Köttbullar

A year ago, I came across this recipe for Swedish meatballs or köttbullar. What's interesting is that it is from 1960! And as I didn't have any ideas of what to cook this week-end, I decided to give this one a try. The original recipe is for 300 g of minced meat. I adjusted for 500 g, which is what I had.

Ingredients (original amounts)
2 tbsp fine breadcrumbs
1.5 dl milk
300 g mixed mince
1 boiled cold potato
1 onion
1 tsp salt
1 pinch of finely ground white pepper
1 pinch of ground allspice
2 tbsp butter for frying

Ingredients (adjusted)
6 tbsp fine breadcrumbs
2.5 dl milk
165 g peeled, then boiled and cooled potatoes
1 large onion (190 g after peeling)
500 g beef mince
1.5 tsp salt
2 ml ground black pepper
2 ml ground allspice
butter for frying

Sauce
2 tbsp plain flour
1 dl water
3 dl from the liquid used to boil the potatoes or liquid from canned mushrooms
salt and ground white pepper to taste
Boiled potatoes for serving

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 80 °C and place a large oven proof dish to warm up.
2. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk and let them swell.
3. Blend the potatoes and onion as smoothly as possible
4. Mix together all ingredients. Note that the mixture will be fairly runny.
   
5. Have a small bowl with water, wet your hands and form small balls. Place on a plate ready for frying.
   
6. Heat up some butter in a frying pan and fry the meatballs in batches, taking care not to crowd them.
7. Remove each batch to the oven proof dish and keep warm in the oven.
8. Make the sauce by stirring in the flour into the water.
9. Pour the potato/mushroom liquid into the frying pan and bring to the boil.
10. Add the flour water and stir vigorously for 5 minutes.
11. Season to taste and it's ready to serve.

Now, the runny mixture meant that I couldn't use my meatball maker. Instead I made 21 meatballs and fried them, as Lundulph was hungry and we had them for lunch together with chilli flavoured spaghetti and the 1960's gravy, which went a bit lumpy in the cooking process. Needless to say, it was not possible to keep the meatballs in constant motion during the frying, they were way too soft and wouldn't keep a round shape. Not to mention that they were difficult to turn and wanted to just disintegrate. However, they smelt and tasted very nice, as did the gravy.

So, later in the evening, when I was going to cook the remainder of the mixture, I stirred in a large egg with the hopes that it would help with binding the meatballs better. I also rolled them in flour before frying. Neither seemed to make much difference. I think I got about 50 meatballs from the 500 g mince recipe, I didn't really count. I'll need to find a more recent recipe next time though.