Keto Swedish Meatballs Meal

This recipe for Keto Swedish Meatballs in Cream Sauce is a delicious taste of Sweden. Add some mashed cauliflower and berry jam and you've got a tasty low carb meal with just 11g net carbs.

Jump to:

• Components of the dish
• The Meatballs
• The Cream Sauce
• The Mashed Potatoes
• The Lingonberry Jam
• 📋 Recipe
• 📋 Recipe

Hallå! 👋

Today I’m going to share my recipe for Swedish Meatballs, a dish I will forever associate with IKEA.  Back before my low carb diet, when I was tired of arguing with my husband over the BJÖRKSNÄS bed frame or the MÖRBYLÅNGA table or even the FJÄLLBO shelving, we could always take a break in the cafeteria and enjoy their famous Swedish Meatball meal. The meal is truly epic, but unfortunately for me, it is very high in carbohydrates.

But fear not, this recipe for Keto Swedish Meatballs will give IKEA a run for its money.

Components of the dish

Swedish Meatballs with mashed potatoes, a cream sauce, and lingonberry jam 

These are all things we can make low carb without too much trouble.  We'll make the meatballs with almond flour instead of breadcrumbs, the cream sauce without flour, and we'll use mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes and cranberries in place of those sugary lingonberries in the jam. And while IKEA’s meal has upwards of 60 grams of carbohydrate, our version will have just 11 grams net carbs. 

The Meatballs

So many Keto meatball recipes fall flat for me.  They are just balls of solid ground beef.  But not the ones we are going to make today, my friends.  No, we’ll be adding almond flour and parmesan cheese as fillers that will act like the breadcrumbs that go into regular high-carb meatballs. And we are going to use the golden ratio of 50/50 meat to breading. This will make softer, more meatbally meatballs.  

Meatball Ingredients

You’ll need: ground beef and ground pork for the meat, garlic and onions for flavor, almond flour and parmesan cheese as fillers, salt, and pepper because you always use salt and pepper, heavy whipping cream to add moisture, and eggs to bind the little meatballs together.  

• Ground Beef and Ground Pork: This recipe calls for a blend of beef and pork like the Swedish Meatballs that IKEA makes. Try and choose ground meat with the most fat, because more fat makes for happy Keto dieters and softer meatballs.
• Almond Flour: This used to be a specialty flour that you had to buy online or in health food stores, but nowadays you can find it at Costco, Walmart and even Aldi. Almond flour is just ground blanched almonds, so the brand you choose doesn't matter so much. Just pick up what's available at the store and costs the least amount of money.
• Parmesan Cheese: The epic battle between sprinkle cheese and shakey cheese rages on. You can use fancy style grated parmesan cheese or you can use the low brow shakey cheese that comes in a can. Either one works fine in this Keto meatball recipe, so again, I think you should just buy the cheaper one.

• Eggs: Make sure to use the Large size because this, like all recipes, was designed to work with Large, not Jumbo or Extra Large eggs. No need for bigger eggs.
• Garlic: You can often find peeled garlic in the produce aisle of the supermarket. I always buy that because I hate fussing with garlic. But if you do use whole garlic, make sure to do the knife trick to get the skin off. Place the garlic clove on a cutting board and press down on it with the flat side of a chef's knife. That will pop the skin and make it easier to peel.
• Onions or Shallots: You can use white onions like IKEA does, or choose lower carb shallots. Onions have 6g net carbs per ½ cup, while shallots have 2.5 grams.
• Cream: The recipe calls for heavy whipping cream, which will add softness and moisture to the Keto Swedish Meatballs. When you add liquid to a meatball mix, it steams the meat as it evaporates, making the meatballs soft and delicious.

Meatball Instructions

Mix everything up, roll it into balls and either fry them in oil, air fry or bake them. Frying the meatballs in oil is the messiest, least satisfying way to do it, so I don't think you should do that. I usually spray my meatballs with cooking spray and bake them in the oven. But you can also get good results if you air fry your Keto Swedish Meatballs. I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of this method before. An Air Fryer is a newfangled device that uses air to "fry" foods. I won't pretend to understand how it works, but I have one and I highly recommend it.

The Cream Sauce

IKEA has this hilariously long name for the thin yellow sauce that their cafeteria workers ladle over your Swedish Meatballs.  It’s called "ALLEMANSRÄTTEN" which roughly translates to “everyone's right to field, forest, and a fine meal, with savoury sauce”.  I don’t know if it actually means all of that, but that’s what it says on the package of powdered sauce you can buy in the food section of the store. 

Cream sauce ingredients

Traditional high-carb cream sauces use a roux (pronounced roo), which is a mixture of oil or butter and white flour, that thickens broth or milk. But we are low carb dieters, you and I, so that is not the path we will tread. No, we’ll be using heavy whipping cream, cream cheese, beef stock, soy sauce or coconut aminos, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and ground turmeric. It'll make for a very mellow yellow cream sauce.

So no roux for you!

Cream sauce instructions

You start by adding all of the cream sauce ingredients to a medium-sized saucepan. Bring the liquid to a low boil and simmer for 10-20 minutes until the cream cheese has melted and the sauce has thickened to your liking. This makes a rather thin cream sauce like the one that IKEA makes, but you can thicken it more by whisking in Xanthan Gum and simmering for a few minutes more.

The Mashed Potatoes

This is an easy one.  Time to turn to our good friend the cauliflower.  You just need 2 bags of cauliflower florets, some cream cheese, butter, salt, and pepper.  You’ll microwave the cauliflower right in the bag, and then mix it with the remaining ingredients in a high-powered blender.  

The Lingonberry Jam

Funnily enough, lingonberries are actually low carb already.  They would be perfectly acceptable to use, if only there was any place you could buy them.  But unfortunately, I have never found any lingonberries in any store anywhere in this big world of ours.

So we’ll need to use cranberries.

It’s always a good idea to buy some extra bags of cranberries during the short window of time when they are available in stores, and throw them into the freezer to use on a later date.  But if you can’t lay your hands on a bag of cranberries to make this recipe, you can use raspberries.  

Just add a bag of cranberries, water, and Allulose to a pan and simmer for 8-10 minutes.   

And that’s it.

It might seem like a lot of work, but you can actually make it in about 30 minutes if you know what you are doing.  You can have all the components of the meal cooking at the same time. So the meatballs will be frying or baking, while the cauliflower is in the microwave and the cream sauce and cranberry jam are happily simmering in pots. 

You’ll be like the Swedish chef, cheerfully cooking away.

So Hürdy Gürdy Børk Børk Børk! 👨‍🍳  

Print

📋 Recipe

Print

📋 Recipe