Swedish Meatballs in Review

Swedish Meatballs in Review:


9/12/10

Yesterday’s Swedish meatball recipe was based on an Alton Brown recipe from the Food Network. Three things set it apart: condensed cream of mushroom soup never entered the equation; it was nicely spiced; and the incorporation of milk soaked fresh bread crumbs bordered on genius.

The bread and milk made them light and moist. As for the spices, I cut the amount of salt and pepper in half -- a good move. Now we get to the condensed cream of mushroom soup issue. While I use it in a few recipes, too often it’s a copout, overly salted substitute for a real cream sauce.

A real cream sauce is a simple thing to make and can be made as quickly as preparing the sauce from canned soup. The key is real cream. Consider this sauce for poached scallops. Without going into great detail, after the scallops a poached in bit of dry white wine and set aside, heavy cream is simply added to the poaching liquid, brought to a boil and reduced until it will coat the back of a spoon. It is then simply seasoned to taste with salt, pepper and basil to taste. Nothing can be more simple.

The beauty of heavy cream is that is can be boiled over direct heat without scorching. It can be additionally thickened to an almost paste like consistency with either a roux or whitewash thinned to a desired consistency with either milk or stock. Forget about the jars of Alfredo sauce and the powdered sauces for scalloped potatoes.

In retrospect this is the approach I would have taken for the Swedish meatball sauce. I did not follow Alton Brown’s recipe to the “T”. He called for mixing the flower into the pan drippings and whisking the flour in to create a roux then adding the beef broth and cream to finish the sauce. While my variation was alright, I wasn’t thrilled with it. Next time I will begin with cream to create the sauce.