Mema’s Swedish Meatballs

In my family, holidays weren’t about gifts, snow, jolly men, or pumpkin pie. Holidays were about one thing and one thing only —

Mema’s Swedish meatballs.

It’s all we talked about, us cousins— how we couldn’t wait to lift the white porcelain lid, tiny fork in hand and scoop our share of tiny meatballs onto our appetizer plate.

No one dared show up late for thanksgiving or Christmas without first tasking their most trusted relative to hide a stash for them. Mema’s Swedish meatballs weren’t a feature; they were the main event.

Fun fact: Mema’s Swedish meatballs weren’t Swedish at all. They were red, spicy, sweet, and warm cocktail meatballs.

When they were dubbed Swedish meatballs, I couldn’t tell you. But I imagine it was much like when Christopher Columbus found the new world. He expected the Indies so he labeled everything in his path as such. Half a millennium later, we’re still trying to course correct how we refer to our land’s Native American lineage.

Somewhere someone got confused and told us the balls were Swedish. And it stuck, despite the sauces being on entirely opposite ends of the flavor spectrum.

The meatballs weren’t just a thing that showed up. They were made in advance. Two days before Christmas and the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Mema would begin rolling one hundred tiny meatballs out of a beef and pork blend. Then, 24 hours before the holiday, she would make the fifteen ingredient sauce. She would simmer the meatballs in the sauce and then let them sit overnight, sauce and meatballs together. Then, on the day of, she would heat, serve, and delight time and again.

When I got married, something scary happened— my husband wanted me to spend thanksgiving with his family! I never missed a thanksgiving with my family, ever. But love requires sacrifice and this sacrifice meant learning Mema’s recipe.

A few weeks before thanksgiving, she sent me a picture of her printed out recipe with handwritten annotations. I went to the store for a handful of ingredients I had never owned before and began my practice run.

Success.

Thanksgiving day with my in-laws? Smash hit. I was vegetarian at the time so the meat was imitation, but the flavor floored my professional chef, meat-eating brother-in-law. All through covid, I made the meatballs for my immediate family.

Finally, this past year, I was able to return the favor of decades of flavor to my Mema and cousins. Mema didn’t want to make them for thanksgiving, so I saved the day, eagerly.

“Jax, you’ve mastered the recipe.” My cousin Amanda affirmed. “I guess it’s okay if Mema decides to die now.” Cue laughter and ten minutes of jokes about every holiday’s most bespoke topic: sudden death.

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I learned a lot from the meatballs, like how to say worschester and that taking the extra time to make the meatballs really small is worth it.

Most importantly, they taught me how to speak thirty years of shared memories and instill eternal hope all with the same singular sentence.

I started making the meatballs today.