Polish meatballs in dill sauce: tender, poached in stock, with a whole handful of dill
The dinner from every Polish canteen and every home with children: pork meatballs with a soaked roll, not fried but poached in a light stock that then becomes a sauce with sour cream and dill. Soft as dumplings, the sauce green with dill and sharp with lemon. With potatoes or rice, ready in 50 minutes.
Your own work in that: 35 min.
- Meat mixture 15 min
- Shaping 10 min
- Meatballs poaching 15 min
- Sauce 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 done
Soak the roll
Cover the roll with the milk and leave 5 minutes until fully soft, then squeeze it out. Put the potatoes on. The roll is not a filler: it loosens the mixture and holds moisture in it, which is what makes the meatballs soft rather than dense.
Ingredients: 600 g minced pork · 1 pcs stale bread roll · 100 ml milk · 1 pcs onion · 1 pcs egg · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
Roll in milk, then squeezed
Knead the mixture
Grate the onion finely (or chop very finely and soften in a spoon of butter). Mix the meat with the roll, onion, egg, salt and pepper and knead by hand 3 minutes, until smooth and sticky. Kneading binds the proteins so the meatballs don't fall apart in the water.
TipOnion grated, not chopped: pieces of onion inside a meatball stay raw and hard after 15 minutes of poaching. Grated, it melts into the mixture.
Three minutes of kneading, smooth and sticky
Shape the meatballs
With wet hands roll balls the size of a large walnut, about 4 cm (around 40 g each), about 20 in all. Water on your palms stops the mixture sticking and gives the meatballs a smooth surface.
Wet hands, 4 cm balls
Poach in the stock
Bring the stock with the bay leaf and allspice to the boil in a wide pot, lower to a gentle simmer and drop in the meatballs one by one. Cook covered 15 minutes, without stirring for the first 5 minutes, until they set on the surface. A hard boil breaks meatballs apart. Cut one open to check: it must not be pink inside.
Ingredients: 1000 ml vegetable or chicken stock · 1 pcs bay leaf · 3 pcs allspice berries · 200 g sour cream, 18 % · 2 tbsp plain flour · 1 bunch dill · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 20 g butter
Barely bubbling, 15 minutes covered
Thicken the sauce with sour cream
Lift the meatballs out with a slotted spoon onto a plate and pour off stock down to about 500 ml (keep the rest for soup). Whisk the sour cream with the flour until smooth, temper with three ladles of hot stock, pour into the pot and simmer 3 minutes, stirring, until the sauce thickens like cream. Return the meatballs.
TipTempering, that is mixing the sour cream with hot liquid before it goes into the pot, protects it from curdling. Poured straight from the fridge into boiling stock it seizes into lumps.
Sour cream with flour, tempered, three minutes
Dill, lemon, butter
Take off the heat. Stir in the finely chopped dill, lemon juice and butter. Dill only at the end: cooked, it loses its scent and turns grey. Taste and add salt. Serve with potatoes and plenty of sauce.
Ingredients: 800 g potatoes
The whole bunch of dill, off the heat
Before you start
In tomato sauce
Instead of sour cream and dill: 400 g passata, a teaspoon of sugar, a spoon of butter, simmered with the meatballs 10 minutes. The other canteen classic.
Turkey or chicken
Minced poultry instead of pork and a spoon of oil in the mixture, because it is leaner. The meatballs come out lighter; poach them the same 15 minutes, as poultry must be cooked through.
Make ahead
Poached meatballs without sauce can be frozen for up to a month; freeze the leftover stock too. Make the sauce fresh in 10 minutes and reheat the meatballs in it straight from the freezer, covered, over low heat for about 15 minutes, until hot in the centre.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
