Swedish Meatballs
Indulge in rich and savory Swedish Meatballs for dinner. These tender meatballs are smothered in an amazing tasting creamy gravy and served over egg noodles or mashed potatoes.
My family loves comfort food recipes and this is one of their most requested. You can prepare the meatballs ahead of time for a quick and easy weekday meal. This meatball recipe also makes a great appetizer to serve at your next party.
What are Swedish Meatballs?
Swedish Meatballs are a comforting, classic dish consisting of juicy ground beef meatballs smothered in a creamy gravy. The sauce is usually made with warm spices like allspice and nutmeg. My husband does not like allspice or nutmeg with ground beef so I like to flavor my sauce with a combination of Worcestershire sauce, beef stock or beef broth, dijon mustard, black pepper, and salt.
Tip
The key to making flavorful Swedish meatball sauce is scraping all the browned meatball bits off of the bottom of the skillet. Pan-frying in a cast iron skillet works perfectly for this. I use a combination of butter and olive oil when browning the meatballs because the olive oil helps prevent burning the butter. Burned butter will not make a great tasting sauce, so keep an eye on the heat while browning your meatballs!
How to make Swedish meatballs
- In a large bowl, combine ground beef, sautéed onion, garlic and oregano.
- Mix in salt, pepper, egg, and breadcrumbs.
- On medium heat, brown meatballs on all sides, carefully turning so they don’t break apart.
- Transfer meatballs to a sheet pan and keep warm in the oven while making your sauce.
- Add butter and flour to the pan to create a roux, then add in beef broth, cream, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard until sauce thickens.
- Add meatballs into sauce, cover and simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes. Season to taste.
Substitutions
- Ground Beef – use a combination of ground beef and ground pork. You can even substitute ground turkey or chicken.
- Spices – add nutmeg or allspice for a more traditional Swedish Meatball recipe.
- Panko breadcrumbs – regular breadcrumbs, pieces of bread or saltine crackers.
- Substitute ground beef meatballs with this Turkey Meatball recipe.
What to serve with this recipe?
Serve Swedish Meatballs with broad leg noodles, rice, or this great tasting recipe for Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Top these juicy meatballs with different condiments such as classic Swedish lingonberry jam, cranberry sauce or mustard pickles
favorite recipes using ground beef
Budget friendly and versitile, ground beef is ideal for making so many family friendly meals.
Swedish Meatballs
Video
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh oregano chopped or 1 teaspoon dry oregano
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 5 tablespoons butter
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 2 cups beef broth warmed up
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- In a small bowl combine panko bread crumbs and milk. Let sit for 10 minutes until breadcrumbs have soaked up the milk.
- In a large skillet heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil with 1 tablespoon of butter.
- Add the onions and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and oregano and sauté for another 1-2 minutes.
- In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, sautéed onion, garlic and oregano.
- Mix in the salt, pepper and egg. Combine until the eggs are mixed into the ground beef.
- Add the breadcrumbs to meat mixture and combine well.
- Use a tablespoon or scoop to make equal sized meatballs. This recipe makes approximately 20 meatballs.
- Reheat the skillet used to sauté onions and garlic, adding a bit more olive oil and butter if needed.
- On medium heat, brown the meat balls on all sides, carefully turning so they don't break apart.
- Don't overcrowd the skillet with meatballs, work in batches.
- Transfer the meatballs to a baking sheet and keep warm in the oven while you make the sauce.
- Add 4 tablespoons of butter to the skillet. Once melted whisk in the flour and cook until golden brown.
- Slowly stir in the heated beef broth and cook at a temperature that keeps the sauce at slow bubble.
- Add in the cream, Worcestershire sauce and Dijon mustard and simmer until sauce thickens at bit.
- Add the meatballs into sauce. Cover and simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Serve over egg noodles, broad noodles or mashed potatoes.
Notes
Nutrition
Just made this! The sauce is just “saucalicious” is that a word? ….I mean just perfectly yummy for the meatballs!! I added some dill to the sauce and that made it even better! My kids loved it!! Thank you so much!
Nazia, love that saucalicious, describes this recipe very well!
I made this last night and it was divine! I added some sautéed mushrooms and onions to the sauce as well! This was such a hit ! I couldn’t believe how tender the meatball was!
Awesome Madison, mushrooms and onions are a great addition!
I am going to make these this weekend. My 8 year old loves meatball anything!! We will have so much fun making these together! Thanks for the recipe~
This will be a great recipe to make together and your 8 year old will love eating his cooking with this recipe.
Making these tomorrow! Can’t wait! Will let you know how they turned out! 🙂
Great Shannon, I would love the feedback
I just made these with my daughter. I can only describe them as manna from heaven. We tripled the recipe, in hopes of freezing some, but lets face it folks, we’re pigs, and they were that good, sadly they will not make it past the leftover stage! LOL. So if you’re thinking of making these, and dont have all the ingredients on hand, I say run, dont walk to the nearest grocery store, and be sure to buy extra because you want to double even triple this one!
what are you still doing here? I said RUN!!!!! GET!!! NOW!!!
Thank you for that wonderful comment, you sure made me laugh. So glad you enjoyed the recipe 🙂
I used the 3 tbsp. of flour and the sauce came out perfectly. The trick to making a smooth non-lumpy roux is to add the flour a little at a time whisking the entire time . Don’t dump the flour in all at once. I learned this from my French Mother-in-law who was a genius making French sauces. Thank you so much for this awesome recipe .
Thanks for the tip MaryAnn
I made this dish tonight for dinner . DELICIOUS !!!!!
My husband loved it. Me, too. I did add a little nutmeg to the meatballs.
Fantastic recipe, thanks. I added a little more Dijon as my whole family are mustard lovers!!!
Absolutely loved that it had a lot of sauce, it’s hard to find recipes that have that, I usually make double batch.
Will definitely be cooking again
Thanks Carrol, my husband doesn’t like too much Dijon, I like more, so I just serve it on the side, but it always does seem to taste just a bit better cooked in
This was SO good.
I totally messed up and didn’t add the carmelized onion to the meatballs, I realized after I formed them so I scooped the onions into a cup until time to add the meatballs back, it was still awesome and I enjoyed having the onion in the sauce!
My insanely picky 6 year old ate 2 servings and said “super awesome dinner!” which is quite a complement coming from him.
My husband loved them as well, he’s not as picky though 😉
So glad I found this!
Oh and I served on some pappardelle. I feel fancy saying that. I promise I’m not, I just always get excited any time a new pasta comes to my publix and I had it on hand.
Sorry for the novel, thanks for the great recipe !
Amanda thank you, I’ll really enjoyed your comment, it made my day. I need to try some of that pasta, it does sound fancy. We have an Italian shop in town, so I’m going to check this week to see if they carry it.
Connie, it is a recipe I make quite often, so glad you and your husband enjoyed it.