Bitterballen

Ingredients

• Beef — for braising500 g
• Butter100 g
• Flour120 g
• Beef stock600 ml
• Onion1
• Parsley30 g
• Nutmeg½ tsp
• Eggs3
• Breadcrumbs250 g
• Mustard — to serve100 g
• Oil for frying1.5 l
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Simmer the beef in the stock for ninety minutes, until completely tender, and shred it fine.

   95 min

2. 2

   Fry the onion in butter, stir in the flour and cook it three minutes without letting it colour.

   6 min

3. 3

   Pour in the hot stock in a thin stream and cook it to a very thick paste, about ten minutes.

   12 min

4. 4

   Stir in the meat, parsley, nutmeg, salt and pepper, spread it in a dish and chill it four hours.

   15 min

5. 5

   Roll the set mixture into walnut-sized balls with damp hands.

   20 min

6. 6

   Coat them in flour, egg and crumbs, chill them twenty minutes, then repeat the egg and crumbs.

   35 min

7. 7

   Fry at 180 °C for three minutes, to a deep gold, and serve with mustard.

   20 min

About the dish

The base is a very stiff béchamel with meat, chilled to a firm jelly. Until it can be cut with a knife, shaping balls is pointless.

They are breaded twice with a chilling stage between coats. A single coat splits in the oil and the filling escapes in the first second.

Inside a bitterbal it should be liquid and very hot. They are served with a warning, and biting into the first is a local ritual involving a burnt mouth.

Worth knowing

• — The mixture has to be stone cold. Warm, it will not roll and sticks to your hands however much you wet them.
• — Fry five or six at a time. An overloaded pan drops in temperature and the coating soaks up oil before it sets.
• — Bitterballen freeze well once breaded. Fry them from frozen with a minute added.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

24 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

38 g

More from Netherlands

• Stamppot — Mashed potato crushed together with curly kale, with smoked sausage and a well of gravy.
• Poffertjes — Tiny yeasted pancakes of buckwheat and wheat flour, served with butter and icing sugar.
• Erwtensoep — A thick split pea soup with smoked sausage, dense enough for a spoon to stand in it.