After you’ve made these, I promise you won’t long after the IKEA ones anymore, but theseinstead. So very humble of me, but there is a vast difference between homemade and store-bought meatballs. I made meatballs from a kilo of mince yesterday and Christopher made the comment that I made meatballs to last us for 3 days. Boy, was he wrong! After Nick, our dinner guest, Christopher and myself had eaten there were seven left. Out of 45. And we had a starter…

I have also added a new category; Typically Swedish, if you’re curious about Swedish cuisine.

Swedish meatballs, about 45

500 g beef mince

500 g pork mince

2 eggs

200 ml plain breadcrumbs

1 large onion, finely chopped

salt, white pepper

Crack the eggs into a bowl and break them up, add salt (more than you think), pepper and breadcrumbs. Leave it for a couple of minutes to swell. If the mixture seems very firm, add 1-2 tbsp water and stir it in. Next add the chopped onion and the mince. Make sure you incorporate it well, the mince has to mix as well as mixing it with the breadcrumbs. This is easiest done with a wooden spoon. When it is all incorporated, roll the mixture into balls, either small (1,5 cm in diameter) or larger(3 cm in diameter). In my family we make larger ones most of the time, and the small ones for holidays. Dip your fingers into a bowl of cold water in between rolling each ball, it makes it easier to roll. Fry them in butter on medium-high heat at first, until they are nice and crisp and brown on the outside, then turn the heat down to medium-low and let them cook through. Roll them around a lot as not to burn them, and check if they are cooked through, by cutting one in half. Serve with boiled potatoes, carrots, a creamy gravy and a nice jelly (I had rowanberry) or lingonberry jam.

You easily make a creamy gravy by heating up single cream, adding beef stock, salt, pepper, soy sauce, a tsp rowanberry jelly or other jelly and colour it darker with a colouring soy sauce (you can get this from a Swedish shop, and possibly Ikea food) or try and darken it with as much regular soy sauce (a dark one) as the taste permits.