Vegan Swedish meatballs | Recipe | Kitchen Stories (2024)

FAQs

What is the sauce for Swedish meatballs made from? ›

The sauce for Swedish Meatballs is a creamy gravy that is made with butter, beef broth/stock, thickened with flour and made creamy with cream. But the most important flavour for the a really good creamy gravy is the pan drippings after searing the meatballs.

Swedish Meatballs as a Symbol of Swedish Cuisine

This iconic dish has piqued the interest of food enthusiasts and travelers, placing Swedish cuisine on the global food map. As a result, Swedish meatballs have played a significant role in promoting the country's culinary prowess and boosting tourism.

Meatballs are as quintessentially Swedish as it gets. In their most traditional form Swedish meatballs ('köttbullar') are made of ground pork and beef, cream, egg and onion, and are served with creamy mashed potatoes, a thick, brown gravy, lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber.

The meatless meatball – a Swedish classic that's entirely plant-based. What looks and tastes like meat, but contains no meat? Our plant ball of course!

The Seasoning

While both varieties include ingredients such as grated onion and panade (milk-soaked bread) or bread crumbs, plus the usual salt and pepper, Swedish meatballs traditionally use spices like allspice, nutmeg, white pepper, and sometimes ground ginger as flavoring.

Czech authorities alerted the discount furniture maker that they had found horsemeat in a sample of meatballs, and Ikea subsequently pulled the product from stores in 14 countries.

Traditional Swedish way: Do not make the cream sauce at all. Serve meatballs over plain or stewed macaroni, plain or mashed potatoes, and lingenberry jam (optional)

ikea restaurants made them famous all over the world: Köttbullar, or Swedish meatballs. Sweden has now revealed that the recipe for its iconic dish actually came from Turkey. It was brought to the Scandinavian country by King Charles XII, who lived in exile in the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th-century.

We've been serving food at IKEA stores since the 1960s, but in 1985 Swedish chef Severin Sjöstedt created a meatball that was delicious, affordable and easy to serve, based on the traditional Swedish meatball. After 10 months of tireless testing and tasting, the IKEA meatball was born.

Did Vikings eat Swedish meatballs? ›

Swedish meatballs aren't just from Ikea, they were also a popular Viking dish.

The meatballs - along with all the dishes in IKEA restaurants - are priced so competitively to attract people to the store. The hope is, that once there, customers will also spend money on household items. The restaurants also reinforce the IKEA brand image of being 'low price' and 'good value'.

But Ikea has been quick to remind vegans that the mash and sauce traditionally served with the meatballs both contain dairy, so are not vegan. But Ikea's chips are vegan, so plant balls and chips for lunch it is!

The newest edition to the family is the plant ball. It's made with pea protein, potatoes, apple, oats and onion, but has the great taste and juicy bite of a meatball – making it perfect for everyone who wants to cut down on meat without losing out on the experience. "A lot has happened since 1985.

Iconic Swedish cream sauce: Melt 40g of butter in a pan. Whisk in 40g of plain flour and stir for 2 mins. Add 300ml of bouillon (or consommé) and continue to stir. Add 150ml double cream, 2 tsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of (Dijon) mustard.

Traditional Swedish way: Do not make the cream sauce at all. Serve meatballs over plain or stewed macaroni, plain or mashed potatoes, and lingenberry jam (optional)

It's All About the Sauce

Flavored with nutmeg and cardamom, these little beef-and-pork meatballs are best served with a Swedish meatball sauce—a rich roux-based and beef stock gravy, spiked with sour cream and a little lingonberry jelly.

Meatballs are not a sauce, they are balls of meat. A sauce has to be runny, or at least flowing. Done correctly, a bolognese sauce isn't particularly meaty. The meat is meant to be finely ground and incorporated into a standard spaghetti sauce, and the meat so fine it should stick onto the pasta in little specks.