Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? It drives me nuts when there’s a whole lotta backstory blah blah blah included with recipes. I mean, I’m all for rambling (obviously), but not when I’m hungry!
I’ll include some notes at the end, if you’re interested, but for now it’s time to cook and eat some delicious beefy meatballs in a scrumptious creamy sauce!
Ingredients
Serves four (4) people. Six Swedish meatballs per person with a nice helping of sauce/gravy.
The Meatballs:
- 2 tablespoon (tbsp) olive oil
- 1 onion – diced
- 2 pounds (lb) ground beef
- 1/2 cup plain Panko/dried bread crumbs
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 2 tsp anchovy paste
- dash salt & pepper
The Cream Sauce:
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1/3 cup flour
- 4 cups beef broth
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 tablespoon (tbsp) sour cream – optional but preferred
- 2-3 tablespoon (tbsp) parsley – fresh preferred
Other:
You can eat these on their own but they wouldn’t be living up to their full potential it you did. So, before you cook these, make sure you have something to put them on.
I think egg noodles work best, but they’re also great on mashed potatoes. You could even get some French rolls and make a Swedish meatball sub sandwich with them!
It’s also really nice to have some sort of side dish to make it a more balanced meal. I love meat and carbs, but veggies are super important! I think these pair wonderfully with asparagus (pictured) but if you’re not into having stank pee or have some other objection to asparagus spears, a side salad of some sort can also be lovely.
Swedish Meatballs + Sauce Cooking Instructions:
I loathe washing dishes so I try to create recipes that involve using as few dishes as possible. This recipe can be done with just one pot/pan. I use a large saucepan to cook the egg noodles up ahead of time and then use the same pan (with a quick rinse, if necessary) to cook the meatballs and sauce in.
STEP ONE:
Cook diced onion in your large saucepan with the 2 tbsp olive oil until they’re translucent. Set them aside to cool.
STEP TWO:
In a mixing bowl, add all the meatball ingredients together, including your cooked oily onions. Mix everything in the bowl together using clean hands. (That’s why you let the onions + oil cool thoroughly first — don’t burn your hands!!)
STEP THREE:
Roll your mixing bowl meat mush into 24 meatballs (6 per person if you’re serving four people).
STEP FOUR:
Reusing your saucepan from earlier, brown your meatballs in batches then set them aside to dry on a paper towel-lined plate. (If your meatballs are sticking, spray on/drip in a wee bit more olive oil into your pan).
STEP FIVE:
In the same saucepan you browned your meatballs in, make the gravy/sauce. Start with a low-ish heat (if you boil milk too quickly it separates and gets really watery and kinda gross). I usually melt the butter first and then pour all the other sauce ingredients in. Keep stirring as you go so it all blends nicely and doesn’t stick to the bottom of your pan (cleaning burnt milk off a saucepan is a huge pain in the butt!).
TIP: If you mix your flour into a tinier portion of the liquids first before adding it into the big ol’ batch of sauce, you’ll be less likely to get weird doughy clumps. So, basically, take the half cup of milk or a small portion of the beef broth and sprinkle in your flour a little bit at a time while constantly stirring… it should mix in okay! But, if it doesn’t, just tell your guests they’re the lucky dumplings or something.
STEP SIX:
Once the Swedish meatball sauce/gravy looks legit, add your meatballs into the sauce and simmer everything together for around 10-15 minutes.
If you get impatient and just have to have them sooner, that’s fine. I feel you. These things smell friggin’ amazing and I pretty much only cook when I’m already hungry so I totally get the temptation! The longer you can stand to let them simmer, the more everything will meld together and have more blended flavor profile; however, if you just wanna plop your meatballs in for a quick dip in the sauce before serving that works too. Heck, you don’t even have to cook them in the sauce if you prefer a drier meatball! You do what you gotta do, you know?
STEP SEVEN:
Serve on top of egg noodles or mashed potatoes or whatever you decided they should go on top of. Enjoy!!
Notes on My Soy-Free Swedish Meatballs Recipe:
The Backstory Behind the Recipe:
So, a lot of the “backstories” for my recipes trace back to my soybean allergy. There will be things that I used to eat back in the day that were once safe (like the Swedish Meatballs TV dinner I used to enjoy as a teenager!) that now have filler ingredients like soy flour instead of real breadcrumbs.
After I stomp around and complain and pout for a while about how “I never get to eat ANYthing fun!!” I end up figuring out a way to create the darn thing on my own. Not quite as fast/easy as just buying a TV dinner from the supermarket but ultimately tastier and (usually) healthier too. Plus, I don’t end up in the emergency room so, you know, that’s always a plus!
Other Notes:
I have trouble digesting cow dairy (I’m not allergic to it like soybeans, so it won’t land me in the ER, but it does give me gas and/or diarrhea if I eat more than a little of it!), so I like to substitute goat milk whenever possible. Goat milk is lower in lactose (milk sugar) and has slightly gentler milk proteins. Goat milk also adds a nice tangy flavor to the sauce, making it even more savory.
That said, goat milk tends to be a little thinner for cooking. So you probably will need to use the sour cream to help your sauce/gravy have a good texture. You can try adding a bit more flour to thicken it up, but that might make it a bit too bland and then you’d have to add in more seasonings to un-bland it and it would become a whole Thing (instead of being a simple/easy recipe).
Also, if you’ve never used fresh parsley for cooking before: You just wanna use the leaves. So pinch the fluffy leafy parts off of the stems and just use those.
Finally, if you raise your heat up too high when you’re cooking the sauce/gravy portion and your milk gets all watery and gross, don’t panic. If you lower your heat down to almost nothing and stir it softly and consistently for a few minutes it’ll usually pull itself back together again. Maybe not entirely, but enough that you won’t gross people out, y’know?
Have fun and remember that presentation is a great added bonus, but it all looks the same in your stomach!
Still Hungry?
If you’re eager for additional recipes, check out The Quarantine Cookbook on HorrorFam.com! It’s FREE and has over 70 pages of delicious (easy!) recipes.
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