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IKEA's restaurants were failing, then it turned to Swedish meatballs
- diebeforei485 4y agoI'm a fan of ikea's vegan hotdog, served at the restaurant. They also sell them frozen, and I buy like 5 packs of them along with the granola and muesli which I'm also a big fan of.
- exabrial 4y agoI've literally gone to Ikea just to eat "Swedish" meatballs
- Hamuko 4y agoI've gone to just buy the lingonberry jam. Goes great with plain yoghurt if no one's ever tried it.
- pigscantfly 4y agoThe hardbread and raspberry gumdrops (gelehallon) are great, too. I'll usually get Kalle's spread, but it's maybe not for everyone.
- bobcostas55 4y agoIf you've ever got leftover potatoes (or mashed potatoes) I recommend making some potato pancakes AKA potatisplättar. They go absolutely perfectly with lingonberries.
- jwilk 4y agoText-only version: https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_d98a496fd4ba614d22b933772fbb434a https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_d98a496fd4ba614d22b933772f...
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- znkynz 4y agoThey serve them with mashed potato - in which markets? In the UK they are/were served with whole (peeled) steamed/boiled potato.
- odiroot 4y agoI just ate a plate with mash (very generous portion) last weekend, here in south England. The other choice was chips.
- callahad 4y agoIn Belfast it's mash or chips with the meatballs.
- Symbiote 4y agoAt least Sweden. The first picture, showing the advert outside an Ikea in Sweden, says "meatballs with mashed or boiled potatoes".
- kart23 4y agoHas anyone been to an ikea restaurant recently? I think post-covid they made a bunch of cost-cutting changes, because I remember the food being pretty darn delightful and tasty. I went a month ago and got cold mashed potatoes, disgusting veggies, and just plain horrible mac-n-cheese. Also, all the silverware and dishes had been replaced by single-use wooden sporks and paper plates. I'm probably never eating at ikea again. The meatballs are decent, but you can get them frozen and they taste exactly the same.
- Hamuko 4y agoHow are wooden sporks and paper plates cost-cutting? They're single use, so you need to keep buying them, whereas you can wash silverware and dishes. And they're probably the cheapest possible silverware and dishes known to man since IKEA makes them. Sounds more like a hygiene thing than a cost-cutting thing.
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- luciusdomitius 4y agoIKEA doesn't make anything. Their entire competetive advantage is inventing logistics 2.0
- nicoburns 4y agoIKEA is well-known for it's innovative designs. They're just focussed on cost-saving for the most part.
- hef19898 4y agoIf you are in logistics, and concerned with engineering for packaging, you have to analyze IKEA. They are among the very best at that.
- luciusdomitius 4y agoThey are not among the very best, they literally invented it and still hold the steering wheel.
- stickfigure 4y agoI made Kenji's Swedish meatballs recipe recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld5cECqIFU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld5cECqIFU0 If you ever want to enjoy Ikea food again, I suggest you do not make this dish. It will be an unfortunate standards-raising experience.
- scorxn 4y agoWow, I hadn't seen this channel before and LOVE the authenticity and first-person POV. Thanks for sharing!
- wincy 4y agoIf you like this channel, Kenji has a book, The Food Lab[0] that is the only place I go for recipes now. I have a hard time eating steaks prepared at restaurants since learning how to properly cook a steak from Kenji. His writing style is also pretty hilarious, and the book is fun to read as it feels like a conversation rather than a fry recipe book. He also has a new book called The Wok [1] but I haven’t read any of the recipes. I imagine they’ll be delicious though, and also explain the theory of HOW to cook good food rather than just tell you exactly what to do. [0] The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_D4HFK70CXC6QGD0PTRQV https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_D4... [1] The Wok: Recipes and Techniques https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393541215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XQZVRZNMZVNBBM6AJ9PJ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393541215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XQ...
- karlshea 4y agoI’ve been cooking out of The Wok and it’s also fantastic. The technique sections have been super helpful!
- henrikschroder 4y agoHe added garlic. He made them large. Those two things alone completely disqualify this dish as Swedish meatballs. This is heresy. He made meatballs, sure, but them things ain't Swedish meatballs.
- jollybean 4y agoI wonder how well such a type of restaurant would do on it's own, outside of an IKEA. Basically Scandinavian 'fast food' - healthy but also very 'hearty' and simple enough for Western tastes. The brightly lit, simply decorated rooms, kind of a 'cafeteria' feel where families can eat. Like 'Denny's' but for middle class and urbanites.
- crooked-v 4y agoDenny's is already for the middle class, though?
- chrisseaton 4y ago> Denny's is already for the middle class Lol what? I can't think of anything less middle-class than a Denny's?
- ramesh31 4y ago>I can't think of anything less middle-class than a Denny's? American middle class means $40k and living paycheck to paycheck.
- akomtu 4y agoThat's shrinkflation of middle class, basically. At this pace, middle class in 50s will be your own tent under a good bridge.
- chrisseaton 4y agoIt's funny - in the UK I think we'd say the middle class is getting smaller but the standard is staying the same, while in the US you look at it as the middle class stays the same size but the standard falls. Different approach to social statistics!
- brewdad 4y agoDepends on where you live. Minimum wage workers make ~$30k a year near me. Well north of that if the are tipped since min wage is the same for tipped and untipped workers. I would never consider minimum wage middle class.
- floren 4y agoI finally picked up a frozen bag of the famed IKEA meatballs about a year ago. As a Swedish meatball enthusiast, I was excited to try them, but honestly they were pretty disgusting--spongy, weird texture, bad flavor. Are the ones served in the cafeteria different? My mother makes them every Christmas, just using ground pork and a packet of premixed seasoning, and they are far superior. To really go to the next level, https://www.themeateater.com/cook/recipes/wild-game-meatballs-recipe https://www.themeateater.com/cook/recipes/wild-game-meatball... is a solid recipe that works well with ground elk meat or pork sausage. All the meatballs I ate when I visited Sweden were fine, of course, it's just that IKEA's were bad.
- Xevi 4y agoI'm a Swede so I think I'm qualified to answer this. Yes the meatballs served at IKEA fits your description. They are really low quality meatballs.
- anitil 4y agoDo you have a recipe you can recommend? I'd love to try making some fresh
- ninjin 4y agoI feel like every Swedish family has a recipe of their own that is passed down and gently modified by each generation. Here is a link to a good “baseline” which aligns very well with my family one if you remove the sugar [1]. It is in Swedish though, but translation engines tend to do a good job with “simple” text like recipes. [1]: https://www.ica.se/recept/klassiska-kottbullar-712807 https://www.ica.se/recept/klassiska-kottbullar-712807 (Swedish) Now, I prefer to have them with boiled potatoes (some prefer mashed), lingonberries (not lingonberry jam though, just boiled gently with a tiny touch of sugar and leave the berries intact if you can), pickles (we have a family recipe for that as well), and of course creamy “brunsås” gravy. Here is a baseline recipe for the gravy [2], I have never used butter myself though and make sure to make it after the meatballs so that you can use whatever flavour you have left in the frying pan as additional stock for the sauce (this is not mentioned in the recipe – despite it being gravy – and should also remove the need to add salt and pepper). I also prefer to make the gravy thick and sticky, so that it will stick to the boiled potatoes if you want to go down that route. [2]: https://www.ica.se/recept/brunsas-720341 https://www.ica.se/recept/brunsas-720341 (Swedish) Happy cooking!
- odysseus 4y agoIKEA's food has always tasted like hospital cafeteria food/plane food to me. Really bland, low quality stuff. I'd rather get an Italian meatball sub somewhere. Or Swedish meatballs from a Swedish relative. IKEA's desserts are OK though.
- christophilus 4y agoSame. A few years ago was my first Ilea trip. I was excited to try their meatballs. They were terrible. As was their coffee (but I’m admittedly a bit of a coffee snob).
- R0b0t1 4y agoThe food was pretty good when I had it. Maybe they're sourcing from different distributors? Would be weird for a food operation of that size, but the stories here are not tracking.
- ynfnehf 4y agoI am Swedish and very much enjoy the meatballs at IKEA. They do not taste significantly worse than homemade or those from a fancy restaurant. Just as a counterpoint to all the negativity in here. (To be honest, I have never had a bad meatball. So the problem might be with me. Edit: actually, I tested plant-based meat(?)balls once. They were not good.)
- ninjin 4y agoAs a fellow Swede, I disagree. They taste just marginally better than what I would get back in school for lunch. However, I can still enjoy them for what they are and have a plate if I drop by IKEA abroad. =)
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoIn my country every morning retired boomers go to IKEA to have breakfast and they spend the entire day there. After care homes were abolished that's were they went. It's cheap, warm, safe and for some reason IKEA puts up with them.
- llampx 4y agoWhen I was in the US, they (Greatest Generation) were in the fast food places from morning onwards.
- digisign 4y agoLove the meatballs, including the veggie varieties, and enjoy the store on occasion. Even the article was decent, though a bit predictable. But, woo-wee there's dozens, perhaps sixty? javascript trackers linked on that page. Thank god for no-script. Don't think I'll be back to cnn.
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- ncmncm 4y ago"Swedish meatballs" are really Turkish meatballs. Just sayin'.
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- _Microft 4y agoThe only source for that seems to be a retracted claim of the official Swedish Twitter account. https://twitter.com/swedense/status/992396766808035329 https://twitter.com/swedense/status/992396766808035329
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoMeatballs are pretty common all over the world and many cultures have their own variants. The Swedish ones are quite similar to the ones in the rest of the Nordics, apart from their smaller size. I suspect there's as many recipies as there are grandmothers. G'Kar describes it well in Babylon 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVLkxSSvegc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVLkxSSvegc
- justsomehnguy 4y agor/unexptectedBabylon5 Though with the topic it's pretty expected.
- leobg 4y agoAlex has a series about it: https://youtu.be/JViMCRQ4f44 https://youtu.be/JViMCRQ4f44
- netsharc 4y agoWell, guess I'm making Köttbullar for dinner this week!
- silicon2401 4y agoBased on what evidence?