This one of my favourite recipes from back home, it’s actually a recipe that I learned from my father, and then perfected. But don’t tell him that 😉 It’s also one of my wives favourite dishes.

First of all, what will we need? These are in no way exact measurements, I usually just eyeball it, this time I measured the quantities that looked right to me.

– about 1 kg (2 lbs.) of meat, I usually take a mix of half pork shoulder and half beef

– 300 g of finely chopped onion (about 2 cups)

– 130 g (5 oz) of carrot (grated)

– 60 g (2 oz) parsley root (grated)

– 40 g (1,5 oz) celery root (grated)

– optional one bell pepper finely chopped

– 2 teaspoons of dry savory (if you don’t have that you can replace it with thyme)

– a big bundle of fresh dill finely chopped (about 100  g / 3,5 oz)

– a big bundle of green parsley also finely chopped (about 100  g / 3,5 oz)

– 40 g crushed garlic (1,5 oz)

– ½ teaspoon smoked paprika powder if you have it (the Spanish one is best)

– ½ teaspoon cayenne powder, or more if you want a bit of spiciness

– salt to taste

– one large egg, or 2 small ones to tie everything together

– some people including my father add a couple of slices of dried bread soaked in water or milk because it’s supposed to make the meatballs lighter, I personally don’t see the need for that, and because they have enough vegetables mixed in, they come out pretty light anyway

We take a pan or a skillet and put a couple of tablespoons of oil to heat up in it. We then take about half of our onions and put them in and cook them for a couple of minutes until they get soft, we don’t want to caramelize them here.

If we are using bell pepper this is the point to add it in. Then we add the root vegetables and mix them in and let them also soften (about 2 minutes on medium heat).

We don’t want these vegetables cooked, we just want to take a bit of the raw edge off.  

We take the mixture and let it cool.

After this we basically take all the ingredients and mix them together in a big bowl, we want to mix them for a couple of minutes so that the mix starts to come together (it’s the opposite of making hamburgers where you can over-mix, here you want to mix the meat thoroughly so that it becomes sticky, so you can’t over-mix this).

I like to leave it covered for a couple of hours in the fridge, so that the taste can develop. After 2 or 3 hours we take the mix and form small round balls (about 5 cm / 2 inches in diameter) and fry them in oil until they are nicely browned and cooked through, you want a medium heat on the oil so that you don’t burn the surface and have an raw canter.

I usually take one meatball and fry it up fist, so that I can adjust for seasoning if needed. When taking them out, let them rest and for about 15 or 20 minutes and enjoy.

A nice pale lager and a cabbage salad or coleslaw go excellent with these meatballs.

And if you are a bit more careful then me you may also manage to take a photo of the finished meatballs (I forgot, and by the time I realized it..they were all gone, so I’ll try to take a nice photo next time).