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This rich and creamy Swedish meatball sauce recipe is one you must add to your repertoire. It comes together in about 10 minutes and will be the perfect accompaniment to Swedish meatballs.
Swedish Meatball Sauce
Traditionally Swedish meatballs are served with lingonberry jam but here in the U.S., we enjoy them swimming in a rich brown gravy.
There are several different variations of the gravy also. Some use cream of mushroom while others use sour cream. Some call for sherry or cooking wine.
We settled on a simpler recipe that you can modify to your liking. That’s a theme we have around here – Make it simple and give you variations to try.
We like this version best because it’s flavorful but uses ingredients that are simple and that are probably already in your kitchen.
So whip up your favorite Swedish meatball recipe and drown them in our sauce!
Learn all about how to make a roux sauce and use it for all my gravy recipes, my Hawaiian brown gravy and country white gravy.
Swedish Meatball Sauce Ingredients:
To make this Swedish meatball sauce recipe, you will need:
Butter: Use unsalted butter because the beef broth is pretty salty.
Flour: Combine with the butter to make a roux that will thicken the sauce.
Beef broth: You can use low sodium if you wish.
Brown Sugar: Just a couple of teaspoons.
Heavy cream:We like to use all heavy cream instead of sour cream.
Blackpepper:Freshly cracked is best but use what you have.
How to Make Swedish Meatball Sauce:
To make this homemade Swedish meatball sauce, simply…
Make a roux.Whisk flour into melted butter and cook until it turns light brown.
Add broth and brown sugar. Slowly whisk in the broth and brown sugar then simmer for about 5 minutes.
Stir in the cream and black pepper. Slowly stir in the cream and pepper then simmer for another 5 minutes.
Use immediately or let cool and refrigerate for later use.
Swedish Meatball Sauce Variations:
There are quite a few ways you can doctor up this Swedish meatball sauce recipe.
Add Worcestershire sauce: 2 teaspoons will make the sauce more flavorful
Add soy sauce: 2 teaspoons will add more flavor
Add dijon mustard: 1 teaspoon will spice up the sauce nicely
Add coconut aminos: 2 teaspoons will enhance the sauce the way Worcestershire sauce does
Add sour cream: Add ½ cup in addition to the heavy cream or use 1 cup of sour cream in place of the heavy cream.
Add shallots: Sauté a minced shallot before making the roux.
Add cream of mushroom soup: Whiskin in a can of cream of mushroom in step 3.
How to Store Swedish Meatball Sauce:
Refrigerate– Cool for 1 hour then transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 4 days. Reheat over low heat and add a little cream if the sauce is too thick.
Freeze– Cool for 2 hours then transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator. Reheat over low heat and add a little cream if the sauce is too thick.
You might also want to try our grape jelly chili sauce for meatballs, onion gravy, chicken marsala sauce, butter chicken sauce, andcopycat mumbo sauce. Enjoy!
This rich and creamy Swedish meatball sauce recipe is one you must add to your repertoire. It comes together in about 10 minutes and will be the perfect accompaniment to Swedish meatballs.
Sauce Fanatic
Prep Time 5 minutesminutes
Cook Time 15 minutesminutes
Total Time 20 minutesminutes
Serving Size 6
Ingredients
2tablespoonsunsalted butter
2tablespoonsall-purpose flour
1 ¾cupsbeef broth
2teaspoonslight brown sugar
½cupheavy cream
½teaspoonblack pepper
Instructions
Melt butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat.
When the foaming subsides, add the flour and cook, whisking constantly, until flour turns light brown, about 30 seconds.
Slowly whisk in the broth followed by the brown sugar and bring to simmer.
Reduce the heat to medium and cook until the sauce is reduced to 1 cup, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the cream and pepper then return to a simmer and let cook for 5 minutes.
The sauce for Swedish Meatballs is a creamy gravy that is made with butter, beef broth/stock, thickened with flour and made creamy with cream. But the most important flavour for the a really good creamy gravy is the pan drippings after searing the meatballs.
To make the tomato sauce, heat the olive oil in a pan and gently fry the shallots, garlic and chilli for 2-3 minutes until soft. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine, then add the tinned tomatoes along with the basil, oregano and some seasoning.
How to Thicken Swedish Meatball Sauce. The all-purpose flour in this recipe should do the trick to thicken your Swedish meatball sauce to the right consistency. But if it doesn't, you can add a cornstarch slurry (1 tablespoon of cornstarch to 2 tablespoons of water) to thicken it up.
Flavored with nutmeg and cardamom, these little beef-and-pork meatballs are best served with a Swedish meatball sauce—a rich roux-based and beef stock gravy, spiked with sour cream and a little lingonberry jelly.
The Ikea website lists the ingredients of their meatballs (which Ikea calls ALLEMANSRÄTTEN), and the rundown is surprisingly simple: Meat (a combination of pork and beef, for texture, flavor, and juiciness), onion, breadcrumbs, egg, water, salt, and pepper.
Iconic Swedish cream sauce: Melt 40g of butter in a pan. Whisk in 40g of plain flour and stir for 2 mins. Add 300ml of bouillon (or consommé) and continue to stir. Add 150ml double cream, 2 tsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of (Dijon) mustard.
Because meat shrinks when cooked, mince proteins are likely to separate and crumble unless bound together. Whether it's breadcrumbs or egg (or both), or simply salt, binding the mince is a crucial step in maintaining the softness of your meatballs while preventing them from falling apart.
The longer the simmer, the more tender and succulent the meatballs become. 3. Concentration of Flavors: Simmering at a low temperature for an extended period also encourages the sauce to reduce and thicken.
You can brown the uncooked meatballs in a sauté pan before adding them to the sauce. You can brown them in the oven. Or you can skip browning altogether and put the raw meatballs straight into the sauce to cook.
Don't overcook your meatballs! Most recipes instruct us to bake the meatballs until they are completely cooked. Next, we are to let them simmer away in some kind of sauce for hours. It should be no surprise that your meatball is going to be completely overcooked and dry by the time you eat it.
Italian Meatballs vs Swedish Meatballs: Swedish Meatballs are typically smaller in size than Italian meatballs and they are usually made with a 50-50 ratio of ground pork and ground beef.
Step 5: Transfer the meatballs to the sauce and allow them to simmer for at least 1 hour. I usually allow them to simmer for up to 3 hours to really suck in all the flavor.
American meatballs are the biggest in size, with Italian and Swedish meatballs following on the depth chart. Italian meatballs call for seasonings like grated parmesan and oregano, while Swedish ones use seasonings like nutmeg and allspice. While it doesn't sound like a huge distinction, you'll notice it in the taste!
Replace heavy or thickened cream with reduced fat cream if you wish to reduce calories. If using half and half, be careful not to bring to a boil or it may separate. Garlic is not usually found in Swedish meatballs, but I prefer it and have included it for this reason. Omit if you don't want to include it.
In their most traditional form Swedish meatballs ('köttbullar') are made of ground pork and beef, cream, egg and onion, and are served with creamy mashed potatoes, a thick, brown gravy, lingonberry jam and pickled cucumber. The latter adds bitter sweetness as a perfect complement to the savoury meatball.
Form the meat mix into 2 inch diameter meatballs, rolling them lightly between your palms to form them, then place them about an inch apart on the cookie sheets. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the outside of each ball is a nice light brown, but the center is still a rosy pink.
Italian meatballs are famously served in a bright, tangy, often chunky tomato sauce (marinara to the layman) whereas Swedish meatballs are cooked in a rich, roux-based, creamy gravy made with beef or bone broth and sour cream (or sometimes heavy cream).
Meatballs are not a sauce, they are balls of meat.A sauce has to be runny, or at least flowing.Done correctly, a bolognese sauce isn't particularly meaty. The meat is meant to be finely ground and incorporated into a standard spaghetti sauce, and the meat so fine it should stick onto the pasta in little specks.
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