One of my favorite meals from childhood is Swedish meatballs. It was probably the creamy sauce, because I am all about sauce. I asked my mom for the recipe she used and her response was, “Swedish meatballs? I never made those.”Yeah, bullshit, mom. How she cannot remember this, I have no idea.
My obsession for these was rekindled on my first trip to an Ikea, when I treated myself to a plateful in the cafeteria. For the record, I hate everything about Ikea. The stupid names for the furniture, the arrows on the floor that are supposed to lead you to a bathroom but lead you around in circles when the only thing you need to continue living is a bathroom, getting down to the warehouse and finding out all of the shit you wanted to buy is sold out, and the lines. Holy Jesus, THE LINES.
So the only thing I have ever purchased at Ikea has been those stinking meatballs. And oh, how I loved them.
Scott’s mom gifted me a subscription to Cook’s Country magazine, and in the first issue I received, there was a recipe for cocktail sized Swedish meatballs. I have been dreaming of these meatballs for about a week now, but other things have taken precedence over making them. Like not leaving the house because it’s fricking freezing outside.
But tonight, after my afternoon hockey game (we won 6-2, I think), we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some supplies and that boring question of “what do you want to eat for dinner?” came up. And when Scott said he didn’t care, a bolt of inspiration hit me.
Swedish Meatballs. It’s what’s for dinner.
I had to recall upon my swiss-cheese memory for the ingredients, but my extreme love of the Swedish Meatball pulled through and I scored all of the ingredients. From memory. It occurred to me that this wasn’t exactly the most low calorie dinner, but I justified it because I had just skated my butt off in the hockey game. Even though I didn’t see the ice for the first eight minutes of the third period. But that’s another post for another time.
We got back around 7PM and I pulled out the recipe. To my total disappointment, the recipe is for a slow-cooked version of these meatballs, and it’s supposed to take about 4-5 hours.
Screw that, I needed meatballs, and I needed them now.
Enter my recent gift from Scott: a 5 qt. Le Creuset dutch oven. I browned the meatballs in the oven as the recipe directed, but instead of throwing them into the crock pot, I made the sauce in the dutch oven and dumped the meatballs in. I let them simmer for a little while, had a glass of wine, and cooked up some egg noodles (I do love me some egg noodles). I made sure to check the temp of the meatballs, and they were done.Pile noodles on the plate, spoon out meatballs and sauce over, and eat. I know that this seems like a lot of food, but this is my first batch of Swedish meatballs ever. And I played hockey today. Don’t judge.
My feeling after eating most of this plate is that the sauce is a little thick, and when I warm these up as leftovers, I will add some beef broth to thin out the sauce a little. I will also cut back a tad on the allspice. Not a bad flavor, but seems a little overpowering. I might add a bit of fresh parsley to the finished dish next time, and laziness is the only thing that prevented me from doing so tonight. I might also try low-fat sour cream instead of full-fat (it was what I had in the fridge).
But overall, fantastic taste. The rye bread totally adds to the flavor, and oh how I love caraway seeds. I suppose if these aren’t your thing, you could use a rye without seeds. I will also read the recipe thoroughly next time and use the correct amount of butter to saute the onions, instead of the artery clogging amount I used tonight. Maybe that’s why they’re so damned tasty.
