them.
I love how the assertive flavor of the venison shines through.
I’ll be doing this on the weekend with moose … does anyone know where I can get a pound of pork fat? Is there a substitute?
Thanks! Looks amazing.
I grew up on moose meatballs. If you want to add a dimension to the taste, mix some dried chantarelles or porcini with the meat. Very nice
Hank,
I work with your dad, who has been boasting his sons meatballs to everyone. I am looking forward to giving these a try. My whole family likes to hunt, except me, I’d rather cook. Looking forward to going through the book.
Nice set up on the site, you have some great pics.
Nina