Swedish fish balls with curry sauce

Swedish fish balls with curry sauce

The first dinner from the weekly menu of Week 5 was Swedish fish balls with curry sauce.

I’ve a very strained relationship with Swedish style fish balls. The only ones I tried was from a can and tasted…mhm…fishy and weird to be nice. They look like this:

Swedish style fish balls. Source: Carl Lindström (Entheta) [Public domain]

After reluctantly trying thai fish cakes, I’m in love with this way of using fish. But it took awhile for me to dare to try making Swedish fish balls. Normally the balls are boiled in salty water rather than fried. I guess you could do that with this recipe, I just prefer frying (more like fish burgers).

Since I was a young child I’ve loved curry sauce. For years when my family and I would go to chinese resturants in Sweden I would order Chicken in curry sauce. That sauce is very different from the sauce presented below, which is a style of creamy sauce that is also good with chicken and rice.

How then do you make Swedish fish balls?

You’ll need for 4 portions:

Fish balls:

  • 400g of frozen white fish (here I used 200g but that was too little)
  • 1.5 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs (1 egg could be enough)
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 1 dl milk
  • 0.5 dl cream
  • 2-3 dl panko
  • black pepper, chives for garnish

Curry sauce:

  • 1 red onion
  • 0.5 apple
  • 2-3 tablespoons curry powder
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 1.5 dl chicken stock or fish stock
  • 1 dl cream
  • salt and black pepper

Defrost the fish. In a bowl let the panko and the cream and milk set for 30 min. Mince the fish, I like it a bit chunky still and not completely smooth (like those terrible traditional Swedish fishballs…). Add the fish to the panko-cream-milk mixture, add egg, flour, salt and pepper. Mix. It’ll look something like this:

If it’s too runny to make balls out of, add some panko, if it’s too dry add some milk. Shape into small hamburgers. Fry in butter about 3-4 minutes per side or until golden brown.

For the sauce, chop up the apple and the onion.

Fry the onion and apple for a couple of minutes in butter and a little vegetable oil.

Add the curry. Fry while stirring for a few minutes.

Add the flour and stir. Add cream and stock. Let it boil for a few minutes while the sauce thickens up. When it has the wanted consistency add salt and pepper to taste. It’ll look like this when it’s done:

Add the fish balls to the sauce, garnish with chives and serve with rice. Enjoy!



1 thought on “Swedish fish balls with curry sauce”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.