Wallenbergare is one of the best dishes in Swedish cuisine In my opinion. It’s pretty easy to make – but, you can’t cheat with the ingredients!
There are many stories about the origin of Wallenbergare. The most likely is that Charles Emil Hagdahl; doctor and cookbook author (19th century) made this dish as a tribute to his daughter Amalia (married to Markus Wallenberg).
Unfortunately, the restaurants cheat a lot when making this wonderful dish, some use pork meat – but it has to be veal (preferably topside) and nothing else. It has to be finely ground meat (preferably 3 times through the fine plate on the meat grinder), but if you run it in the food processor it will turn out just fine. The ingredients should be well chilled before mixing it all together and the burgers should be no more than 1 cm thick – last but not least, you only use butter to fry the burgers.
Tore Wretman (a famous Swedish chef) added some Epiche Riche to his Wallenbergers, it certainly enhances the taste – but it’s not the original recipe. I still chose to have 1/4 of a teaspoon Epiche Riche in my Wallenbergare.
Ingredients for 4 servings
400 grams of minced veal
1.5 tsp salt
1 ml (1/4 of a teaspoon white pepper
4 egg yolks
4 dl whipped cream
Breadcrumbs
Butter for frying
Please observe that all ingredients should be well chilled before mixing them in a food processor.
Method:
- Mix everything except the cream and run it a few turns in the food processor.
- Add the cream a little at a time, mix well.
- Let the mixture rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- Divide the mixture into four equal parts. Mold each part into a round “burger” – max 1 cm (0,5 inches) in thickness.
- Turn the burgers into the bread and fry it in a pan with butter. The burgers should be light in color both externally and internally.
- Serve with green peas, mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam, and melted butter.
Enjoy!
Epiche Riche: is a mixture of seasoning: 1-part ground nutmeg, 2 parts white pepper, 1-part ground allspice, and 1-part ground cloves.
