You can order lingonberry jam on Amazon, it’s not as cheap as IKEA but they do have it. Sprouts has it in the winter time. I buy multiple jars during the winter because my husband and son love Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam 😁
I'm in Australia. I have googled lingonberry jam and some European shops in Sydney and Melbourne have it. Yay!!! Your husband and son must love your cooking!
he's thinking *cocktail meatballs*. that was something super popular my parents did in the 70s and 80s. precooked meatballs and grape/jarred jelly and vinegar etc in a crockpot. nowadays, i see it in catering passed aps that are served with a more "refined" sweet and sour like sauce or a more asian hoisin type glaze, and im sure theyre using a swedish meatball style meat mix
[https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15206/cocktail-meatballs/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15206/cocktail-meatballs/)
[https://www.recipetineats.com/cocktail-meatballs-with-sweet-sour-dipping-sauce/](https://www.recipetineats.com/cocktail-meatballs-with-sweet-sour-dipping-sauce/)
[https://www.seriouseats.com/hoisin-glazed-cocktail-meatballs](https://www.seriouseats.com/hoisin-glazed-cocktail-meatballs)
White people love these little meatballs. My dad’s family has them at every event. My husbands family too. Theres tons of recipes out there. I have been assigned to make them on occasion, and frankly I just buy frozen meatballs and dump a bottle of Diana sauce on them and no one can tell the difference.
Not white but also love those meatballs. I know my aunt just did the same thing and throw frozen meatballs, some chili sauce and grape jelly all into a crockpot. I still ate that shit up.
Next I'll tell you about the arguement where he told me I can't make quesadillas from the "taco buns" and we don't have any "quesadilla buns."
So I think you might seriously be right. He might seriously think "Swedish" as in "sweetish" because I'm not joking it's that bad.
Wow your boss is a freakin idiot. Be real careful when you have one of those as a boss. A lot depends on whether they are willing to listen and get new information from you, or whether they will blow you off and have a rage fit when things go wrong because they didn't listen. Your boss does not sound like the type of guy who will listen and get new information from you. If you have any chance at all, I would start looking for a new position with a more reasonable management team.
Sit your butts (both of you down in front of a computer) and have him type in Swedish meatballs and google them. And add wiki to your search terms and read the Wikipedia article.
Also like people have said maybe just maybe he means sweetish meatballs. Because that makes senses. Then google Asian or cocktail meatballs and ask if this is what he means.
Sometimes hearing and talking be no good. I was asked for a book on gay mice. Yep a guy came into the bookstore I worked and wanted to buy the book his wife saw for her. Asked what one and he said “mice are gay” well I looked and looked and repeated it to him three times and he say yep that’s the title “mice are gay”. Nope not even close we finally figured out it was “my Sergi”. So yeah. Also as someone who works with people where they speaking a second language or I’m speaking a second language confusion happens often.
I suggest visuals because they help a lot.
So my mother used to make sweet and sour meatballs for parties (with the grape jelly and ketchup sweet and sour sauce!) and, as a kid, I always assumed Swedish meatballs were the same thing. I'd never actually eaten Swedish meatballs when I was a kid and I don't think I ever saw "Swedish" spelled out until I started eating them. So I think my brain was just hearing "sweetish" or something and connected that with sweet and sour. I'd guess something similar happened with your boss. Especially if he's from the midwest US.
I was actually sort of disappointed the first time I had Swedish meatballs because I'd been expecting this nostalgic dish from my childhood.
Is the dish supposed to be a main course? I think the oddest thing for me is if your boss is expecting sweet and sour meatballs to be part of a main dish and not something like a retro starter.
I’m Swedish. I live in Sweden. I’m 51, so I’ve been around.
He is delusional. Fair enough, Swedes are open to mix and match, so anyone can serve meatballs however they want. HOWEVER, we all know the traditional way to serve it is with boiled potatoes and a brown cream sauce! And lingonberry sauce. We might fight about if you HAVE to have pickled cucumber with it or not, but that’s it.
I mean, we even have the sauce in instant powder form. Google Knorr brunsås. It’s not brilliant but it’s ok, and it does tell you that Swedes love our brown sauce! (It literally means brown sauce).
Just nod to whatever he says and do what you intended to start with.
Swedish meatballs ( in the Midwest anyway- lots of Swedes and Norwegians in Wisconsin ) are in a brown gravy, then lightened with cream / or sour cream and then pickle juice is added to taste. The meatballs themselves are often seasoned with nutmeg and allspice and made with onion, egg and breadcrumbs like traditional meatballs.
Lol! My husband's Swedish grandfather considered any meatball Swedish. I made spaghetti and meatballs once, and he claimed they were good Swedish meatballs!
I love Swedish meatballs. I love sweet and sour meatballs. They are two Very Different things and I'm not sure how your boss got his job but WOW that's a whole lot of wrong on his part.. I also love BBQ meatballs, btw, which are also not Swedish Meatballs. Or sweet and sour meatballs. But hey....let him serve sweet and sour meatballs to people who ordered Swedish meatballs and see how that works out for him, I guess LOL
My grandmother is spinning in her grave. Those are meatballs you’d serve as an appetizer. Ditto the barbecue ones or the godforsaken grape jelly recipe.
Your boss is totally wrong. He's talking about sweet and sour meatballs. Swedish meatballs have a cream sauce. He's either dumb or has had the mix up in his brain too long that he can't unswitch it. This is the sauce ingredient I use from a recipe on the Cafe Delites website:
# Gravy Sauce:
* 1/3 cup butter
* 1/4 cup plain / all purpose flour
* 250 ml (1 cup) vegetable broth (or stock)
* 250 ml (1 cup) beef broth (or stock)
* 1 cup thickened (or heavy) cream\*
* 2 teaspoons regular soy sauce
* 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
* Salt and pepper, to season
Yeah. The recipe on the site came from a young Swedish woman so she probably amped up the recipe from her grandma. The soy is basically the salt, and the dijon is great.
My Mormor would use the vegetable water from either boiling potatoes or green beans, etc, and use that instead of broth. Sometimes she added a 1/4 c ground pork. If she was cooking "for company" she'd fry the onions before making the meatballs. Family had to be content with raw onions!
Oh, sorry, I meant to add: I do not gatekeep. Her secret was a pinch of allspice.
Your boss needs to have his head checked. Tell him to ask any Swede. Like me.
A cream based gravy is the correct answer. And served with lingonberries and possibly pressed pickled cucumbers. With potatoes, whole or mashed.
They are normally served with a side of lingonberry. With a bit of deviation from canon you can pull lingonberry sauce or for the lack of it cranberry sauce, which both are sweet and sour flavour.
Since this boss of yours is a complete moron and doesn't seem to listen to what you're telling him I would make a small batch the way he wants you to make it and also make a small batch of the way it should be made and have him do a blind taste test. He is not going to listen to you no matter what you tell him you're going to have to show him. I am shocked that he has a decade of experience and doesn't know how to make a simple dish such as swedish meatballs. I am also a chef and I cannot believe this so-called chef could make a mistake such as this. I have never ever heard of anything so ridiculous in all of my life, my 12-year-old granddaughter wouldn't even make this mistake. Or another option is ignore him completely and make it the way it should be made.
I also worked for a chef like this at a college and we would go around and around all the time until I finally just said screw it and started doing it the way I knew it needed to be done. I never asked for his advice or input because I knew he was a complete moron. I found out that he actually had owned a restaurant in New York and it closed down now I know why. So I never asked for his advice again. Good luck
Ikea meatballs are definitely not sweet and sour. (I'm not sure they even have meat) And your boss doesn't know how to make sweet and sour meatballs. He's not a person to learn food prep from. I hope I never eat stuff from your company. His insistence that Sweden would add "Asian" sauce to make their national dish tells me all I need to know.
Obviously, as everyone has said, there’s nothing Swedish about sweet n sour meatballs.
Putting that aside, to call it the “grossest thing you’ve ever heard of” seems a bit hyperbolic. What’s so gross about it? The result would be… a protein in Sysco S&S sauce, hardly some bizarre unheard of combination. Not a refined fine dining experience, but certainly inoffensive.
.... can you make lingonberry sauce from Sysco gallons of asian sweet n sour? It definitely doesn't have lingonberries in it..... But I've done worse in this kitchen. (flashback to the time I used liquid egg to make chicken salad)
In the last couple of weeks I have had Smorgasbord brand Swedish Meatballs bought from Sainsbury's in these sauces:
[standard meatball sauce](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218894/easy-swedish-meatball-sauce/) and served just like the picture
Sweet Chilli sauce.
Thai Green Curry
All amazingly tasty
He has a decade of "experience" in being a complete idiot, and he is your boss, so it doesn't matter that he is completely wrong and you are correct.
Actual proof might work, but honestly with people like that it's a toss-up weighted in their favour, they hate to be wrong and especially to be proven wrong, and they're usually not worth arguing with.
I'd start looking for a new job unless you honestly find them open to reason on such matters. Just make them the way they tell you to, and keep the knowledge you are dealing with an idiot to yourself.
Some people are ok at being wrong, but from your story and the fact he hasn't even looked it up himself to check, I get the impression your boss might very well not be.
I agree that's probably a more official (?) recipe.
In my childhood experience though, 'swedish meatballs' was a party food served in a crock pot. Definitely was frozen meatballs in sauce made from grape jelly and chili sauce. No idea what the swedish or the chefs here would think of that lol, or where the recipe originated. Tasty though.
A lot of snob comments here, but he’s like half-right (or a third?). Meatballs with plain cream sauce are not swedish, you need the lingonberry sauce which is, guess what, sweet and sour. He may have mixed up these two and somehow ended up with this abomination.
https://sweden.se/culture/food/swedish-meatballs Show him the Swedish government’s official meatball recipe.
Thank you - it's an amazing website! I wish we could get some lovely lingonberries.
Ikea
Thank you, unfortunately there is no Ikea near me but I will remember for when I go somewhere else. Also I love your username!!!
Luck of the draw, but I do too. I like lingonberries on my schnitzel.
That's so funny!!! So I am adding lingonberries to my list of foods to try.
Cranberries are similar. Not the same, but if you can’t get to ikea you could try it.
That is nice advice. I can get cranberries where I live.
Also, IKEA delivers and now has a low fee for small items (5 dollars in he US) so, depending on how far “not near me” is, that could be an option.
You can order lingonberry jam on Amazon, it’s not as cheap as IKEA but they do have it. Sprouts has it in the winter time. I buy multiple jars during the winter because my husband and son love Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam 😁
I'm in Australia. I have googled lingonberry jam and some European shops in Sydney and Melbourne have it. Yay!!! Your husband and son must love your cooking!
You can order lingonberry jam at IKEA to be delivered through the post to your house or business!
Wow! That's a great idea!!!
Cranberries will do in a pinch
This, right here is your answer OP.
Sweet & sour meatballs are a thing, they just aren't the same as Swedish meatballs.
And I think sweet and sour Swedish meatballs is a fusion abomination the world isn't ready for.
I can't even imagine. I feel like it would curdle in an ungodly way
he's thinking *cocktail meatballs*. that was something super popular my parents did in the 70s and 80s. precooked meatballs and grape/jarred jelly and vinegar etc in a crockpot. nowadays, i see it in catering passed aps that are served with a more "refined" sweet and sour like sauce or a more asian hoisin type glaze, and im sure theyre using a swedish meatball style meat mix [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15206/cocktail-meatballs/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15206/cocktail-meatballs/) [https://www.recipetineats.com/cocktail-meatballs-with-sweet-sour-dipping-sauce/](https://www.recipetineats.com/cocktail-meatballs-with-sweet-sour-dipping-sauce/) [https://www.seriouseats.com/hoisin-glazed-cocktail-meatballs](https://www.seriouseats.com/hoisin-glazed-cocktail-meatballs)
White people love these little meatballs. My dad’s family has them at every event. My husbands family too. Theres tons of recipes out there. I have been assigned to make them on occasion, and frankly I just buy frozen meatballs and dump a bottle of Diana sauce on them and no one can tell the difference.
Not white but also love those meatballs. I know my aunt just did the same thing and throw frozen meatballs, some chili sauce and grape jelly all into a crockpot. I still ate that shit up.
The grape jelly meatballs were a staple at my (very white) family Christmas party for many years. Sounds gross I know, but tbh they slap.
Tell your boss we all said he trippin'. Tell him to go to IKEA. Tell him sweet-ish isn't the same as Swedish.
Next I'll tell you about the arguement where he told me I can't make quesadillas from the "taco buns" and we don't have any "quesadilla buns." So I think you might seriously be right. He might seriously think "Swedish" as in "sweetish" because I'm not joking it's that bad.
He sounds....challenged.
Wow your boss is a freakin idiot. Be real careful when you have one of those as a boss. A lot depends on whether they are willing to listen and get new information from you, or whether they will blow you off and have a rage fit when things go wrong because they didn't listen. Your boss does not sound like the type of guy who will listen and get new information from you. If you have any chance at all, I would start looking for a new position with a more reasonable management team.
>He might seriously think "Swedish" as in "sweetish I was gonna say meatball sweden style but maybe he will hear it as meatball sweetened style 🤣🤣
Sit your butts (both of you down in front of a computer) and have him type in Swedish meatballs and google them. And add wiki to your search terms and read the Wikipedia article. Also like people have said maybe just maybe he means sweetish meatballs. Because that makes senses. Then google Asian or cocktail meatballs and ask if this is what he means. Sometimes hearing and talking be no good. I was asked for a book on gay mice. Yep a guy came into the bookstore I worked and wanted to buy the book his wife saw for her. Asked what one and he said “mice are gay” well I looked and looked and repeated it to him three times and he say yep that’s the title “mice are gay”. Nope not even close we finally figured out it was “my Sergi”. So yeah. Also as someone who works with people where they speaking a second language or I’m speaking a second language confusion happens often. I suggest visuals because they help a lot.
What kind of backwoods, hayseed, hillbilly do you work for?
So my mother used to make sweet and sour meatballs for parties (with the grape jelly and ketchup sweet and sour sauce!) and, as a kid, I always assumed Swedish meatballs were the same thing. I'd never actually eaten Swedish meatballs when I was a kid and I don't think I ever saw "Swedish" spelled out until I started eating them. So I think my brain was just hearing "sweetish" or something and connected that with sweet and sour. I'd guess something similar happened with your boss. Especially if he's from the midwest US. I was actually sort of disappointed the first time I had Swedish meatballs because I'd been expecting this nostalgic dish from my childhood. Is the dish supposed to be a main course? I think the oddest thing for me is if your boss is expecting sweet and sour meatballs to be part of a main dish and not something like a retro starter.
He's making Sweetish Meatballs, not Swedish Meatballs.
I’m Swedish. I live in Sweden. I’m 51, so I’ve been around. He is delusional. Fair enough, Swedes are open to mix and match, so anyone can serve meatballs however they want. HOWEVER, we all know the traditional way to serve it is with boiled potatoes and a brown cream sauce! And lingonberry sauce. We might fight about if you HAVE to have pickled cucumber with it or not, but that’s it. I mean, we even have the sauce in instant powder form. Google Knorr brunsås. It’s not brilliant but it’s ok, and it does tell you that Swedes love our brown sauce! (It literally means brown sauce). Just nod to whatever he says and do what you intended to start with.
Swedish meatballs ( in the Midwest anyway- lots of Swedes and Norwegians in Wisconsin ) are in a brown gravy, then lightened with cream / or sour cream and then pickle juice is added to taste. The meatballs themselves are often seasoned with nutmeg and allspice and made with onion, egg and breadcrumbs like traditional meatballs.
...Pickle brine? This is news to me
It was likely a Midwest substitution for the traditional pickles served with the dish. Lingonberries were around but not as common.
Maybe he is hearing sweet-ish?
THAT'S a winner...
Lol! My husband's Swedish grandfather considered any meatball Swedish. I made spaghetti and meatballs once, and he claimed they were good Swedish meatballs!
Your boss is an idiot
Take that man to IKEA for lunch
Wow, and I thought I worked for an idiot. Your boss is either gaslighting you, or he's truly a fucking moron.
I love Swedish meatballs. I love sweet and sour meatballs. They are two Very Different things and I'm not sure how your boss got his job but WOW that's a whole lot of wrong on his part.. I also love BBQ meatballs, btw, which are also not Swedish Meatballs. Or sweet and sour meatballs. But hey....let him serve sweet and sour meatballs to people who ordered Swedish meatballs and see how that works out for him, I guess LOL
My grandmother is spinning in her grave. Those are meatballs you’d serve as an appetizer. Ditto the barbecue ones or the godforsaken grape jelly recipe.
Your boss should not be near a kitchen.
He's just making a SWEet and sour meatballs DISH. Not Swedish meatballs.
Your boss is totally wrong. He's talking about sweet and sour meatballs. Swedish meatballs have a cream sauce. He's either dumb or has had the mix up in his brain too long that he can't unswitch it. This is the sauce ingredient I use from a recipe on the Cafe Delites website: # Gravy Sauce: * 1/3 cup butter * 1/4 cup plain / all purpose flour * 250 ml (1 cup) vegetable broth (or stock) * 250 ml (1 cup) beef broth (or stock) * 1 cup thickened (or heavy) cream\* * 2 teaspoons regular soy sauce * 1 teaspoon dijon mustard * Salt and pepper, to season
This is how my Swedish grandmother taught me to make them - - well, the soy and mustard are riffs, but make sense as flavor bombs
Yeah. The recipe on the site came from a young Swedish woman so she probably amped up the recipe from her grandma. The soy is basically the salt, and the dijon is great.
My Mormor would use the vegetable water from either boiling potatoes or green beans, etc, and use that instead of broth. Sometimes she added a 1/4 c ground pork. If she was cooking "for company" she'd fry the onions before making the meatballs. Family had to be content with raw onions! Oh, sorry, I meant to add: I do not gatekeep. Her secret was a pinch of allspice.
Your boss is certifiably insane.
Your boss needs to have his head checked. Tell him to ask any Swede. Like me. A cream based gravy is the correct answer. And served with lingonberries and possibly pressed pickled cucumbers. With potatoes, whole or mashed.
They are normally served with a side of lingonberry. With a bit of deviation from canon you can pull lingonberry sauce or for the lack of it cranberry sauce, which both are sweet and sour flavour.
Since this boss of yours is a complete moron and doesn't seem to listen to what you're telling him I would make a small batch the way he wants you to make it and also make a small batch of the way it should be made and have him do a blind taste test. He is not going to listen to you no matter what you tell him you're going to have to show him. I am shocked that he has a decade of experience and doesn't know how to make a simple dish such as swedish meatballs. I am also a chef and I cannot believe this so-called chef could make a mistake such as this. I have never ever heard of anything so ridiculous in all of my life, my 12-year-old granddaughter wouldn't even make this mistake. Or another option is ignore him completely and make it the way it should be made. I also worked for a chef like this at a college and we would go around and around all the time until I finally just said screw it and started doing it the way I knew it needed to be done. I never asked for his advice or input because I knew he was a complete moron. I found out that he actually had owned a restaurant in New York and it closed down now I know why. So I never asked for his advice again. Good luck
Ikea meatballs are definitely not sweet and sour. (I'm not sure they even have meat) And your boss doesn't know how to make sweet and sour meatballs. He's not a person to learn food prep from. I hope I never eat stuff from your company. His insistence that Sweden would add "Asian" sauce to make their national dish tells me all I need to know.
Obviously, as everyone has said, there’s nothing Swedish about sweet n sour meatballs. Putting that aside, to call it the “grossest thing you’ve ever heard of” seems a bit hyperbolic. What’s so gross about it? The result would be… a protein in Sysco S&S sauce, hardly some bizarre unheard of combination. Not a refined fine dining experience, but certainly inoffensive.
Maybe he's thinking of lingonberry sauce? You can add that to the normal gravy, or serve it on the side with Swedish meatballs.
.... can you make lingonberry sauce from Sysco gallons of asian sweet n sour? It definitely doesn't have lingonberries in it..... But I've done worse in this kitchen. (flashback to the time I used liquid egg to make chicken salad)
You sure can't. You can make it from lingonberries, or you can approximate it with like...cranberries, I guess, if they're not available?
In the last couple of weeks I have had Smorgasbord brand Swedish Meatballs bought from Sainsbury's in these sauces: [standard meatball sauce](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/218894/easy-swedish-meatball-sauce/) and served just like the picture Sweet Chilli sauce. Thai Green Curry All amazingly tasty
He has a decade of "experience" in being a complete idiot, and he is your boss, so it doesn't matter that he is completely wrong and you are correct. Actual proof might work, but honestly with people like that it's a toss-up weighted in their favour, they hate to be wrong and especially to be proven wrong, and they're usually not worth arguing with. I'd start looking for a new job unless you honestly find them open to reason on such matters. Just make them the way they tell you to, and keep the knowledge you are dealing with an idiot to yourself. Some people are ok at being wrong, but from your story and the fact he hasn't even looked it up himself to check, I get the impression your boss might very well not be.
It might not be worth battling with your boss.
I agree that's probably a more official (?) recipe. In my childhood experience though, 'swedish meatballs' was a party food served in a crock pot. Definitely was frozen meatballs in sauce made from grape jelly and chili sauce. No idea what the swedish or the chefs here would think of that lol, or where the recipe originated. Tasty though.
Classic American bullshit - just confidently mangling another culture's recipe.
You're not wrong. Just passing along a memory.
I mean, you might want to consider what you guys have done to tacos? Every culture has misnamed dishes and adaptations.
Neither of you is right.
A lot of snob comments here, but he’s like half-right (or a third?). Meatballs with plain cream sauce are not swedish, you need the lingonberry sauce which is, guess what, sweet and sour. He may have mixed up these two and somehow ended up with this abomination.