Week 27 - Retro Recipes

What does retro mean to you? Merriam-Webster defines it in relation to styles of the past, suggesting any time in the past, but to me, retro feels like the '50s, '60s, '70s, maybe the '80s. For the Week 27 challenge, retro recipes, I had no idea what would qualify for the various decades, so I combed a bunch of lists until I found something I wanted to make - Swedish meatballs! Apparently, Swedish meatballs were popular in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, although I also remember them from my childhood in the '80s and '90s. Not just at Ikea, but I remember Costco selling bags of frozen Swedish meatballs with sauce that would make for tasty holiday and party appetizers. That seemed to fit the definition of retro, and I decided to try that out by modifying a recipe for Swedish meatballs from Damn Delicious.

The main changes I planned to make for our meatballs were to use ground turkey instead of beef and pork and to substitute the egg yolks with flax eggs, so our modified list of ingredients for egg-free Swedish meatballs was:

- olive oil, about 2 tbsp divided ($0.40)
- 1/2 onion ($0.40)
- 1-1/3 lbs ground turkey ($4)
- 1/2 cup panko ($0.20)
- 2 flax eggs ($0.16)
- about 1/4-1/2 tsp ground allspice ($0.05)
- about 1/4-1/2 tsp ground nutmeg ($0.05)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- 4 tbsp butter ($0.36)
- 1/3 cup flour ($0.08)
- 1.5 cups chicken broth ($0.75)
- 2/3 cup sour cream ($1)

The total for the meatball portion of dinner was approximately $7.48, and we made this alongside mashed potatoes (probably about $2) and some mixed vegetables (probably another $2) for an approximate total of $11.48. Not bad for a filling dinner.

The steps for our egg-free Swedish meatballs were:

1. Prep - chop onion. Make 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flaxseed + 6 tbsp water).

2. Heat olive oil (about 1 tbsp) in skillet, and cook onion until softened.

3. In a large bowl, combine the turkey, panko, flax eggs, allspice, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and cooked onion. Combine well (tried using a spoon but hands always work better for me), and then roll into meatballs.

4. Preheat oven to 250 degrees, and line a baking pan with parchment paper.

5. Heat olive oil (about 1 tbsp) in the same skillet, and cook the meatballs in 2 batches until browned. Once each batch is browned, put into the parchment-lined baking pan in the oven until ready for step 9.

6. In the same skillet the meatballs were cooked in, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until browned.

7. Add the chicken broth gradually, stirring the entire time. Keep stirring and cooking the sauce until it becomes thick. Scrape any of the browned bits from the meatballs off the pan, and combine into the sauce as you stir.

8. Add the sour cream, and continue stirring the sauce until well-combined. Add salt and pepper, and season to taste.

9. Add the meatballs back into the pan, coat well with the sauce, and cook for about 10 minutes.

10. Serve meatballs covered in sauce with sides of your choice. (Ours were mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, so I was running those two pots of food alongside the meatballs which was more chaotic than I had anticipated and not really sure why. It was our first time having mashed potatoes with oat milk, and they were pretty good.)

These were tasty meatballs, and the sauce was creamy and delicious. It didn't taste exactly like Ikea for us, but we did use turkey instead of beef/pork and made some other changes, so we weren't expecting it to. I'm curious how this would taste with Impossible Burger in place of the meat, but given that B wasn't a huge fan of it in turkey form and hasn't loved Impossible Burger in the past (really thinking this kid might be mostly pescatarian or vegetarian, which is just fine with me, given that I didn't eat red meat for ~15 years), we may wait a little bit before trying that. I did like this recipe, and I love meatballs, but if we want a super quick Swedish meatball night, still might just buy the frozen (chicken or veggie) ones with cream sauce from Ikea.