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
These look very good and the picture is perfect. I love that it is also shown in a cast iron skillet, as that is how my mother made them for me every year for my birthday.
HOWEVER – this really shouldn’t be called Swedish Meatballs as the recipe, and the spices is not at all how Swedish meatballs are made. The only thing similar to the Swedish recipe is that it is in a creamy gravy.
Nonetheless, it looks like a good recipe for meatballs, regardless of not being a Swedish meatball.
This looks so amazing!! I am so bummed I don’t have ground beef defrosted, but I will make this tomorrow. Awesome recipe! Thanks for posting!
Terrific Sarah, let me know when you make it.
I made it once before using this recipe and it was great. Thinking of making it tonight, but I don’t have beef broth, do you think chicken broth might work as a replacement?
Hi Deidra, so for slow response, I was out all day. Chicken broth should work.
My Swedish Grandmother Maya always added allspice to her meatballs. I don’t think she used oregano.
Allspice is used in the authentic recipes I’ve found. But this recipe is my favorite!
Yes I have seen allspice in many recipes, but my husband is not a fan of allspice so I don’t add it. So glad you enjoyed the recipe Jennifer.
But they are not Swedish, sorry.
I’m Swedish and we use a equal parts beef, pork & veal mix for the meat. I will try this recipe, it sounds very tasty. My Greek husband will tell you that oregano improves everything. As for the non-Swedish aspect-we have our Christmas meatballs with a BBQ sauce that includes grape jelly. So there! Sounds kinda icky, definitely non-traditional, but very good and always a huge hit. Some of my family even prefer them without any sauce at all.
My grandmother used either nutmeg and allspice or just nutmeg. Definitely not oregano.
Grandma’s are the best cooks Danielle! Great thing about recipes, you can adapt them to suite your taste and sometimes just what you have on hand. I love the flavour of the meatballs in this recipe.
Do you have a printer feature for your recipes? I can’t seem to find it
Hey Paul, its there, right under the small photo beside the recipe.
Tried the recipe tonight and it was great. Definitely a keeper.
I’m going to cook this recipe later, has anyone tried it without the cream? Some of my friends are dairy intolerant.
Helen, I not sure what type of dairy substitute you could use because the cream is an important ingredient to making this dish taste as good as it is.
I just made this and it was really good. I followed recipe exactly. It was so good I had to run back to the store to get more meat to make another batch. 🙂
Thank you Lori for taking the time to drop a comment. So glad you enjoyed the recipe.
Made this tonight with brown rice noodles. So good. Only thing I changed was I used half and half and source am mixture to get the creamy sauce. I used an all natural beef broth paste which eliminated the need for Worcester and dijon. Thank you. This recipe was great!
Fantastic Stacy, so glad you tried the recipe
It might save some time to bake the meatballs wouldn’t it?