Danish Meatballs (Frikadeller)
Frikadeller … a complete meal © kvalifood.com
Recipe with video - The classic Danish dish that has roots in Italy and Germany. It is almost unknown outside Denmark, but here at home we cannot live without it.
I am not entirely sure where my recipe comes from. It gets lost somewhere in my childhood and years of experimenting.
The only slightly unusual thing about my recipe is that I use a stock cube. Some recipes recommend using bouillon/stock, others use milk, and others just water. I tried making it with stock from a cube. That was good too. But I found that the combination of milk and a cube gave the best result.
Ingredients
- 500 g minced pork
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 1-2 dl milk
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 stock cube or 1 tbsp chicken powder (optional)
- 1/2 tbsp salt (only 1 tsp if you use a stock cube)
- 1 pinch of pepper
- tun set - almost sacrilege, but boosts the flavor by 50%
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
Method
Mixing
If you are using a stock cube, warm the milk in your pan and dissolve the cube in it.
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Including the milk and cube.
Add the flour last so it does not clump.
Frying
Pour oil into a hot pan. Add butter. When the butter has stopped foaming and starts to smell fried, it is ready for cooking.
Some people say that browned butter smells like nuts. I cannot smell that. To me it is more in the direction of caramel.
Start at the “12 o’clock” position on the pan so you can remember which meatballs went in first.
Use a tablespoon. Dip it in the frying fat so the meat mixture releases easily.
Take a heaped spoonful of mince. Shape it with the spoon and your hand into a meatball.
Place it in the pan and press it a little flatter. Make sure they are all the same thickness so they take the same amount of time to fry.
Add the meatballs from the edge of the pan and work your way in a spiral towards the centre.
Fry on one side until the meat has turned lighter about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way up the meatball.
Turn and fry on the other side until done.
When they are nicely golden/brown and firm when pressed, they are ready.
Pan temperature
If your meatballs are “boiling” in the liquid that runs out of them, your pan is too cold.
If they burn on the outside before they are cooked through in the middle, it is too hot.