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Directions:Ikea releases secret Swedish meatballs recipe and it’s super delicious
Ikea's Swedish meatballs are legendary. Up until a few weeks ago, the recipe was a carefully guarded secret. However, like several other organizations responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ikea released the recipe for its iconic meatballs so that fans could enjoy them at home. I tried my hand at making the Swedish meatballs. Here's what I learned.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I've never had Ikea's meatballs. Therefore, I didn't have anything really to compare them to. After two attempts at making them, however, my view is that they are amazingly delicious and super easy to make.
About the Ikea recipe
The meatball ingredients are pretty standard. They include ground beef, ground pork, onion, garlic, breadcrumbs, egg, milk, salt and pepper.
However, weights in the recipe that Ikea released were metric, i.e., in grams. Therefore, I spent some time converting from grams to U.S. cups and ounces. The conversion yielded some non-standard weights. For example, the Ikea recipe called for 500 gram of ground beef which is 17.637 ounces, or slightly over a pound.
Because of the non-standard US weights, I scaled the recipe back such that it used one pound or 16 ounces of beef and comparable proportions of the other ingredients.
If you've read my blogs, you probably know that I'm a major geek when it comes recipes and weighing the ingredients. No exception here.
The Ikea recipe called for mixing the meatball mixture by hand after successive additions of the ingredients. The first time I made the meatballs, I followed the published procedure. However, as I was making the meatballs, I kept thinking that I should have just combined all ingredients in the food processor.
I used the food processor the second time. The meatballs made with the food processor were superior in all respects! The reasons were that the ingredients were better blended together and the resultant texture of the meatballs was finer.
The cream sauce for the meatballs is made like a standard béchamel sauce. However, the ingredients differ somewhat. In addition to the standard butter and flour, the cream sauce included vegetable broth, beef broth, heavy cream, Dijon mustard and soy sauce.
The first time I made the cream sauce, I thought that it was all right, but not exceptional. The second time I made it, I added some salt and pepper at the end. That made all the difference in the world!
The soy sauce that I used was low sodium. Perhaps if I had used regular soy sauce I wouldn't have needed to add the salt.
Ikea's Iconic Swedish Meatballs
Serves 6
Ingredients
Ikea's Meatballs
1 pound (16 ounces) ground beef
1/2 pound (8 ounces) ground pork
1 cup chopped onion (1 medium onion)
1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 cup (3.2 ounces) dried breadcrumbs
1 large egg
5 Tablespoons (2.5 ounces) milk
1/2 Tablespoon Kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
Cream Sauce
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (4 ounces) vegetable broth
1/2 cup (4 ounces) beef broth
1/2 cup (4 ounces) heavy cream
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons soy sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Ikea's Meatballs
Add ground beef and ground pork to food processor fitted with steel blade. Process for 10 seconds or until combined. Add remaining meatball ingredients. Process for 20 seconds or until combined.
Take a small amount of meatball mixture; microwave for 20 seconds or until done. Taste for seasonings. Correct if necessary.
Form mixture into golf-ball sized meatballs. Refrigerate for 2 hours. (See Tip 7)
Heat oven to 350°F
Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in 12-inch skillet over medium heat.
Add 9 ot 10 meatballs; brown on all sides. Remove from pan; drain on paper towels. Repeat with remaining meatballs.
(I would guess that if you were prepping the meatballs up to this point, that you could then freeze them until the day you want to serve them, and then bake in the oven (shown below) to an internal temperature of 145°F).
Place browned meatballs in oven-proof dish. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake in preheated 350°F oven for 30 minutes
Yield: 28 meatballs
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Cream Sauce
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of flour; stir for two minutes.
Whisk in vegetable broth and beef broth until bubbly and thickened. Whisk in cream, mustard and soy sauce until smooth and bubbly.
Yield: 1 3/4 cups of Cream Sauce.
Chula's Tips
1. I used 90% lean ground beef.
2. I actually used the food processor to "grind" the pork. To do this, I put 2-inch chunks of pork butt in the food processor fitted with a steel blade and processed it for 10 seconds. The result - perfectly ground pork.
3. If you use regular table salt in place of Kosher salt, reduce the amount to 1 1/4 teaspoons.
4. You can use chicken broth in place of the vegetable broth and/or the beef broth. If the sauce is too thick, add more beef broth.
5. I used low sodium soy sauce. If you use regular soy sauce, the salt content might be all right. I would suggest that you taste the sauce to see if more salt is needed.
6. I added 1/4 teaspoon of Kosher salt and a few grinds for black pepper.
7. I used a 1 3/4-inch ice cream scoop to initially form the meatballs so that they would be uniform in size. Then I rolled them between my palms to round them off.
8. Leftovers are equally amazing!
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This recipe for Ikea Swedish Meatballs is from