Frickadeller

Today I’m going to share with you a traditional Danish recipe for fricka-deller. Fricka-deller (pro-nounced “frick-a-dillah”) are Danish meatballs. They are traditional made with ground pork and veal, eggs, onions, breadcrumbs or flour, salt and pepper. I was talking with a native Dane about the difference between Swedish meatballs and Danish frickadeller and was basically told that Swedish meatballs are round and cooked with a sauce while Danish frickadeller are flattened a bit and usually served with potatoes and some other sidedish.

They sell a pound of “Pork-Calf” at the grocery store very inexpensively which is partly what led us to try making frickadeller in the first place. It is mixed 75 percent pork/25 percent veal and the meat is incredibly tender.

Michael has a Danish friend who passed along this basic frickadeller recipe to him:

Frickadeller
1lb minced pork and veal
1 egg
2 tbsp flour
1.5 tsp salt
pepper

Mix everything together and leave it in fridge to 'set' for at least 30 minutes.

Form into small balls and flatten slightly with a spatula. Cook in butter on medium-low heat until done. The goal with the lower heat is to keep the balls from burning even the slightest bit.

You can spice these in anyway you like. I like putting minced garlic and a little red pepper into the frickadeller mix before forming it into balls. We like to serve them with pasta dressed with garlic, red pepper flakes and parmesan.

Back in the states we made these with ground beef.