Swedish Meatballs with Pasta

I often whipped up pasta meal for my family as my big kids loved cheesy pasta. I usually used store bought ready pasta sauce ... quick, easy and hassle free ^-^! Most of the time, I'll see what ingredients I could salvage in the fridge to mix and match an edible pasta meal .. hee .. hee !

Previously I had also tried out a few "new" pasta recipes added to my pasta cooking list :
Pasta with pumpkin sage brown butter
Baked Pasta with cooking cream and thyme
Baked chicken teriyaki pasta

We liked the famous Swedish Meatballs at IKEA. Sometimes we would travel to IKEA just to have a plate of its signature meatballs and some fried chicken wings ... without doing any furniture shopping.

So, for our weekend lunch, what has the Swedish meatballs got to do with pasta ? Aiyoh! I've made "the taste almost like" the famous Swedish meatballs with pasta instead of serving with potatoes and lingonberry jelly ... hee .. hee!

Recipe adapted mostly from: Simply Recipes swedish_meatballs

Below my slightly modified version as I've omitted certain spices, used cooking cream instead of sour cream as I forgotten to buy it, used panko breadcrumbs, reduced the recipe quantity served for 2.

Swedish Meatballs with Pasta
Yield about 25 meatballs
INGREDIENTS
Meatballs:
1 Tbsp butter
50g of large yellow or white onion, peeled, grated

50ml fresh milk
30g panko breadcrumbs
1 small egg
120g ground pork
300g ground beef
1 teaspoon  salt
1/2 teaspoon all spice powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Sauce:
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp plain flour
400ml beef stock
100 ml cooking cream
Pinch of Salt

Pasta:
Vegeroni Pasta Shapes about 70g

METHOD
1) Melt the butter (1 Tbsp) in a sauté pan on medium-high heat. Stir in the grated onion and cook until translucent and softened, 3-4 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2) Place panko breadcrumbs in a bowl and mix with the milk. Let sit for 10 minutes for the bread to absorb all of the milk.

3) Stir the cooled onions into the milk bread mixture. Add the egg, ground pork and beef, salt and pepper. Use your (clean) hands to mix everything together until well combined.

4) Use your hands to form the meatballs about an inch-thick and place them on a plate or sheet pan.

5) Heat 2 Tbsp of butter in a large sauté pan on medium heat. When the butter is melted and foamy, start adding some meatballs to the pan. Working in batches as to not crowd the pan, slowly brown the meatballs on all sides. Handle the meatballs gently so they do not break apart as you turn them.

Sizzling browning meatballs in pan

6) Once the meatballs have browned on all sides (about 3 - 4 mins), remove them from the pan and set aside. You do not need to cook the meatballs all the way through at this point, you only need to brown them. You'll finish cooking the meatballs in the sauce later.

Once you have removed the meatballs from the pan, keep the remaining butter in the pan. You'll use this butter to make the sauce. If the butter in the pan has become burnt through the browning of the meatballs, remove and discard it, and add 2 Tbsp of fresh butter to the pan. Otherwise use the existing pan butter. Add more if needed.

Bought a pack of beef stock

7) To make the sauce, first make the *roux.
*Roux (pronounced "roo") is a mixture of fat (especially butter) and flour used in making sauces.
Heat the butter in the pan on medium heat. Slowly whisk in the flour. Stir until smooth. Continue to stir, allowing the flour mixture to cook, several minutes, until the roux is the color of coffee-with-cream.

When the roux has cooked to a lovely shade of light brown, slowly add the stock to the roux, stirring as you add the stock. The stock will sputter at first and the roux may seize up, but keep adding the stock slowly and keep stirring. Eventually the sauce will loosen and become silky. Add in the cooking cream.

8) Return the meatballs to the pan with the sauce and lower the heat to low. Cover the pot and cook on low heat for 8 - 10 minutes. You may need to work in batches.

9) Transfer the meatballs to a serving dish to serve or together with pasta.

In a separate cooking pan, boil some water and cook the pasta according to the packaging instructions. Drain the water and served with meatballs and sauce immediately.

My girl commented these meatballs tasted like IKEA's signature meatballs ^-^! She liked them served with pasta too !

Happy cooking & hope you have a great weekend too ^-^!

I'm linking this post to event Little Thumbs Up January 2015 : Pasta / Noodles hosted AnneRegalado - My Bare Cupboard & organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Doreen of My Little Favourite DIY .