Swedish Meatballs that are perfectly tender and spiced, served with creamy, savory, tangy gravy. Comfort food at its best!
The Best Swedish Meatballs
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I made my own Swedish meatballs for the first time!!! And gosh it wasn’t difficult at all! Thank you so much for the amazing recipe.
Shiela
All Hail These Swedish Meatballs!
I grew up eating a lot of Swedish meatballs, and I have to say – Swedish meatball recipes are varied and they all kind of have their own personality. But after testing several ingredient combinations and methods, this is the one that I like best.
Cream-soaked bread mixed with ground beef and ground pork with plenty of salt and pepper, baked to golden meatball perfection, and finally rolled around in a rich and savory cream-based gravy. It is mellow, ultra comforting, and deeply flavorful all at the same time.
Swedish meatballs may or may not be something that you want to make on a random Tuesday night because they’re gonna take a little time to make. You’ve got the rolling, you’ve got the baking, you’ve got the gravy-making…
But they are SPECIAL. And they aren’t hard. They are perfect for holiday meals or dinner club or just a little something extra when you’re looking for a good reason to live your best life.
May your gravy be creamy and your meatballs be extra-savory and your special dinner be one to remember. ♡
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How To Make These Swedish Meatballs
1
Soak The Bread.
You’re going to soak some basic white bread in heavy cream. Yeah, I know. But trust that this is where the tenderness and flavor start coming into the picture!
2
Make Your Meatballs.
Mix everything together – pork, beef, BREAD, butter, onions, garlic, all that’s good. Then roll them into meatballs on a sheet pan and bake until cooked through.
3
Make The Gravy.
Whisk the gravy: butter, flour, beef broth, Worcestershire, little bit of nutmeg (and/or allspice if you want), and some heavy cream for that delicious creaminess. (Some recipes will use sour cream, but traditionally the creaminess comes from cream!)
4
All Together Now.
When the gravy is finished, add your baked meatballs to the pan and stir it all up. HELLO Swedish Meatballs!
What Are Swedish Meatballs?
Whether it’s from frequent IKEA trips, Christmas dinners at grandma’s, or the generally strong Scandinavian pride of the midwest, Swedish meatballs feel synonymous with Sweden.
Traditionally, Swedish meatballs are made with pork and beef, cream, egg, and onion, and are served alongside mashed potatoes, lingonberries, and tangy pickly cucumbers. It’s the perfect balance of savory, sweet, and tangy.
If you want to REALLY dig deep, back to be beginning of the history of these beautiful little bites, Swedish meatballs are actually based on a dish brought back from Turkey in the early 18th century by King Charles XII of Sweden. Which means… they might actually be Turkish meatballs? Excuse me? Intrigue!
Tips For Making The Best Swedish Meatballs
Like I said, this isn’t exactly a made-for-a-weeknight recipe, so let’s talk about some tips.
- The meatball mixture will be a little wetter than most meatball recipes you’ve probably made, and that’s how it should be! This is what makes for the most tender, delicious, meatballs.
- When baking your meatballs in the oven, make sure they’re not touching. This will ensure the meatballs get crispy instead of steamy!
- SAVE YOUR GREASE! After the meatballs are made, save that grease to make your gravy for the BEST flavor. (Don’t worry, the recipe reminds you to do this!)
- Make the sides. I repeat: MAKE THE SIDES! These meatballs are so delicious and savory and go so well with creamy mashed potatoes, but the balance of it with the tangy/sweet lingonberries (affiliate link) and zippiness of the cucumbers truly brings this all together.
- If you need a vegetarian option for this recipe, whether for yourself or someone at your table, this Vegetarian Swedish Meatballs recipe is the ticket!
What To Serve with Swedish Meatballs
The meatballs in and of themselves are a world wonder, but let me fill out the plate for you for what to serve with Swedish meatballs.
- Creamy Mashed Potatoes <– I like these, obviously, because they’re very easy and have so much garlic herb flavor. (If you’re not into potatoes or don’t have the time, you’ll often see Swedish meatballs served over egg noodles, though we are VERY much partial to the mashed potatoes.)
- Tangy Lingonberry Sauce, for which we use the recipe on the back of the lingonberry package.
- Vinegary Cucumber Salad, which seems a little strange at first glance but is so delicious and essential for cutting through everything. It wakes the whole plate up.
Swedish Meatballs: Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use all pork or all beef?
Yes! The flavor combo of the two meats is really good, but I’ve also enjoyed the all-beef versions that I’ve made.
How do I make the gravy?
You make a basic roux and add cream and Worcestershire to it – and if you want to add all the pan juices from the meatballs in there, too, that’s delicious! If you like a smoother gravy, don’t add all the juices because they will create some flecks in the gravy. (But I don’t mind the flecks personally! And the flavor is top notch.)
What’s the meatball mixture like?
The meatball mixture is pretty wet! That’s normal, especially because there’s not any dry elements in this, like cheese or breadcrumbs. The reason for the wet texture is that the cream-soaked bread makes for a very tender meatball once it’s cooked. If you get your hands slightly wet, you’ll have an easier time rolling them.
Can I use sandwich bread?
You can! If you are using thin, plain white sandwich bread, you may want to use 6-8 slices instead to make a thicker bread mixture.
Can I freeze this recipe?
The meatballs in the recipe freeze amazingly well. Just cook them as the recipe states and then freeze in a bag. Keeps for up to two months, and then you can easily whip up a batch of gravy and toss the meatballs in!
How can I prep this ahead of time?
The best way to prep this ahead of time is to make the meatballs! That way, when it comes time to serve, all you need to do is make your sauce and then pop them out of the fridge or freezer and add to the pan.
The mashed potatoes and lingonberries also prep beautifully and will keep in the fridge for a few days!
Can I make this vegetarian?
We do have a different recipe for Vegetarian Swedish Meatballs that is equally delicious and popular!
What should I serve with Swedish Meatballs?
I listed a few ideas right here! But the basic formula for me is this: meatballs and gravy, mashed potatoes, tangy vinegar cucumbers, and sweet lingonberry sauce. Perfection.
Could I use frozen meatballs?
Sure could! Target sells frozen pre-made Swedish Meatballs, or you can take a trip to IKEA to get their frozen meatballs in the market. Then just warm them up in the gravy and you’re good to go!
A previous version of this recipe used raw onions and garlic in the meatball mixture; we’ve since changed that as we felt the whole process was made significantly easier by using granulated onion and garlic with no sacrifice in flavor! Find the previous version here.
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The Best Swedish Meatballs
- Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Yield: 5–6 servings 1x
Description
Swedish Meatballs that are perfectly tender and spiced, served with creamy, savory, gravy. Comfort food at its best!
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Swedish Meatballs:
- 4 slices white bread, no crusts
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 pound ground beef (I use 85/15)
- 1 pound ground pork (you can also sub with another pound of ground beef instead)
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- a few shakes of black pepper
Gravy:
- 2 tablespoons butter (you can also use some drippings from the baked meatballs)
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 1 1/2 cups beef broth (more as needed)
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (more to taste)
- 1–2 teaspoons brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt (to taste – I recommend adding it last so you can taste and adjust for how much you want)
- Very slight dash of nutmeg (optional)
Instructions
- Meatball Mixture: In a small bowl, soak the white bread in the heavy cream for 5-10 minutes. Mash with a spoon or you hands. Mix the bread paste in a large bowl with the garlic and onion powder, beef and pork, egg, brown sugar, salt, and pepper. When it’s all well-mixed, roll into smallish meatballs. (If you find the mixture is too wet to handle, you can add a bit of panko or a tablespoon of cornstarch to help them hold a bit more. But don’t panic – wet is normal for this mixture. It makes for very tender meatballs!)
- Bake the Meatballs: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place meatballs on a sheet pan or baking dish. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked through.
- Gravy Time: In a large pan, melt the butter over medium heat. (You’re going to add the meatballs back into this pan so make sure it’s a nice big skillet, saute pan, or braiser casserole dish.) Whisk in the flour; let it bubble for 2-3 minutes. Add the beef broth, slowly, stirring after each addition. Gradually a smooth gravy should start to form. Stir in the heavy cream and season with Worcestershire sauce, sugar, salt, and a bit of nutmeg if you want. Taste and adjust to get it just right! That’s where the magic happens.
- Add meatballs in with the gravy. Cover to keep warm until you want to serve them, or transfer the pan to the oven where they can hang out on low / warm heat and continue to get tender and delicious. (The meatballs are already great on their own, but the longer they soak in sauce, the more tender and delicious they get.) Serve over mashed potatoes, with a cucumber salad and lingonberries.
Notes
If you prefer, you can use all ground beef in this recipe instead of half beef, half pork.
The gravy thickens and the meatballs get more tender as you let them rest in the sauce. I like to make this in the afternoon so it has a few hours to settle in before I serve it in the evening – I just keeping it warm if it’s for 2-3 hours, or put in the fridge if it’ll be longer. If it will be in the fridge, the gravy will probably need an extra 1/2 to 1 cup of broth to help it get back to a saucy consistency!
A great make-ahead option for this is to make the meatballs, and either bake them and freeze them, or just freeze them raw and bake day-of. That way, when it’s time to serve day-of, all you really have to make is the gravy!
For a real easy version of this, use your favorite store-bought meatballs! I’ve had many readers tell me they do it that way and love it!
The cucumber salad (or just any salad with a vinegary punch) is very important in balancing this meal! I would highly recommend doing a simple Swedish cucumber salad – the flavors and textures were just made to create a beautiful balanced plate!
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Sauté
- Cuisine: Swedish
Keywords: swedish meatballs, meatballs, swedish food, gravy recipe
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December 6, 2021
Nice to meet you!
I’m Lindsay and I ♡ FOOD. I used to be a teacher, and now making food and writing about it online is my full-time job. I love talking with people about food, and I'm so glad you're here.
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Great recipe! That gravy looks amazing!
And I’ve never seen a soaked bread and the cooked onion/garlic mixture mixed into meat to make meatballs. Will have to try this
My first time making and tasting Swedish Meatballs. I followed the recipe, but I did sub egg noodles for mashed potatoes. BF stated it was the best he has ever had. Thank you for the recipe. I give it 2 thumbs up and 5 stars. As I write this review I am adding this recipe to my ‘Hard Copy Recipe Book’.
This looks great. For a shortcut I use fresh white breadcrumbs, just a couple of tablespoons of cream then grate a small pre-frozen onion straight into the mix – gives you the moisture plus the oniony taste spreads easily throughout the meat mixture. Also white pepper, white sugar and just ground pork, but my family is a Danish – Swedish hybrid so we probably do things a little differently 🙂
These are one of our favorite meals! Totally need to make these this week!
Paige
http://thehappyflammily.com
Enjoy, Paige! 🙂
Do you have a recipe for the cucumber situation? This all looks amazing and I want all of the parts 🙂
We like this one. 🙂 https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/348955-swedish-cucumber-salad
This was so good. Can’t go wrong with Swedish meatballs, my family devoured this meal.
So glad it was a hit!
Too bad the cucumber salad instructions can only be accessed by signing in first.
What temperature do you bake them for and for how long?
Woops – sorry…. just saw 350 for 30
Looks great, but where’s the nutmeg?
No nutmeg here. 😉
Nutmeg is in the gravy recipe, read above
Oops didn’t realize it was an old recipe post lol
As the intro to this recipe states, there are a lot of different recipes for Swedish meatballs. This one looks quite tasty! They are popular all over Scandinavia–family recipes get passed down to generations! I have a 1955 cookbook of Swedish recipes that is a collection by members of the American Daughters of Sweden. There are seven different recipes for Swedish meatballs (köttbullar). Some are made with pork and beef, some all pork, some all beef. Some have nutmeg or allspice and some don’t. All are made by browning in butter on top of the stove. Gravy is made using pan drippings and flour for the roux, and then adding milk or light cream. There’s usually not tons of gravy with this method, but it’s enough to coat my egg noodles! Notably, no recipe uses garlic. A quick perusal of current recipes online for Swedish meatballs shows that many folks are adding garlic because they like it to enhance the flavor. I see that this recipe does add a pinch of nutmeg to the gravy which would give it that Scandinavian taste. I would say it’s a modernized American version, but yummy all the same!
I want to make the cranberry sauce from scratch too but I don’t know which package you’re referring to. Is it on the back of a fresh bag of cranberries? (I’m in Vancouver, Canada so might not be familiar with any brands, btw)
My grandma is coming to visit this weekend and I’d love to make this for her!
Hi, Jessica! Yep, you can usually find them right on the back of the bag. 🙂
Hi, Swedish girl here!! The real deal to eat with Swedish meatballs are lingonberry. Bye raw frozen lingonberries and just stir with a bit of sugar, it will resolve with the juice from the berries. If you can’t find lingonberries, it might just work with cranberries but I have never tried it! 🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪
Easy cranberry sauce: 1 bag of cranberries; 1 c. sugar; 1 cup water (or ½ c. water and ½ c. orange juice). Rinse cranberries under cold water. Put in pot with sugar and liquid. Stir together and bring to boil. You will hear the cranberries start to pop/split open. Lower heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes. Sauce will thicken as it cools.
one of my favorite recipe!
These look delicious. My husband does not eat beef. Would you substitute ground turkey for the beef?
We haven’t tried using ground turkey here instead of the beef, but we think it could work. You could also try using all ground pork instead.
Melissa,
Did you try with turkey ? Half turkey/ half pork? How did they turn out? Thanks!
It tastes so good because it’s healthy, right? 😉
I was wondering if you had a solution for a full large crock pot full of just the meat balls. I would like to make them for Christmas day.
Hi, Koren! We think it’d work to cook these as is and keep them warm in the crockpot. Enjoy!
I love Swedish meatballs, they are our families go-to quick comfort food, but this is because we use the frozen Ikea meatballs and I’d rather make them from scratch. It looks like the beef and pork is quite smooth, was it also put in the food processor?
Hi, Matt! Nope, just the bread / onion / garlic mixture went into the food processor. 😉
Now I’m confused. In the recipe above, nothing goes into the food processor, not even the bread / onion / garlic mixture you mention. Is there even a bread / onion / garlic mixture? It says to soak the bread (slices above are crustless and are intact) with the cream. Garlic powder and onion powder do not need a food processor. Is there an alternate recipe with onions and garlic? Please help?! I really want to make this recipe.
And now I’m seeing comments and questions about this recipe pertaining to pan frying the meatballs. Aren’t these baked?? Where would I see the comments for the baked meatballs (the recipe above), as these are obviously comments for an entirely different recipe?
Hi, Cyndi! We updated this recipe in 2021 to make the whole thing a bit simpler to make. If you’d like to find the previous version of this recipe, click here!
Thank you, Eman! I made the recipe above (the simpler one) and they were the best Swedish meatballs we’ve ever had! I actually tripled the recipe, using six pounds of just beef. They were WONDERFUL – these are not Fred Flintstone’s Swedish meatballs – they are soft, tender little nuggets of joy! And that gravy. There really was the moment where I saw the sauce I was making turn into the smooth silkiness which is the delicious gravy. Even found lingonberry preserves. AND made the cucumber salad*. Thank you for this amazing recipe.
* In the link provided for the salad, it is necessary to sign up in order to get the directions. I used the ingredients (very nice) and found directions elsewhere. For salad, directions do not usually matter, but for Norwegian cucumber salad, they do. Just thought a high quality website such as this would want to know :).
I just stopped to say beef AND sausage are the right way to go. Legit swedish meatballs.
Thanks for sharing these tips, Amanda! Glad to hear you enjoyed the meatballs!
These were easy and very good! I used sour cream in the sauce, instead of heavy cream. My family said they prefer my typical Swedish meatballs more, but this was an easier version.
I was so confused for a moment because I was like “but you already have the perfect swedish meatballs recipe?” and then I realized that I’d gotten so caught up in how awesome the wild rice ones are that I’d legitimately forgotten that meat existed.
Hahaha! So good, right?
Very nice page
nishapalblog.blogspot.com
Made these for Christmas Eve dinner. They turned out very tasty. I ended up adding black pepper and red pepper flakes to the gravy to add a hint of heat. Thanks Lindsay!
Sounds delicious! Glad you enjoyed these, Julia!
I have been making this dish but there is a little difference between how to make your dish and how to make min. i have felt that your way is good. I will also try to make this dish in the same way.
You miss the point of being Swedish by not adding the spices. Living in Minnesota you would think you had the ability to pick up some local Norwegian or Swedish cookbooks to compare the correct ingredients. You may call them meatballs but not ethnic Swedish or Norwegian with out the correct spices.
What are the correct spices, Virginai?
Thyme, Allspice, and Nutmeg.
No no no, I am Swedish, living in Sweden. No nutmeg in our meatballs please! It is just minced beef and minced pork (like 70/30), bread crumbs, milk/cream, union, bouillon, salt and black pepper. Absolutely no nutmeg or any other spices. Allspice is a traditional Christmas spice and is only used in Christmas meatballs.
I am curious about the addition of brown sugar. In Australia we do not use as much sugar in our cooking as Americans. I love Swedish meatballs but have always included allspice and yet you use no spices apart from pepper.
Just personal preference here, but feel free to leave out brown sugar or include other spices if you’d prefer. 😊
I love this recipie!and have it made if several times. I finally thought ahead to freeze half and was wondering if i cook from
Frozen or let the meatballs thaw first?
Great question! I’m thinking you can cook from frozen!
Thyme, Allspice, and Nutmeg. If your Swedish Meatballs don’t contain these things, you aren’t Swedish-Meatballing hard enough.
Well, I am Swedish and here in Sweden 🇸🇪 we never use those spices, and most certainly not together! Allspice is a traditional Christmas spice and is only used in meatballs during Christmas. Read my comment above and THAT is the real Swedish meatballs ingredients!!!
I made my own Swedish meatballs for the first time!!! And gosh it wasn’t difficult at all! Thank you so much for the amazing recipe.
So happy to hear this, Shiela!
Smells heavenly. Everything was going well until I was browning the meatballs. Then they started to fall apart. Do I need more bread in the onion garlic cream mixture?
Thank you!
So sorry to hear this, Shannon. 😕 It’s hard to say why they fell apart without seeing them. You could try a little bit more bread next time to see if that helps. Let us know how this goes for you!
Will try again and update. Can I ask how big the meatballs are supposed to be? The ones I made were big. Approx 2”. Maybe that’s too big?
We’d say ours were a bit smaller than that.
The meatballs in this recipe we’re out of this world!
Awesome!
Thank you.
Glad to hear you enjoyed these, Trina!
My husband and I loved these! These really are the perfect Swedish meatballs. The brown sugar and salt work together very nicely and the gravy with the addition of Worcestershire sauce was wonderful. The acidity of the pickled cucumbers works so well with it all too. Looking forward to adding a little lingonberry jam to the mix next time! Thank you!!
Glad to hear you enjoyed these, Gretchen!