Meatball recipe with a twist

The dish Sweden is most famous for is meatballs. I mean, who hasn’t been to IKEA and tried their meatballs in creamy gravy with potatoes?

It’s a classic!

I’d say I will never get tired of meatballs, but to make things more exciting and get away from those everyday tastes, it’s great to experiment with some new meatball recipes.

Us Swedes tend to be drawn to Mediterranean flavours when we experiment with our food, and I’m not an exception – I absolutely love garlic, basil, feta cheese and sundried tomatoes.

Another way of varying the taste of your meatballs is to swap the standard pork or beef mince to another meat. We eat a lot of wild meat in Sweden as well, and I’ve grown up eating both elk and venison, so when I came across this video recipe by professional huntsman Mike Robinson I was hooked straight away!

Looks delicious, doesn’t it?!

There’s currently a whole series of Mike Robinson's Wild Kitchen online, with everything from wild meat to vegetarian mushroom dishes.

This particular recipe was recently tried and tested by blogger Foodsessed.

My own favourite meatball recipe with a twist is of the creamy kind, and this is the recipe for it:

Recipe for 4 portions

Ingredients

• 500 grams of minced meat (pork or mixed pork and beef)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 table spoons of chili ketchup
• Butter
• 1 tub of reduced fat crème fraiche
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 teaspoon of dark soy
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon of thyme
• 3-4 tablespoons of water

This is how you cook it:

Mix the minced meat, garlic, chili ketchup and salt to an even paste. Shape into approximately 8 meatballs (2 per person), and fry them in the butter – ca 3 minutes on each side. Take out the meatballs and put them to the side whilst you mix the sauce. Add crème fraiche, pepper, soy, thyme and water to your pan, and bring it to boil. Lower the heat, put the meatballs back in the pan into the sauce, and let simmer for a few minutes.

Serve with pasta or potatoes, and a fresh salad.

Delicious!

I usually find my food inspiration on Swedish recipe sites, but you can find lots of great recipes on sites such as Homemaking Hacks.

What’s your favourite meatball dish? The classic Swedish, the tomato sauce based Italian, or the garlicky and creamy Greek style?