Why hello there, or should I say…Hallo? Welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where one man roams the world in a culinary safari, bagging big game, and eating large bags of food. I’m your Great White Hunter of Awkward Cultural Touchstones, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe, as implied by the name, comes to us from the Netherlands. Or maybe Holland. What’s the difference? Oh don’t worry, we’ll get into that.. The important thing is we got “meat balls” from them. And yes, those quotations are important. But if you wish to avoid the MANY TANTALIZING mysteries about these meats that I’ve laid out, you can click this link to just get the recipe. Everyone else, let’s get dangerous!

Going Double Dutch

Fun Fact: The phrase “Going Dutch” was potentially invented by the English to be propaganda. The Netherlands and England are less than 100 miles apart across the North Sea, with the River Thames’ outlet to the sea pointing DIRECTLY at the bays and inlets of The Netherlands. As such, the two were both big naval and mercantile powers back in the day, often trading with each other, and ARGUING about (well, warring about, but these things are kind of interchangeable for European powers in the 1600’s)  trade routes/trying to outbid each other. As such, the English started calling the Dutch cheap, and thus came up with the phrase “going Dutch” or giving a “Dutch treat”, to refer to when people split the bill on an activity (in much of Europe at the time, social decorum defaulted to “whoever made the invitation got the check”. ), with the obvious joke/insult being that the Dutch would “treat” you to lunch…you just had to pay for it.

The Dutch, the Scots…I think England only has ONE insult for people they don’t like, but aren’t French.

While this attestation (solid $2 word there, ain’t she?) comes from the Oxford English dictionary, it’s not fully settled. There’s evidence to it, (The nickname for alcohol as “Dutch Courage” comes from this same time period, for instance, and is probably an insult…) but there are other possible interpretations/etymologies.

Speaking of etymologies, and the English screwing us all over, why exactly do we call people from The Netherlands “Dutch”? And what’s the deal with Holland? The answer is pretty simple, but it’s easiest explained moving from the weirdest part inward, starting with “The Low Countries”. Back in the day, there was a part of Europe called The Low Countries, referring to where several large rivers from Germany and inner Europe form a delta in the low-lying regions before hitting the ocean. Hence “The Low Countries”: they’re literally the lands downhill from the people giving the name. And that’s important, because “Netherlands” or “nederlands” means “the land beneath/under”.

A land down under, is she?

So this region keeps changing hands, but ends up under German rule. Kind of. This is centuries before “Germany” exists, formally, and is actually as part of the Holy Roman Empire, which, if you didn’t know, is basically all of central Europe: Germany, Switzerland, the top of Italy, the right side of France, a lot of Poland, Austria, Hungary, Luxeumbourg, Belgium, and The Netherlands. During this time, a section of the Low Country becomes a county, in the old school “Count of X” way. Specifically, it’s the County of Holland. So down in the Low Countries, there’s these Holland people. And they start getting rich off of international trade. And they’re quasi-German, speaking a dialect of German. And the German word for “German” is, as I’ve covered before, Deutsch.

This is important, because one Emperor says “You know what, I’m calling THIS WHOLE REGION (referring to The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) as ONE thing. And we’re unifying them under one system, so we don’t have to figure out who technically should be Duke or Count or whatever next. They’re just mine, and I’m the Emperor, so I’m giving them to THIS one of my kids Also, I hear a lot of them are turning to that new-age Protestantism. We’re going to fucking cut THAT shit right out, let me tell you.”

Didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition in this discussion of the Netherlands?
Well, that’s their greatest weapon, innit?

This…didn’t go so hot. I may have failed to mention that the Holy Roman Empire was tearing itself apart at this point in history. We were DEEP in “The Hapsburgs have intermarried so much their children are mutating” territory, as well as halves of the empire deciding they wanted to do their own thing. So when the Emperor’s Spanish-ruling son got the Low Country instead of his German-ruling one, the area said ‘Yeah, but what if no?’, and waged the Eighty Year War. (This is, for some context, just after some dude named William Shakespeare is born.) This war ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which, if you don’t know that name, OH BOY. It’s a big one. It’s basically where the modern IDEA of nations, ie, lands with sole sovereign claim over their own territory, regardless of current leaders, comes from.

So the Dutch Republic becomes a country, based around this prosperous and rich county of Holland, and becomes a merchantile power, and England needs a new name for them, since they’re not the same as the other German guys anymore. So they use “Dutch”, which sounds like what they call themselves. Then the Dutch Republic got eaten by France, and broke free once Napoleon died, making The Netherlands.

So Holland is an area inside the Netherlands, where most of the biggest cities are. A Dutch person introducing themselves as from Holland is doing much the same as an American saying they’re from “New York”: it’s a more precise designation, but one that still recognizable to outsider.

Holland is notably less vertical, though.

Man, that was a hell of a journey there. Lot of etymological ground covered, a lot revealed…Oh fuck, I didn’t even START talking about the food! Oh God, how much more time is THAT going to add?

Bitter Balls of Beef

Almost no time at all. They’re called bitterballen, because they’re balls you eat with bitters. Like, the alcohol. 

Germany, England, and a couple other countries all got into putting “medicinal” herbs in alcohols, and drinking the bitter alcohols to help digestion, treat minor illnesses, and just have more interesting alcoholic options. In the Netherlands, these drinks would often be served with bittergarnituur, a series of meaty, salty, hot, and/or crunchy foods, to encourage you to drink more bitters. You might recognize this as “Bar Snacks”.

Yes, this is basically “Mozzarella sticks, meat edition”.

Indeed, Bitterballen are basically just Fried balls of Beef stew (a common pub offering). Indeed, more specifically, they’re just smaller forms of kroketten, or ‘croquettes’. So a some bar-owner just had a half batch of croquette mix left, and made mini-versions to hand out.

Thus, the recipe can technically be made a variety of ways, as long as you start with “something that resembles beef stew”. Which…mine only barely does, but it’s a hell of an adventure. Let’s tackle it.

Mixing Mini Meatballs

My recipe is adapted from one by Jo Cooks, the first Google result when you search for Bitterballen. (What? I spent all my damn research time on the Peace of Westphalia. Also, this one was weird enough to interest me.) And it’s quite something.

The big visual difference between this recipe and a more traditional beef stew is how impressively thickened the mixture is. See, I’ve noted (in the FIRST Quick Tip of the site), that most people under-flour their roux, putting a 1 to 1 ratio, while, in actuality, a ‘true’ roux starts somewhere closer to 2 parts flour to 1 part butter.  So, after gradually shaking in all the flour to the molten butter, THIS is what you get:

Either that, or I’m trying to saute beach sand.

And yes, that does look more like un-cooked cookie dough than a standard roux. But where it gets really weird is in the next step. See, the standard guidelines for roux usage are: for each 4 cups of liquid you’re thickening, you add 3 ounces of roux for a light sauce/gravy, 4 ounces for a medium, and 6 ounces for a thick one.

This recipe uses SIXTEEN ounces of Roux (8 ounces butter, 8 ounces flour) for THREE cups of liquid. That is 3 and a Half times THICKER than thick. Which, to use modern parlance, I believe makes it thicccc (the increase from “ck” to “c” is a half step on the thic-ness scale.) As such, the mixture that results looks more like paste than food.

Adding three cups of dark brown beef water didn’t CHANGE THE COLOR, that’s how little it modified the mixture.

To your grout mixture, you’re going to add some controversial and complicated ingredients. Firstly, and this is where we step aside from the original recipe, I started with beef broth, and then I added an additional tablespoon of beef bouillion paste, because I personally felt that the mixture wasn’t going to be sufficiently beefy.  To that, you add a minced onion, raw ground beef, and thym- Hold on.  …Parsley. This recipe uses PARSLEY. Why did I think it needed thyme? I have entirely the wrong herbage for this. Ummm. That’s fine, really. I’m already making a richer base, and I used red onion instead of white onion, because I figured a little extra pungency would fit into that better. So, sure, let’s riff even more. Change the onion, the herb, and the sauce.

Honestly, doesn’t look all that different.

Stir all of that, with some raw ground beef, into the hot grout-paste. And let it simmer for a minute or two as you gather some salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Yes, nutmeg. I don’t know why, but this is pretty widely accepted to be a part of the Dutch flavor for it. Mix in those spices, taste the mixture (that you just put raw beef in, noice), and then pour it into a bowl, for phase 2. See, you need this to cool down, and set up, so that you can ball it out for frying later. So pop it in a bowl, pop that bowl in the fridge, and wait to fix it tomorrow. Oh yeah, this is a multiple day recipe. So you’ll finish it tomorrow.

Well, not TOMORROW “tomorrow”. I was pretty busy the next day. That’s when Nate convinced me I had to make the Cornbread for last week’s recipe, and we had to pop out to see Macbeth, so I decided to put it off a couple days.  And I have stuff I do on Sundays…Monday…Tuesdays…Wednesday I couldn’t convince anyone to help me make it…So when I got around to looking at it again A WEEK later, I couldn’t be CERTAIN it hadn’t gone bad. There was a weird bit of green to the mix. Maybe that was the herbs, but I decided better not to risk it, since the beef was so briefly cooked.

THUS, I had to START OVER this last Saturday, making the whole mix again. THIS time, however, I made a couple changes: I used beef STOCK instead of beef broth, to up the “stew” flavor”, and this time I actually brought parsley.

BAM. Got some green up in this.

THIS batch I DID tackled “tomorrow” tomorrow…kind of. See, it turns out, this is, to use the scientific term, a FUCK TON of bitterballen. Specifically, it makes SIXTY 1 inch balls. And it turns out that dredging (rolling in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs) even 30 balls took like, 20 minutes.

It takes a lot of hands-on work to get these balls ready.
wait.

So we decided to only make half the batch for this run. We also decided to use all the oil in the house, because no one told me our neutral oil stores were so low. Which, in retrospect, I was almost certainly the guy in charge the last 3 times we deep-fried, so I suppose I’m the guy I’m mad at. Get your oil to 375, cook in batches for 4-5 minutes, and pull them when they’re nicely browned and bobbing toward the top of the oil.

Fried crusts are appealing, in theory, but visually not super interesting.

And they’re done. You want to wait a COUPLE minutes before eating, as they’re at like, 190 degrees inside right now (I know, because I was worried about whether or not the beef was fully cooked, so I checked with a thermometer.) . I also found that my personal balls (ha) had a weak spot (less ha) or two in the breading, which actually served as a great point to bite into the balls, opening up their insides to the air.

Which do not LOOK much more impressive.

And the results are pretty dang good. It’s not quite as beefy as I could hope, but what it is is savory, warm, and quite enjoyable. The traditional accompaniment is spicy mustard, and it definitely completes the taste. Of the just under 30 balls we cooked today, I brought 14 to a rehearsal, and everyone there spoke highly of them. Personally, I think this recipe works a lot better in a more broken-up way: take an hour to make the filling one day, then a day or two later spend another hour rolling and breading the balls, and either have someone frying as you finish rolling, or roll them in the morning, take an hour or two break, and then come back and fry them. It’s weird, every step was pretty low-key, and enjoyable, but doing the roll then the frying took a fair bit of time, and was a little frustrating.  It’s a great recipe, people love it, it’s very cool and straightforward, it’s just a LITTLE fiddly. So it makes perfect sense why it works so well at a restaurant/pub setting:  they can split the three tasks between different cooks or shifts, pre-making the balls to fry later. But I highly recommend checking it out this winter season.

As ever, we couldn’t do what we do without the support of our Patreon supporters, who I know I’m thankful for. I’m also thankful for all our friends who share our posts on social media, whether Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. OH CRAP. I had a post I wanted to put on Instagram. I should do that.

THURSDAY: IT’S THANKSGIVING, SO WE TALK ABOUT ANOTHER HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

MONDAY: I’M GONNA FRY MORE MEAT! WE MAKE A SOUTHERN SANDWICH,

RECIPE

Bitterballen

The Interior Mix

8 tbsp butter unsalted (1 stick)

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 cups beef stock

1 tbsp beef bouillon

2 tbsp fresh parsley (or other herb), chopped

1 small onion, or half a large onion, minced

1 lb ground beef

1 tsp salt

2 tsp black pepper

½  tsp nutmeg

For Breading

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3 eggs beaten

1 cup Panko breadcrumbs

vegetable oil for frying

Preparation

1. In a large skillet melt the butter over medium-high heat. When the butter has melted completely, add the 1 cup of flour, a bit at a time, whisking it, it will turn into a thick dough-like paste.  Slowly stir or whisk in the beef stock, it should fully incorporate into the roux. The gravy should be smooth but still quite thick. Simmer the gravy for a couple minutes then add the parsley, onion, and ground beef, stir well. Season with the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary.

2. Transfer the meat mixture to a Tupperware container and refrigerate for several hours until the gravy has solidified. I refrigerated mine overnight, but 3 or 4 hours should suffice.

3. Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper, and bring out three plates. In one plate add the flour, in another plate add the eggs and the last plate the bread crumbs.

4. Shape the meat mixture into 1 inch balls. (a small ice cream scoop will make this easier) Roll the balls first through flour, then eggs, then finally bread crumbs. Place these meatballs on the other prepared baking sheet. Once completed, place the baking sheet with the meatballs in the fridge until ready to fry.

5. In a large Dutch oven, skillet or deep fryer, add about 2 inches of oil. Heat the oil up to 375 F degrees. Fry the meatballs 5-6 at a time until golden brown, should take about 4 or 5 minutes. If you have enough oil in your fryer the meatballs will float to the top when done.  Continue until done with all the meatballs. In between batches you might have to clean the oil with a slotted spoon of all the leftover fried bits from the meatballs.

6. Serve with spicy brown or stone-ground mustard.