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Yes, we did hit a high of 91 degrees today and yes, I did make Swedish Meatballs for dinner. I’ve wanted these for about a week now, but have also been on some antibiotics that have been doing a fantastic job of making me feel horrid, so I held off until I *knew* I’d feel good for dinner. And today I feel great, and still wanted them like nobody’s business. So, there you go.

My Mom used to make these with a packet mix from McCormick or Lowrys or one of those folks. Now, it was always tasty so I certainly can’t complain by any means. But, I’ve kind of gone a personal crusade for “packet-free food” – I truly think that just about anything you can make with a seasoning packet can be done just as well (if not better) on your own. The big hurdles I got over were chili & spaghetti sauce. (Don’t laugh!) Well, once I got those to a point where I was pleased with them, I decided it was time to tackle the Swedish Meatballs.

In scouring recipes across the internet, I found there are as many recipes for Swedish Meatballs as there are stars in the sky. (And I am still convinced if you asked someone from Sweden about them, they would look at you as though you’d lost your mind, the Ikea cafeteria menu notwithstanding.) My first go at it, I used this recipe from allrecipes.com, and of course had to make some variations on it…

It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was just ALL WRONG. I seem to recall throwing in a bit of beef stock in the sauce instead of water, and overall the sauce was just too “beefy” – like I said, not bad, but certainly not what Mom used to make. My brother ate it but readily admitted it just didn’t cut it for what we used to get. (And isn’t Mom always the yardstick by which we measure so many comfort foods?)

That night, I had the “OMG, I am such a dumbass” moment. Mom’s (and McCormick’s) sauce was a thickened *cream* sauce. I remember looking at my brother and saying, “Good lord, it’s nothing more than another variation on red-eye gravy, and I can do THAT.” I felt like an idiot.

So, tonight, it was me vs. the Swedes again. :) I stuck somewhat to the original meatball recipe I’d found, with more variations (it’s almost my meatloaf recipe, sans the 57 sauce, LOL.) and then when it came time for the sauce, it came out MUCH better than before, and damn close to what I remember my Mom making. Gotta love that. My brother says it’s not quite there, but very close, but neither one of us can quite figure it out (and I can’t find a damn McCormick package to see what other spices I’m missing in the sauce.)

So, here we go – Swedish Meatballs after the jump:
Meatballs:

1 – 1.5 # of ground beef & pork (2:1 ratio) – the easy way? Get the markets “meatloaf mix” which is ground beef, pork & lamb. (Which I have never actually used for meatloaf, but constantly use for meatballs and lumpia.)
1/2 c. finely diced/chopped onion
1-2 cloves finely diced garlic
1 egg
1/2 c. milk
1 t dried parsley (I have no doubt fresh would be better, but dried was all I had on hand)
1t Worchestershire sauce (could the culinary world have come up with a more used sauce that was HARDER to spell properly?)
2 t salt (I know I went much lighter than this, probably 1t)
1 t pepper
3/4 c. bread crumbs (I use the “italian style” which is marketspeak for “we’ll charge you $1 more for 3 cents worth of oregano and basil in the mix)

Mix it all up, in a chilled bowl if at all possible (don’t know why, just seems to make the meatballs form up easier) – I add the breadcrumbs last, just a little at a time, because I tend to eyeball the liquids I put in and that way I don’t have to add more liquids at the end cause I dumped in too much breadcrumbs. I’ve done this both with my KA mixer on low and by hand – upside to the KA is that you don’t end up with meatball mix stuck under your fingernails, but doing it by hand seems to just work a little bit better.

Once it’s all mixed up, toss 1 to 1.5 T of butter in your favorite meatball browning pan of choice on low to start melting and get the meatballs formed. I have zero luck with the meatball scoop things, so I just do rounded teaspoons (like cookies) onto a plate so they’re of a fairly uniform volume and the go back and actually make them round. Doesn’t take more an an extra minute or two. The extra time might not fly in a restaurant kitchen, but this is my kitchen and I can do whatever I want. :-D

While you’re doing this, keep an eye on the butter and as you get close to done on getting the meatballs formed, crank up the heat on the butter to about medium (this is going to be different on every friggin’ rangetop – basically hot but below the smoke point.) Toss in the meatballs and brown them. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how long this takes. (Another reason I am not a professional chef.) I can tell you that I have a great wide silicone spatula/pancake turner that is great for turning meatballs, and I just kept turning them every few minutes. Just be prepared to sacrifice a couple meatballs for “doneness checks” – that’s the upside to being the cook – checking for taste along the way.

Once they’re done, set them aside to drain. (I just chuck them in a colander and set them in the sink – some may scream food poisoning, but I’ve never had the time it takes for meatballs to drain @ room temp result in my being at death’s door.)

Now it’s on to the sauce – my albatross the last time around.

Sauce:
~ 2 T AP flour
~ 1/2 c. White wine (anything you’d be willing to drink)
~ 1 c. Veggie stock  Chicken Stock
1 T parsley
Salt & Pepper
~1/4 c. finely diced onions
~1/2 c. milk (or heavy cream – I had milk on hand) <<<heavy cream is better
Cornstarch if it won’t thicken
This is where it gets into “Cindy just winging it”, but I made note of everything I did.

Have the heat at medium for all this.

I decided I wanted a little more butter in the mix and tossed in another 1/2 T. In retrospect, I probably could have skipped this.

Then, I deglazed the pan with the white wine, working through all the browned butter and meatball yumminess and adding the additional onions and the flour.
Next was the vegetable stock. (Each time letting it warm back up.)

The flour had decided to be a bastard and just clump up, so there was a LOT of whisking. Next time I either skip the flour or put that in FIRST and whisk the hell out of it.

Then the milk, parsley, salt and pepper. More whisking and stirring and cussing the fact that it won’t freakin’ thicken up.

Now, keep going until it gets to a bubble – if it still doesn’t want to thicken up at that point, go ahead and toss in a bit of cornstarch. (I panicked too soon and probably didn’t need the cornstarch if I had waited another 30-60 seconds.)

The texture I was going for was a little less than a heavy cream soup (like a baked potato soup) but still ahead of “hot cream sauce” – hard to describe, but if you think about it, you’ll recognize it when you see it.

Once you hit that point, turn the heat as low as it will go, add the meatballs back in and let it simmer on low (covered) for 5 minutes. Stir once or twice during the process.

Serve as is, or over egg noodles. If you’re going to put this in a chafing dish with a handful of toothpicks and let folks just go to town, it’s great that way, but you might want to be prepared to stir it up every now and again depending on how hot your chafing dish gets.

Forgive the incredibly informal plating, but dinner was a free for all this evening (and yes, that is flour all over the place) – the sauce is lighter than the orange/yellow that is coming out, but I assume that is just a combination of my flash and the weird under-micro lighting that I use for my rangetop.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Appetizers, Beef, Main Dishes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.