Bavarian Meatballs – Fleischpflanzerl Recipe
Author:
Thomas Sixt is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger.
Here he shares recipes, answers cooking questions and helps with cooking.
Today I present my Fleischpflanzerl Bavarian Meatballs Recipe from Bavaria to you.
This is a meatballs recipe with Koch-Wiki, a detailed article with lots of information and tips and a bit of dialect.
Few would immediately admit that meatballs with potato salad are a favorite dish.
This is due to the lack of a glamour image.
Too often the wonderful preparation is banally and lovelessly outside the Bavarian empire.
Close relatives are koettbullar which are Swedish meatballs, minced loafs (Austrian) and French boulettes.
Please see all this with a smile, with me the Bavarian pride is going through ….
The meatballs on the picture are especially popular and loved by my guests.
It is not uncommon that my meatballs are directly “stolen” from the pan.I wish you a lot of fun while tasting and trying out.
Please share this article with your friends, thank you!
Table of Contents
- 1. Recipe for Bavarian Meatballs
- 2. Nutritional Values
- 3. Where does the Name “Fleischpflanzerl” for Bavarian Meatballs come from?
- 4. Meatball Tips from Bavarian Star Kitchen
- 5. Meatballs the Final Tips
- 6. Cooking Meatballs in the Thermomix Wondermixer?
- 7. Meatballs in the Oven
- 8. Meatballs with Sauce
- 9. Bavarian Meatballs Side Dishes
- 10. Other interesting Recipes with Minced Meat
1. Recipe for Bavarian Meatballs
A recipe from a real Bavarian Chef, who loves the Fleischpflanzerl – meatballs.
Notice my tips after the recipe.
Bavarian Meatballs
Cooked, photographed and written down by chef Thomas Sixt.
Simple guide for preparing Bavarian meatballs.
Ingredients
| 250-300 | g | minced meat (pork/beef or veal) |
| 1 | pc | onion |
| 1/2 | pc | garlic |
| 10 | g | butter |
| 150-180 | ml | Milch |
| 2 | pinch | Salt |
| 1 | pinch | black pepper |
| 1 | pinch | nutmeg |
| 1 | pinch | Cayenne pepper |
| 2 | pc | rolls |
| 1/2 | bunch | Parsley |
| 1 | tbs | majoram |
| 1 | pc | chicken egg |
| 2 | tsp | Dijon mustard (or other mustard medium hot) |
| 2-3 | tbs | Sunflower oil |
| 150 | ml | veal stock (or veal Stock, veal sauce, veal jus) |
Instruction
Prepare minced meat
Place the fresh minced meat from the butcher in a large bowl.
The bowl should be big enough so that the other ingredients can be added and you can later knead the mixture well with your hands.
Onions and garlic
Cut the onion and garlic in half, peel, finely dice.
Sauté diced onion and garlic
Sauté garlic and onion cubes with butter in a pot until colorless.
Add fresh milk and bring to the boil, let stand for 10 minutes, season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper.
Soak bread rolls
Fresh baker’s rolls finely dice and pour hot milk to soak.
-> Original is white bread or roll or Kaisersemmel.
-> The bread cubes should just soak up with milk.
Prepare meatball mixture
Provide a large bowl to prepare the minced meat mixture.
-> Put the minced meat in the bowl
-> Finely chop the washed parsley and add to it.
-> Season with marjoram, egg, medium hot mustard and salt.
Supplement minced meat
-> The cooled, prepared onion and garlic cubes
and the
-> Squeezed, tempered bread cubes
add to the meatballs mixture.
Mix meatball mixture
Next, season the meatball mixture with salt and pepper and mix well with your hands.
Meatballs portion
Portion out evenly sized meatballs:
-> Use an ice cream scoop portioner or a small ladle.
-> Pan fry a sample meatball and adjust seasoning if necessary.
-> Portion the entire ground meat mixture and place the portions on a baking sheet.
-> Form nice patties with your hands, moistened with cold water.
Roast and serve
Slowly fry the meatballs on both sides in the pan with a little sunflower oil.
-> Optionally glaze with veal jus in the hot pan shortly before serving.
Or arrange directly from the pan and serve with garnishes.
Wish you a good appetite!
Courses
Cousine
Keyword
2. Nutritional Values
Attention: without potato salad calculated!
3. Where does the Name “Fleischpflanzerl” for Bavarian Meatballs come from?
The name for Fleischpflanzerl comes from the medieval term “Pfannzelten”.
Flat cakes were called “tents”. This later became the “pflanzerl” in the name.
“Fleisch” is then just the German word for meat.
In Austria these are called “minced loafs” or “meatballs”.
In Germany we know similar preparations which differ regionally by small things with the ingredients and the preparation.
These known as “Buletten” or “Frikadellen” are all meatballs.
You may also have a look at Wikipedia, there is a good source for the naming.
Find another crazy recipe for meatballs with muesli coat and homemade ketchup
4. Meatball Tips from Bavarian Star Kitchen
As a Bavarian and professional I am permitted to talk about Fleischpflanzerl and tell you the secrets of the Bavarian super meatballs.
The most important thing about Bavarian Fleischpflanzerl is the fresh preparation.
The right meat (only organic half beef and half pork), the right mustard (medium-hot from Develey), clever baker’s rolls, a fresh milk and herbs from the garden.
The meatballs should en up with a fluffy consistency. The spices need to be sparingly varied in order to create a balanced taste experience.
In my recipe for meatballs, onion, garlic and parsley are not turned through the mincer.
I like it when the meatballs have more structure in the mouth feeling and I achieve this by cutting the aforementioned ingredients very finely and cubically.
At Alfons Schuhbeck we always prepared the meatballs with veal sausage in addition.
In general, a calf’s meatball is the best meatball of all, but simply not the traditional variant for a Bavarian.
If you still want to fine-tune it and show off a bit, then you’ll just make Fleischpflanzerl out of veal minced meat.
Women, if they eat meat, love meatballs made of pure veal. Veal is the insider’s tip for men.
With these veal-meatballs you can twist the head of every woman, except of Sushi-lady, who may not be impressed.
If you’re ever in Vienna, please go eat a veal butter schnitzel at Restaurant Eckel in the 19th district.
This is the best veal butter schnitzel in town!
Back to Bavaria and to Alfons Schuhbeck’s insider tip:
I learned at Alfons, that he often called the meatballs “Laiberl” because he had so many guest chefs from Austria, who are using this expression.
The meatballs à la Schubeck become better when you glaze them before serving in a veal jus or veal sauce.
That is a force and even makes Manfed Kohnke and Karl Hohnelohe happy.
Such a glazed meatballs on potato salad was worth 19 Gault Millau points before the times of molecular cuisine and Mikado Staberl Ikebana cuisine, in the 90s!
The ennoblement comes from glazing in calf jus.
The coating with this meat juice creates the absolute bang effect and even makes Carpaccio & Truffles look old.
5. Meatballs the Final Tips
For the end I’m still saving some chef tips for the hard-working readers, who will hold out until the end, here please:
5.1. Meatballs and Breadcrumbs
Avoid adding breadcrumbs if possible. They are mentioned in many recipes but have the opposite effect to what we want for a good meatballs.
Meatballs should be soft and a little fluffy. Breadcrumbs bind strongly, but make the meatballs hard. If you express the rolls well after soaking them in the milk, you will usually achieve enough binding.
If the meatballs mixture seems to be too soft, try a roast, if it is not enough, add a little breadcrumbs to the raw meat mixture and let it rest for a few minutes.
5.2 Glaze Meatballs with Sauce
When glazing, put the sauce in the hot pan. Use a calf jus. The heat reduces the sauce slightly.
The taste is intensified and the food to be cooked, in this case the meatballs, can be glazed with the boiled sauce.
This variant promises a great taste experience.
5.3 Prepare Meatballs: Onions and Garlic
The sweated onions and the soaked rolls as well as parsley and garlic are turned in some preparations by the mincer. It’s a matter of taste.
In my preparation it is important to cut the ingredients finely and evenly cut with a knife so that the minced meat mass binds well.
6. Cooking Meatballs in the Thermomix Wondermixer?
Everyone has nowadays a Thermomix(er), even my aunt in Lower Bavaria is raving about it.
The advantage of preparing meatballs in the Thermomix is not plausible to me.
I don’t find the Thermomix bad, it’s also in my kitchen (cheap Porsche substitute for cooking enthusiasts), but I prefer to make the meatballs by hand.
What’s the matter with you? Because cleaning the shaker is too much work for me in this case.
In addition, the meat likes to stick to the knife at the bottom or it is not evenly enough mixed.
You have to feel the mass of the meatballs with your hands, only then will they become fluffy and delicate!
Let’s do the math together quickly:
For the meatballs, traditionally made, you need a knife, a board, a bowl, a pot.
These are four tools.
If you make the meatballs in the Thermomix, you also need additionally the board and the knife.
A bowl is also needed because you have to decant either the onion cubes or the parsley (always chopped beforehand in the Thermomix) once.
So it’s more complicated with the Thermomixer and you come up?
Wait a minute:
1. cup, 2. knife, 3. lower part, 4. lid, 5. small plastic thing on top, 6. the device itself.
That’s nine pieces of work to clean with the knife and bowl after the terrific Thermomix meatplant action.
Nine! Four working parts, I don’t make meatballs in the Thermomix, it’s much too much to rinse off!
7. Meatballs in the Oven
You can also make your meatballs in the oven:
Put the shaped meatballs on an oiled baking tray, nice next to each other with distance, it is not cuddling, and do not exaggerate it with the heat.
If the heat is too high, the planters rise like a cake and then look like shapeless dumplings.
Preheat the oven and at 150°C, place the beautifully shaped meatballs on the tray and cook longer, that’s just right!
I personally prefer to fry the meatballs in the pan, it tastes better to me!
Fry the meatballs in the pan, they’ll just get better!
Tip from Chef Thomas Sixt
8. Meatballs with Sauce
Those who take the sauce seriously will serve their meatballs with a real veal jus or with another good gravy.
The sauce with the Pflanzerl must be a good one, otherwise the sauce will flatten the taste of the Pflanzerl.
Pork roast sauce would be a recommendation!
I don’t recommend cream sauce, you can eat it at Ikea, in the form of swedish meatballs named Koettbullar with sauce.
There are peas in it too. Swedish flawless but Bavarian a No-Go. The BMW remains a joy to drive, the Volvo the safest car in the world, the same with the Fleischpflanzerl and the Köttbullar.
Both preparations should remain true to themselves in the selection of the side dishes.
Meatballs with potato salad – Köttbullar with peas – it can stay that way!
Tip from Chef Thomas Sixt
9. Bavarian Meatballs Side Dishes
The Bavarian traditionally eats a potato salad with the Fleischpflanzerl, which I discuss in the next paragraph and imagine a simple potato salad.
More good potato salad varieties can be found elsewhere in my blog.
You can also serve meatballs with parsley potatoes or mashed potatoes.
But please don’t forget the sauce, otherwise it will be a dry matter.
To see above, a meatballs on barrel cabbage, if the cabbage is fresh, then I cannot go past it and make immediately finest meatballs to it.
9.1 Recipe for easy Potato Salad
For 4 portions:
- Peel approx. 300 g salad potatoes and cut into 5 mm thick slices.
- Potato slices are brought to the boil with 250 ml chicken broth or vegetable broth in a pot.
- The potato slices must be covered with liquid, if necessary add some water.
- Cook the potato slices until firm to soft.
- In the last 5 minutes add a finely diced onion.
- Next pour off the stock and place the potato slices with the onion cubes in a bowl.
- Sprinkle the hot potatoes with a tablespoon of brown sugar.
- Add 3-4 tbsp white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, 1 tsp Develey mustard and mix.
- Let the potato salad steep for about 15 minutes, then finish with 2 tbsp sunflower oil and 1/2 bunch of freshly chopped parsley.
By the way, there is a detail article on Bavarian potato salad, where you can find lots of information and tips and also help on the right potato variety for potato salad.
9.2 Pimp the Bavarian Potato Salad
The potato salad can be combined with cucumber slices, endive salad, bog salad or green salad.
Cucumbers should be cut into thin slices and marinated with salt for 15 minutes before mixing.
This removes some water and the potato salad tastes good.
Always fold in leaf salads shortly before serving, cleaned bite-sized, washed and centrifuged. Post salad wash!
If lamb’s lettuce (contribution lamb´s lettuce wash) is added, some pumpkin seed oil can be added (but is Austrian/Styrian).
Another variation for potato salad is with herbs or basil pesto. Simply mix 2-3 tablespoons of freshly prepared pesto with the salad.
Basil is very refreshing and pleases the palate. Of course you have deviated a bit from the Bavarian cuisine.
But this shows that the Bavarian in the leather trousers is pretty flexible – like an Italian.
As an alternative to the pesto with basil, I recommend a Bavarian herb pesto (across the garden, what you can find) or a homemade wild garlic pesto!
10. Other interesting Recipes with Minced Meat
Muesli Meatballs, Exciting Recipe With Video
Minced Meat Sauce Recipe in Two Variants, with and without Animal
Moussaka Recipe
German Frikadelle Meatballs Recipe
German Meatloaf Recipe
Meatballs in Sauce Königsberger Original Recipe
Meatloaf Recipe for German wrong Hare with Egg Filling
Swedish Meatballs Köttbullar Recipe
Spaghetti Bolognese Recipe
Beef Tartare Recipe
Comments, Cooking Questions and Answers
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