Frikadeller - Updated recipe

I have a confession to make: I generally chop quite coarsely. And for the most part I am quite happy with the result.

But when making meat balls too coarsely chopped onions tend to towards undesirable effects when shaping and frying the meat balls. So, lately I've started chopping the onions for my meat balls not by hand as I've always done in the past but in the cutter that came with our new electric hand-held mixer/whipper/cutter unit (a purchase of debate in the household - while the need for a new one was indisputable, the type I bought met with some critique).

I've also recently discovered that making meat balls with bread crumbs and milk tends towards juicier meat balls (as opposed to flour and milk - or neither of the two). Here follows an updated recipe for frikadeller (a type of Danish meat ball).

Ingredients:
- 850 g (1 lb 14 oz) minced pork/beef^[1]
- 4 small onions, very finely chopped
- 3 eggs
- ~5 dL (~2 cups) bread crumbs^[2]
- 5 dl (2 cups) milk
- salt and pepper
for frying:
- margarine
to serve:
- rye bread
- red cabbage sauerkraut

The onions were chopped very finely using an electric cutter, then mixed with minced meat, eggs, salt and pepper. Milk was stirred in in portions until the texture was as desired (for frikadeller I usually aim for a little more on the liquidy side than I would for most other types of meat balls).

The meat balls were shaped using a teaspoon (see the original post on frikadeller for pictures of the shaping procedure) and fried in a large pan (medium heat) with some margarine, working mostly in batches.

As you can see I made a heap of them. We ate some right away on rye bread with red cabbage sauerkraut - a perfect combination. I put a lot of the rest in the freezer.


^[1] I used a 50:50 mix available from the local store. This kind of meat balls could also be made mixed pork/veal or even pure pork - but pure beef wouldn't be 'right' for frikadeller.

^[2] I don't buy bread crumbs. I simply grate some old dried out white bread. Whenever I buy fresh bread and don't manage to eat it all before it goes dry, I just leave the bread in a dry place for a couple of weeks (or even longer - it usually doesn't go mouldy if stored in a dry place) to make sure it is really dry - then it is easy to grate to bread crumbs.