Vegetarian Swedish Meatballs

justcallmetoni's Note:

The 2005 World Tour is next headed to Scandinavia. Posting this for my vegetarian teammates. Don't want to see them go hungry this week. :-)

• Total Time: 1 hrs 15 mins
• Prep Time: 45 mins
• Cook Time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 8

• 3 slices bread , crumbled
• 3 tablespoons onions , finely chopped
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ¾ cup skim milk or ¾ cup soymilk
• 2 (12 ounce) packages soy crumbles
• 1 ½ tablespoons oil
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (if you are using soymilk or skim milk add another tablespoon)
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1 cup soymilk or 1 cup skim milk or 1 cup fat-free half-and-half
• plus 1 tablespoon powdered milk (with skim only)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl combine bread crumbs, onion, pepper, nutmeg. and burger-style crumbles until well blended. Add all but 2 tablespoons of milk and test if your "meat" will form a ball. If needed, because the mixture is too dry, add the additional milk. Form into 1 1/2 inch balls.
3. In a large skillet over medium heat, brown the 'meat' balls in oil. Remove with a slotted spoon and place in a 2 quart casserole dish.
4. Whisk flour into drippings in skillet; cook until bubbly, stirring constantly. Stir in broth and half-and-half/soy milk/skim milk and continue cooking, stirring, until sauce thickens and boils, about 1 minute. Pour over 'meat' balls .
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Reviews

[KeleKooks]

I love swedish meatballs but I am trying to stay away from eating meat so I decided to try these. It was my very first time ever using/trying the soy crumbles, but I just did not find these meatballs that good. I managed to eat three of them by mixing mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce up with the cut up meatball. Won't make them again though. Sorry, but I have to give my honest opinion about my experience with this recipe.

[BigFatMomma]

Yum! I halved the recipe, and made a change or two. Okay, here's the trick to getting these to stick together. Use an egg or egg sub equivalent, and slightly more bread crumbs. Use fresh--dry just won't cut it. I used dried onions to help absorb some of the excess water. The big change I made was baking the meatballs at 350 for about 15 minutes. I sprayed a foil-lined baking sheet with cooking spray, placed the meatballs on that, and sprayed them with the spray, too, so they wouldn't dry out as easily. They came out perfectly, and stayed together. Thanks, Toni, for a yummy vegetarian alternative.

[Mizzy]

the flavor of this is great, i've never had real swedish meatballs before, so it was a surprise. Luckily i had the previous two reviews as a guide, so i defrosted the crumbles before attempting to form the balls. The meatball still fell apart though, which i was disappointed about. I think maybe the measurements are a litte vague, i did not know what 3 slices of bread meant, since slices come in different shapes and sizes. Either way, I added an egg to help keep the balls together a little better, which helped a bit. I will definitely keep using this recipe in the future, despite the small probs i had. thanks for posting!