Cook with Us - March, Week 1 - Danish meatballs with brown sauce and potatoes

I am happy to make my entry to the first week and theme here on @cookwithus loving the initiative ! thank you @pandamama, @offoodandart and @chefsteve for making this awesome contest, in this first week with the family tradition theme I found it quite fitting to make a very traditional ... in my own mind kind of boring meal ... that is very much requested and appreciated by my family .... I do have my own little twists on this one ....
Danish meatballs with brown sauce and potatoes

Ingredients

Tatar mince (lean beef mince high quality)
Bacon
Onions
an egg
butter
double cream
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper
kulør (a danish thing to add color to your sauce lol )
pig stock cube
Potatoes
Quite basic ... you can additionally serve it up with sweet gel (we actually had that on the table too) , pickled red cabbage heated missed out on that one ... they were all out in the supermarket today ... bummer !
My little twist
normally people will make the meatballs from a mince of 50/50 veal and pig ... I don't like those premade minces ... so I make my own with tatar beef and bacon ... the bacon adds the needed fat and also a great flovor, that is not in traditional danish meatballs aka frikadeller...
Steps

I steam my potatoes in my trusty steamer ...it takes longer time ... but it is worth it ... I hate to peel potatoes so in my house they are served with the peel on ... which I personally prefer too ... both my dad and my daughter peels theirs at the table ...I eat mine with the peel on lol
The mince

Baby Steps

onions in my mixer

and in goes the bacon

the lovely mince in my bowl

in with the onion bacon puree ( I make sure it is very close to puree ... my daughter detects the onion pieces like a pro lol ... this way no onion pieces and I actually got 2 whole onions in there hihi

add your egg to the mix

salt and pepper ... you can add parmasan cheese ... breadcrumbs, herbs... nuts shrooms ... the world is your oyster here ... but I stayed child and dad friendly ...and stuck with salt and pepper and a dash of sparkling water as that makes the meatballs more light...

mix and mix and mix again ... this is key to a good meatball....

butter in the pan ...

I use a teaspoon to form the meatballs ... here in DK the meatballs are not round but rather ovals lol

additional liquid from the bacon etc I Spoon out so the meatballs fry and don't boil ... found that there was a lot of excess liquid ... I think the bacon must have been pumped with water ... sadly ... but I reserve it for the sauce mixing the liquids with a cube of pigstock (I do think that pigstock is unique to Denmark lol ... never ever saw it in Spain when I lived there lol )

NomNom we did get that nice crust on there ....
Sauce

once your meatballs are off the pan.. add the reserved liquids with the stock cube ... let it boil dow a bit and add double cream ... let it boil together ... no splitting lol !

after that ... we add Kulør ( coloring for danish sauces lol I don't think that is international either ....) and I always mount my sauce with a dollop of butter ... and then I season to taste and since my sweet daughter don't eat sauce I add my Cayenne pepper usually in quite generous amounts lol ... I do need a bit of a kick in my food ... at times I can see that I might have overdone it slightly ... at the table when my dads eyes start bulging slightly and he seems a bit short of breath .... he loves sauce and I usually make a lot of sauce as it seems that he eats it as if it was a soup ...
The Nitty Gritty

family meals ... we dont plate ... we serve to the table ...

said table where our meals take place ... I usually got the candles going at dinner at least on the 200 days of windy rainy cold weather that we have here ... this meal got cleaned out ... had to stop my dad as I wanted to reserve at lest a couple of the meatballs for Victoria's lunch box for school tomorrow !

and here is a proof pic ... always remember that !
I hope you enjoyed this little simple step by step into a more traditional danish dish ...

...what can I say it don't look special at all ... but it sure does taste wonderful !

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