I absolutely love IKEA's Swedish meatballs 🇸🇪

Ikea is a meatball company that also sells furniture
- VW is a sausage company masquerading as a car manufacturer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_currywurst

I liked them better when they still contained horse meat.
- I would 100% eat those. Even more likely to if they officially advertised them as being made from horse.
- Horse meat is delicious and idgaf what all the crazy horse girls say

Me too. Quick story time. It was the day before COVID lockdown. My now wife and I had just moved in together the day before and were at IKEA buying furniture for our new apartment. Being at IKEA, knowing the new fridge and freezer at home were empty, and having poor impulse control, I threw three bags of frozen meetballs with sauce and fixings into the cart near checkout.
The following day lockdown was announced with all restaurants to be closed, and stores to enforce limited occupancy with lines down the block waiting to get in. We feasted the first two weeks.
- It was all I could do not to buy a couple bags of the meatballs and gravy at the checkout. Something about the flavor, don't know what it is but I was stuffed after 16 meatballs and STILL wanted to eat more.

Their plant based meatballs are good too. I pan fry them then toss them into a slow cooker with some bachans barbecue sauce, green onion, and sesame seeds for parties and potlucks.
- Bachans Japanese BBQ is so good. Getting expensive. But damn it's delicious.

Then you need to make proper Swedish meatballs. IKEA's stuff doesn't compare.
- Do you have an authentic recipe? It's always hard on the web to find out which "true 100% reals straight from grandma" recipes are the right ones.
  
  Niklas Ekstedt's recipe is authentic, Swedish, and tasty AF. If you can't find venison, beef will do.
  EDIT: I imagine this is one of those things where there are 1,000's of different "proper" recipes. I shared this one as the guy who wrote it is Swedish, so I thought there must be some authenticity there, and I've made it, so can testify that it's good. Not saying it's the best or the most authentic, so slightly confused by the commenters saying it's somehow wrong?
  
  I improved the taste of my version a lot by making my own Piffi Allkrydda mixture fur the sauce. Its a spice mixture that goes really well with the taste of the berries!

Did have them a week back. But IKEA is to Swedish cuisine what Taco bell is to Mexican.
- Nah but my home made meatballs with proper mashed potatoes, pickled cucumber, lingon rawstir (not jam) with 60% lingon, cream sauce with a kick ( using mango chutney instead of classic black current jelly) with sage and rosemary definitely is. :)
- Ikea really managed to pull off a magnificent marketing stunt.
  They have the same furniture quality that you can get off of Amazon, Wayfair, or Walmart but you have to go get it out of their warehouse and deal with the logistics of getting it to your house. But they hand out some meatballs and give everything funky Swedish names; so people get the impression that it's a fancy European experience.
  China is the single largest manufacturer of Ikea products. I found that when I went directly to the source, I could get the same item cheaper or a better item at the same price. That deal is likely to die with the new tariff regime but that same regime will have similar impacts on Ikea.
  
  IKEA started delivering furniture a long time ago, at least in Ontario.

Their vegetarian hot dogs are worth a try. I only got one because it was cheaper than a standard hot dog, but was surprised how much I loved the taste.
- Their veggie dogs (not meat like, just veggies) were surprisingly good! I assumed the regular hot dog would be similarly good but it was hands down the worst hot dog I have had in my life.
- Next time I go I promised myself I would try some of the plant meatballs instead.
  
  The plant balls are amazing. Can't say how they compare as I've never had the meat ones, but they're tasty and savoury and delicious.
- Note that there are two similar sounding products. A friend tried the plant balls and enjoyed them, but then bought the bag of vegetables balls to take home and was disappointed
  https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/huvudroll-plant-balls-frozen-90508221/
  https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/huvudroll-vegetable-balls-frozen-70487795/
- They are fucking ugly though which makes the first bite difficult. Good after that.

Do they have lunch there?
- They do. The one near me has a whole menu that changes regularly, aside from a few permanent options. Some of the items can be very good.
  It's a whole cafeteria setup with trays and a line with workers dishing out different things. Then you pay at the end of the line.

They haven’t been as nice since they took the horse out.

IKEA breakfasts slap.
- Didn't know they had breakfast!

Homemade
- This photo has so little colour it's almost monochrome.
  
  I've made much better, these ones don't have much colour because I made them in bulk to freeze. It was the only picture I had of my balls tho
- I can't believe you would just post a pic of your balls like that

With lingamberries yum!
- Ligmaberries
  
  ligma balls

Do you get a Swedish flag on those in the states?
- Absolutely. This is the store in Tempe, Arizona.

Their vegan meatballs are also excellent.

Twice now on my ikea trips the restaurant has been so jampacked that I could not fit even if I shot myself in there with a cannon. ◕︵◕
- Find yourself a minimalistic-yet-sturdy bench from some nearby display space and use it as a battering ram to force your way to the food.
  EDIT: Apparently they sell bags of frozen official meatballs that you can do yourself:
  https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/meat-25217/
  EDIT2: Apparently despite the fact that they deliver the furniture, they won't deliver the frozen meatballs. You have to go to the store for them. I guess just make one large trip.
  
  They probably deliver many orders on one trip and it would require a truck with a refrigerated box to be up to food safety standards.
  
  The meatballs were actually located right before the main checkouts. 2 lb bags of regular or chicken for $15 each. Very tempting but I had already gone last month, bought items frivolously, and did the same thing again today. By the time I got to the end I knew I had to just shut it down, pay and get out of there. Got 3x chocolate bars for $5 though. Couldn't help it.
- It was pretty packed today - went there around lunchtime, but the line moved fairly quickly and we were at the checkout in maybe 15-20 mins. There are some premade items already on plates right at the start of the line and I'd imagine if you just wanted one or two of those you could skip past the people in front of you waiting to be served meatballs or whatnot and checkout faster.

They got the vegan option too. If you don't want to think about the poor horse that gave his life for you, go eat vegan stuff. Often times vegan options are just a bridge. There are other ways to eating healthy nutritious foods.
- The vegan alternative tastes terrible.
  And the meatballs are a blend of beef and pork in most countries. In Muslim places it's beef with chicken, in Sweden you sometimes get moose variants for special occasions.
  Horse is not typically used for meatballs since the meat is too lean, you need fat as a binding agent and to prevent it from drying out.
  
  I disagree - I thought the vegan ones were fine! Cheapest meal out I'd had in a long time. They also had a lots of beds in their restaurant, so I could relax and let my food go down on-site.
  
  The horse joke was a reference to the massive recall a decade ago, when they found horse meat in their balls and sausages.
  Also, as a non vegan, I find the veg balls to be as good as their meat ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ As long as one doesn't expect it to taste anything like meat..

The nearest IKEA to me is about ~~5,000~~ 2500 miles away. This picture makes me feel all of them.
Edit: I failed to search the actual mileage between my home and the nearest IKEA before posting.
- Wat. Are you in the South Pole?
  
  Nah. Hawai’i. But I didn’t search the correct mileage before I posted. It’s half that. (But feels like 5k when I think about that lingonberry sauce.)

Anglais Ikea has marketed fecal-contaminated horse meatballs and chocolate pies. Bon appétit!
- We in the US have gotten used to eating shit since January. Politics aside, I also still eat Chipotle.

I need to make a trek to the giant blue box. Lingonberry Master Race!
Don't @ me cranberry peasants.

You can buy Swedish meatballs at IEKA??????
- U been living under a rock or something? Fuck yes you can. They even have vegan (maybe vegetarian) ones too, and chicken Strips for kids and a few other things. Their restaurant is not bad, sometimes I'll take the kids there to get something I could easily grab at Walmart/ target just to get some swedish meatballs.
  
  Hey that's a bit rude there :<
  But yeah I've never seen meatballs at Ikea. Very cool. Thanks for sharing :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v2Ti8IoQ_M

So good! But I always think they might have just a little bit of horse in them. 🐎

Ohh it's been long time i went there and had their meatball. I just went there to buy their currypuff.
- I didn't see that on the menu! Which country?
  
  Malaysia! They have local food menu like fried flat noodle and nasi lemak and curry noodle, i assume every country have local food as their special as well

Only until you have watched Sebastian Lege analyzing it. Amazing documentation.

Super Meatballs! 07

I need to go back to IKEA. But I need to make my own too.

With some jam on the side

I agree with you ma'am. It's quite pleasant actually.

I love blocking people that post stuff like this.
- Wait aren't you in the foodporn community? Is this not the purpose, to post pictures of food that the OP finds delicious? Either you're very lost or you misinterpreted the "porn" part of the community name and wanted the mashed potatoes to take their pants off.
  Surely you don't simply disagree that it's delicious, because you're blocking them. Even a downvote isn't appropriate for a well framed and high quality photo of food that you personally don't enjoy, but is enjoyed by many. In that case a user would simply not upvote. So that can't be it.
  
  Look at their comment history. Par for the course. They don’t seem to have a positive comment for anything.
  
  I am indeed in the food porn community and generally enjoy it. I said something negative about something as stupid as mass-produced meatballs in consumer market that doesn't even operate as a restaurant. There's virtually no difference between this and posting a picture of a crunchwrap. Hit me up with your sous videes and your pan sauces and your other things that you actually do that are impressive. Not your shopping trips.
- Lol ok
- Mutual I'm sure