RecipeTin Eats Dinner Recipe And Review!
Bernadette’s terrific “Cookbook Confidential” review series is focusing on RecipeTin Eats Dinner by Nagi Maehashi, which was Jo Tracey’s suggestion.
As Nagi writes on her blog: “I’m Nagi, and RecipeTin Eats is my corner of the internet! I create recipes, take photos of them, write them up and make recipe tutorial videos. Oh, and I have a food bank – RecipeTimMeals – and I wrote a cookbook too!”
I was eager to find out more, and I discovered a great recipe to try.
This is a photo of the Swedish Meatballs that Nagi made, and I am going to try and replicate them!
As Nagi says: “they are meatballs smothered in a beautiful creamy gravy, with a hint of spicing that Swedish Meatballs are known for. Made extra soft and extra tasty by soaking fresh bread in grated onion – tried and tested technique used in my most of my meatball recipes, highly approved by readers!”
Here we go!
Here are the ingredients for the Meatballs:
2 slices white sandwich bread , crusts removed, chopped into small cubes
1 small onion
10 oz ground beef (mince)
10 oz ground pork (mince)
1 egg
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg , preferably freshly grated
1/4 tsp All Spice powder
1/4 tsp black pepper and 3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
Get started by grating the onion using a standard box grater – here’s a Quick Look:
Scrape the onion and juices into a bowl. Add bread and mix well – onion juice should make the bread soggy (if not, add a tiny splash of milk).
Mix all of the remaining Meatball ingredients together except for the oil. Have some fun doing it like I did!
Form the meatballs into golf ball size and set aside.
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add half the meatballs and brown all over – about 3 minutes. Remove onto plate, then brown the remaining batch.
Next, let’s make the gravy. Here are the ingredients:
3 tbsp butter , unsalted
2 tbsp flour
2 cups beef broth/stock (salt reduced)
1/2 cup heavy cream or sour cream, which I used for a bit more tang
Add butter into skillet and melt. Add flour and stir. Cook for 1 minute.
While mixing, add about 1/4 of the beef broth – it will thicken quickly. Then gradually add remaining beef broth, stirring as you go.
When the liquid is simmering, add meatballs back into the pan, and rock and roll them for about 8-10 minutes like so:
Turn up heat slightly to keep it at a rapid simmer. Cook for 8 – 10 minutes or until the liquid thickens into a thin gravy, stirring occasionally.
Add cream or sour cream as I did, simmer for a further 2 minutes then remove from stove.
I served mine over Orzo, and the gravy was rich and just thick enough to coat the meatballs and the Orzo. I could have added broccoli to this dish, but chose to just top with diced green onion and serve!
Here is entire process:
My review: this was a fairly easy dish to make and it tasted delicious. Everyday cooking with some new ingredients are what make me want to own a cookbook, and I love Nagi’s passion for food, which makes me want to cook from this cookbook again and again!
Thanks Bernadette for sharing this as part of the cookbook confidential review series – everyone, go to her website to see all the recipes and reviews!
Yes, I make a lot of meatballs, like these:
I replicated the famous Rao’s meatballs…how did I do?
See the recipe here!
“Bite! Eat! Repeat!” is filled with recipes and so much more – please sign up to follow along here:
https://biteeatrepeat.com
If you enjoy this recipe, please share on social media – thank you!
Categories: Bite Eat Swallow, Bite! Eat! Repeat!, Chef memoirs, Cookbooks, Eat This!, Food, Food Pictures, Recipes, Wacky Food, World's Wildest Food
Bite! Eat! Repeat! 
They look good!
I like the idea of the grated onion. My mom used to that in her meatballs, the garlic too, back in the day, but I had forgotten that part! She didn’t like chunky things in her meatballs.
Thanks for that! That was the first time I’d ever done it!
Come to think of it, my youngest brother (the baby of the fam) hated onions, so I suspect mom was trying to hide them!
HA! Thanks for sharing that – made me laugh! I will say that while I love raw onion, grating them certainly brought out their power!
It does with the garlic too, although I’m sure you’ve already discovered that!
Yes, I have friends who make fun of my inability to adhere to a single rice that calls for a single garlic clove..I mean, C’MON!
Oh I agree! One garlic clove? Give me six!
Terrific review, John.
Thanks it was fun to make!
Grated onion makes so much difference I think the meatballs hold together better…good idea to use orzo, John 🙂
I’m a meatball fan, and I do make them sometimes. I would add the finely chopped onion and garlic. I also buy them ready-made on occasion to save time, and they are usually very tasty too.
Best wishes, Pete.
Pete, they have become my meat “go to” – here in the US, you can’t even order a steak that isn’t 14 oz. at least in a restaurant and it has burnt me out – we mostly eat salmon and swordfish anyway on a daily basis –
mwah! yum
Hi John, I read this today and thought your contribution sounded delicious. I will try this recipe.