Best Dutch East Indies Meatballs Recipes

GEHAKT BALLEN (DUTCH MEATBALLS)

Steps:

• Place meatloaf mix in a large mixing bowl; crumble bread over meat and knead with hands to combine. Add milk and egg to meat mixture. Knead onion, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and pepper into meat mixture until well-combined. Form mixture into six equal-sized balls.
• Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook and stir meatballs in hot butter until browned on all sides, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir water, tomatoes, beef broth, and onion soup mix into Dutch oven; bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until meatballs are tender and cooked through, about 1 hour.

GEHAKTBALLEN: DUTCH MEATBALLS

Steps:

• Mix the meat with the egg, bread, onion, salt and spices and form 4-5 meatballs.
• Chill for about 30 minutes.
• Make into 4-6 meatballs.
• Heat the butter and brown the meatballs for about 15 minutes, turning them a couple of times.
• Reduce the heat to simmer and cook the meatballs for another 15 minutes, turning a few times.
• Remove the meatballs, add the water or beef stock and bring to a high heat. Add a little ketjap manis or Maggi seasoning to the mixture and you will have a lovely gravy to serve with the meatballs.
• NOTES : Some people coat the meatballs with breadcrumbs before frying.
• We soak the bread in a bit of milk, and then press out the milk from the bread before adding to the ground beef.
• We almost always use just the ground beef, and it is very good.
• This is good served with homefries and lots of mayonnaise.

EAST EUROPEAN MEATBALLS

Steps:

• Chop the onions finely. Put a little canola oil in a pan, turn the heat to medium. When the oil is hot, add the onions and a pinch of salt, turn down the heat to low-medium and saute, covered, for about 10 mins, until yellow and soft. Simmer from time to time.
• Remove the onions from the pan, and put on a bowl to cool down.
• Grate the carrot using the coarse side of the grater. Squeeze well between your palms afterwards, to get rid of all the water.
• Grate the potatoes using the fine side of the grater. Squeeze well between your palms afterwards.
• Dunk the slices of bread (crust removed) in a little milk for 3 seconds and then squeeze well between palms to get rid of all the liquid.
• Mince the garlic cloves (you can remove the germs if you wish - in this way, the garlic smell won't stay with you 2 days afterwards).
• Remove the leaves from the parsley and dill, and finely chop them.
• Put the minced meat, potatoes, carrot, eggs, garlic, onion, bread slices, dill, parsley, bread crumbs, pepper in a large bowl. Mix everything together (with your hands or mixer). Add 1/2 Tbs salt, mix, and taste the composition. Add another 1/2 Tbs salt if you think it's needed. I normally put 1 Tbsp salt in total. Also, of course, you can add more pepper if you like it more spicy.
• Press the mixture against the pan and 'pat' it slightly with you hands to look uniform. Then cover the bowl and let the mixture rest in the fridge for 1 hour. This will firm up the mixture.
• Remove the mixture from the fridge 20 minutes before cooking.
• Take 1 heaped Tblsp of mixture at a time, and with your hands wet, form the meatballs. Place the meatballs on a plate.
• In a deep medium sized frying pan, put canola oil until it's about 1.5 inches in height. Let the oil heat up on a medium-high heat. It's important that the pan is not too wide, so that the oil inside is quite deep in order to cover the meatballs well from all sides when cooking.
• When the oil is hot, turn down the heat to medium, and put the meatballs in the pan. Fry on one side for 4 mins, then turn on the other side, fry for 4 mins, then 1 min again on each side.
• Remove the meatballs from the pan and place on a paper towel to absorb the oil.
• That's it! I hope you'll like :).

SPICY SPECULAAR DUTCH MEATBALLS

Steps:

• Cut the bacon into very thin strips.
• Ground the cookies into fine crumbs and mix them with the speculaar spice powder, ketjap, sambal and bacon, then mix all of it throughly with the ground beef.
• Roll the mixture into balls (about 24 of them).
• Heat the butter in a large pan and cook for about 10 minutes on a low heat until golden brown and cooked though.
• Serve while warm with a little extra sambal.