Swedish meatballs were invented by IKEA to sell furniture. Can you tell if the word köttbullar means “meatball” or “four piece dining room set?”

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can go to IKEA.

Swedish Not Meatballs. Swedish Meatless Balls didn’t sound as good.

SWEDISH NOT MEATBALLS

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 70 minutes

Also, lay those vegan orbs on top of some garlic butter rotini and you are all set. I’ll fit those directions in here too though the three ingredients are literally in the name.

This recipe will be broken up into three parts: the meatballs, the gravy and the pasta. Amen.

For parts one and two………

What you’ll need:

white onion
garlic
ground plant based meat stuff
vegan butter
olive oil
soy milk
white bread
salt
pepper
brown sugar
allspice
dried basil
flax seed
nutmeg
oat flour
vegetable broth

First, dice up a white onion and a whole bulb of garlic. Some of the garlic is going to end up in the pasta later so just get it ready now. These two things will make up two thirds of your mince components.

If your plant based ground meat stuff needs to be defrosted, make sure that it is defrosted.

I didn’t cut the garlic down yet, leave me alone.

In a pan, heat up some olive oil and throw your MINCED garlic and white onion in there. You want to caramelize both of these things without burning them. Add some salt and pepper into the pan. Once they are done cooking, set them aside for now.

Meatless Farms ground plant stuff. Use whatever brand you like best.

Take two slices of white bread and soak them in soy milk. Almond milk works fine too. Eventually, this too will get added to your mince. Okay I guess that’s more than three components.

You can take off the crusts if you want. I don’t mind them.

Now take your plant based ground meat stuff and add it to a bowl. If you have gloves, put gloves on. Ground the meat stuff down as much as possible. Take your onions and garlic and add them right into the mince. Please don’t burn your hands.

After you mix up your mince, remove your soggy bread from the soy milk and squeeze out the excess liquid and then mix that in there too. Again, you can leave the crust or remove it. Up to you.

In a small container, mix a flax seed with water. Two parts flax to water. Mix that up until it has an egg-like consistency. That will go in your mince too.

I didn’t say it was gonna look like eggs.

Add a heaping couple of spoonfuls of brown sugar to the mince as well as salt, pepper, nutmeg and allspice. Go heavy on the allspice.

Is Brown Sugar your favorite D’angelo album?

Now go ahead and mix up all that stuff if you haven’t already. Preheat your oven to 380°. First you’re going to sear the meatballs and then you will bake them through.

Next, you’re gonna roll up some meatballs. Lay out some parchment paper on a baking sheet. Roll up as many meatballs as you can from your mince. You can use a scoop if you’d like but I didn't mind leaving it out. Heat up some oil in a pan on a medium flame.

Doing a few at a time, place the meatballs in the oil to sear for a few minutes on each side. Make sure you don’t move them around in the pan otherwise you will lose your crust. Sear them as evenly as possible and then put right back onto the parchment paper. Continue doing this until they are all seared.

Vegan orbs swimming in radioactive fluid!

Now that all of your meatballs are seared, stick the whole baking sheet in the oven. Bake them for 30 minutes and check on them. If they need more time, put them back in for an extra 10-15 minutes.

Next, while your meatballs are baking, you can make your gravy. Using the same pan you just used, on a medium flame, add vegetable broth and brown sugar. Salt and pepper to taste. Bring the flame up a little bit and sieve some oat flour into the pan. Whisk like crazy until it thickens into a gravy like consistency. Drop the flame and let it simmer.

AND THEN as your meatballs are cooking, you can make your pasta. I used rotini for this recipe but you can use whatever you want. Cook your pasta according to the directions and be sure to salt your pasta water. Using some of your minced garlic from earlier, mix that up with some vegan butter in a separate dish and melt it down in a pan. I blended mine at the end to ensure maximum smoothness. You can too if you’d like.

Once your pasta is cooked, drain the water (except a little bit because keeping a little pasta water is important.) Put the pasta back in the pot and add olive oil and stir so it doesn’t stick to the pot. Add your garlic butter.

I added extra butter too. They’re buttered noodles damn it!

Now that your pasta is complete and your gravy is ready, check the status of your meatballs if they are still cooking. If they’re ready too, plate some of your pasta. Add some of your meatballs on top and throw some gravy on there. It’s the holidays, we aren’t counting calories until 2020.