Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Slow-Braised Meatballs with Cranberry Sauce and Egg Noodles - Recipe #45 Stirring the Pot

When I heard that Joanne of Eats Well With Others was hosting Regional Recipes this month, I knew I wanted to participate. Joanne is not only a great blogging friend, but a very dedicated and inspiring young lady. In fact, she just ran a marathon! I figured that if Joanne could run a marathon, then I could get my act together to make this recipe for Regional Recipes.

This month, Regional Recipes is focusing on Scandinavian cuisine. This Scandinavian theme was perfect for me because I had been wanting to make this recipe, Tyler's version of Swedish meatballs. This is how Tyler describes these meatballs:

"These aren't your typical goodfella's meatballs. You can look to Sweden for the inspiration here with the sweet cranberry sauce serving as a substitute for the traditional lingonberries."

Tyler's recipe is in Stirring the Pot, but you can also find it here on the food network.

Notes/Results: This was a pretty cumbersome dish to make and involved many dirty pots and pans! Over at Tyler Florence Fridays, Tyler is famous for yielding many dirty dishes :D We still love him though. Tyler directs you to brown the meatballs on the stove top first in a large roasting pan. Well, I didn't have a roasting pan large enough for 3 pounds of meatballs and oodles of braising liquid. I had to cook everything in batches. Then I had to transfer to another roasting pan in order to put it into the oven. Maybe I wasn't with the program yesterday, but there has to be an easier way. Overall, we liked this dish. It was an extremely savory dish and fairly mild in flavor, even with the addition of the cranberry sauce. The meatballs had a soft and delicate texture due to being braised in the cooking liquid. My husband doesn't care much for a "soft" meatball, but he did like these. The soft texture of these meatballs didn't bother me at all. I quite liked them. I enjoyed dunking my meatballs into the cranberry sauce. The cranberry sauce was a beautiful red color and really helped bring the meatballs up another notch. This was a stunning dish when it was plated with the saucy meatballs, red cranberry sauce, and pretty green dill sprinkled around the plate. It would be great at the holidays!! A very tasty dish indeed, especially if you can get around all those dirty dishes :D

I will also be submitting this to Tyler Florence Fridays this week! Don't forget to head on over to TFF this weekend to see what everyone else is cooked up throughout the week. There are still two weeks left to participate with TFF!!

11 comments:

  1. Isnt it funny, on the tv shows the chefs never have to worry about all the dishwashing that needs to be done? You know some pleb is probably cleaning up some major messes LOL.

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  2. Hmmmm Tyler must not do his own dishes :) The dish sounds delicious though :)

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  3. These sound yummy with cranberry sauce! I made Swedish meatballs for this too.

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  4. I feel so dumb. Just went back and re-read your comment! Glad you were able to make them!

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  5. Tons of dishes? Tyler? Yes, I think you nailed it right on.

    With that said, I am intrigued by the addition of cranberry sauce to meatballs.

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  6. oh i love the cranberry, very festive for this time of year. the meatballs look wonderful!

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  7. Mmm, that looks so hearty and delicious!

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  8. Yum! They look great with that cranberry sauce--a perfect choice.

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  9. Yummm! I have noticed that Tyler's recipes have a lot of ingredients. I'm trying to pick recipes from him that don't require a lot of prep work...lol. Regardless though, the one's I have made have been really good and tasty :) I love the meatballs in this one. Total comfort food.

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  10. These look great, but I'm with you on the many dirty dishes being a bummer. I hate them so much I'll rarely make certain dishes because of it.

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  11. I've meant to make these, several times, but haven't had the chance yet. Thanks for the heads up on the dishes, though I'm not surprised.

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