In episode 041 we are making Swedish Meatballs in our Instant Pot. Susie shares a ton of tips and tricks for making Swedish Meatballs and using your Instant Pot. This is a great dinner when paired with Mashed Potatoes and a green veggie.
Transcript
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Susie Weinrich: Welcome on in Y’all, to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. That’s my guarantee. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
All right, I’m calling in all of my die-hard Instant Pot fans. Where are you at? You’re going to want this recipe today we’re making.
One of my favorites, it’s probably one of my favorites, and it is a classic Swedish meatball recipe made in your instant pot. We’re talking a delicious beef meatball that has all of their classic Swedish meatball flavors that are going to be cooked in your instant pot and then coated in this delicious, thick Swedish meatball gravy sauce that you’re going to want to eat with a spoon. I highly recommend you serve these over, my mouth is watering. I highly recommend you serve these over mashed potatoes or a cooked egg noodle with a little garlic butter. Your family’s going to love these.
Tips and Tricks: So let’s talk about a couple of different tips that I want to share about this recipe that you can use in your kitchen all the time.
One of them has to do with ground meat recipes, and we’ve talked about this before, making a panade to make sure that your meatballs stay nice and tender, and juicy. A panade is your best friend. I use a panade anytime I’m making burgers, meatballs, meatloaf, almost anything that is a ground meat recipe where the meat is coming together. Basically, a panade is just a starch and a liquid that gets added to that mixture. In this recipe, we’re using a mixture of Panko breadcrumbs and then egg and milk, and it keeps your meatballs super tender and super perfect. Another great tip, is when you’re forming meatballs, if you have a medium-sized cookie scoop in your kitchen, I highly recommend using it for meatballs as well. Because then you’re going to get a nice uniform-sized meatball, which who cares about their appearance, really? What you want is something that’s going to cook evenly all the way across. So it’s not like you’re going to have a tiny meatball that’s done in two minutes and then you have a huge meatball that’s going to be needing 15 minutes to cook. Everything will be the same size and cooked at the same rate.
Okay, so those are the meatball tips. Let’s talk about some tips with your instant pot. I swear to you that different models of instant pots are more sensitive to burn warnings. I think I have one of the very older models that never gets a burn warning. Because then I will have some people make the same recipe in their newer instant pots and say that they got the burn warning. So I really do think that it is a sensitivity based on your model. This also may be crazy, but from my experience, that’s the case. What I recommend is spraying the bottom of your Instant Pot with a non-stick spray before you start your recipe. You could use this almost for any recipe, especially if you have a very sensitive Instant Pot. The burn notice is basically when something is cooking to the bottom of your Instant Pot and it’s getting little hot pockets and then that gives you the burn warning.
Another tip with your Instant Pot. So I work with the Six Quart Instant Pot Nine and One Duo Plus, I think. I think that’s the model. There are a lot of words. But on my Instant Pot you have sauteed mode, and if you just press it once, it’s just at normal, it’s normal heat. You can press it again and it will go too high. That is going to be like browning wok-style cooking. If you hit it again, it will go to low, which is more of just keeping things warm, and then press it again, it will go back to normal. And that’s just like your sauteing, melting butter, that type of heat. Okay, so those are all of my tips. So let’s get into the Instant Pot Swedish meatball recipe.
Instant Pot Swedish Meatballs Recipe: There are basically three different sections to this recipe. You’re going to be making a meatball, then we’re going to cook it in a liquid in the instant pot, and then we’re going to remove the meatballs and make the gravy with the sauce that it cooked in.
So to get started, let’s make the meatballs. In a large bowl, you are going to want to make your panada. You’re going to stir together one egg that’s lightly beaten. Two tablespoons of milk and then half a cup of panko breadcrumbs. Mix that together and let it sit and soften just for a couple of minutes. Then to the panade, you want to add a quarter cup of yellow or white onions that are finally diced, three garlic cloves that are minced, and one tablespoon of fresh parsley that has been chopped. Then for spices, you’ll add a quarter teaspoon of each – ground allspice and ground nutmeg, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, and one a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. Stir that all together. Then the last thing we add, anytime we’re making meatballs, the last thing we add is the meat.
So add one pound of ground beef, either an 85 or a 90% lean will work really nice here. Then one pound of ground pork. We’re not talking about sausage here, it’s just straight-up ground pork. Then either with clean hands or with a fork, go ahead and mix everything together so that you have a nice meatball mixture.
Like I said in the tip section, this is a great time to use a medium-sized cookie scoop to make sure that all of your meatballs are the same size. So go ahead and form your meatballs into about a ping-pong or golf ball-sized meatball. You should have around 20 to 24 meatballs and you can set those aside for now.
We are going to turn our attention to the Instant Pot. So, like I said before, if you have a sensitive Instant Pot, go ahead and spray the bottom with a little non-stick spray, and then you’re going to pour in three cups of beef broth and two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. Then go ahead and take all of those meatballs and place them down into the instant pot, into the liquid. It’s okay if you need to pile some on top of each other, just do it gently so they don’t smash. Then you’ll close the lid of your instant pot, turn the pressure valve to seal, and cook on high pressure for eight minutes. In the end, you’ll finish with a five-minute natural release. Then at the end of that five minutes, go ahead and turn that pressure valve and let all of the steam escape. Then open up the pot and then with a slotted spoon, you’ll remove all of those meatballs to a separate bowl or a rimmed baking sheet. Because now we’re going to make that delicious Swedish meatball gravy.
Start by turning the saute mode on your instant pot, and you want it just on normal or low. Make sure it’s not on high heat. Then you’re going to whisk in one and a half teaspoons of Dijon mustard, one teaspoon of kosher salt, and one cup of heavy cream. You’ll just let that all heat through together and lightly simmer for about two to three minutes. Now while that simmers, you’re going to make something called, and I hope I say this right, a Beurre Manié, and what that is, is a French word for a mash of flour and butter. So instead of a roux, which is something you make before you add the liquid, a Beurre Manié is something that you add after the liquid has already been heated.
So you take four tablespoons of salted butter that are softened but not melted, and a quarter cup plus one tablespoon of all-purpose flour, and put it together in a little bowl and mash it together with a fork until it all comes together in one paste.
While your sauce is simmering, you’ll take a whisk and whisk that butter-flour mixture into the liquid until it’s completely dissolved and it should thicken up that sauce pretty quickly. Once the sauce is as thick as you would like it, you can turn the saute mode off, add the meatballs, and any juices that collected with the meatballs, back into the pot. Give it a stir to coat the meatballs and it is time to eat.
While all this is going on and you’re making your Swedish meatballs, if you have two instant pots, if you’re a true pothead, then you can absolutely make my Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes to serve these Swedish meatballs on top of. If you only have one instant pot, then I would recommend making my Yukon Gold Mashed Potatoes which are just made on the stovetop, and they make a great base for this dish as well.
Now if you just listen to this entire recipe and you’re like, well, I don’t even have an instant pot. Totally okay. I have a very similar recipe to make these classic Swedish meatballs on the stovetop, and I will link that in the show notes for you.
So when it’s time to serve these, you will just take a plate, make a nice little bed of mashed potatoes, and then serve 3, 4, or 5 meatballs per person, and then spoon extra gravy over top of the potatoes and the meatballs. Then we like to just have a green veggie on the side, something like green beans or roasted asparagus or peas.
That does it for the whole entire recipe. So of course, as always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes so you can make it for dinner when you are ready.
If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you rate and review our show. As a newer show, it just helps us show up for more people on all the podcast platforms.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier.
Recipes Mentioned
- Instant Pot Swedish Meatballs
- Stove Top Swedish Meatballs
- Mashed Potatoes
- Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes
- Roasted Asparagus
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