Use Leftover Roast for German Frikadellen

Similar to our American hamburgers, German frikadellen are flat and pan fried. They are also a close cousin to our meatloaf because they have a variety of herbs and spices and use milk, eggs, and breadcrumbs as a binder.

Ingredients Use Up Leftovers

Traditional frikadellen use up leftover meat, traditionally veal or lamb, but beef and pork are now common in recipes. It is the ultimate “remake” meal combining leftover meat with wet bread or bread crumbs, eggs, onion, mustard and herbs and spices.

All of these ingredients are mixed together then formed into patties and pan-fried. If you don’t have leftover roast, ground meat – leftover or freshly cooked – works just as well to make these into a fast evening meal.

My recipe calls for

• ground beef and pork
• breadcrumbs soaked in milk
• grated onion
• hot German mustard – Thomy and Löwensenf are my favorite
• mustard powder
• dried marjoram, parsley and dill
• salt and white pepper
• an egg

Substitutions

Mustard: Depending on where you live, German mustard might be hard to find. You can substitute Dijon mustard or any hot mustard in its place. You can also buy various German mustards online. Click the images below to shop Amazon.

Meat: While I make frikadellen using ground beef and pork, traditional recipes call for leftover meat. Roast beef, veal, pork, lamb, and venison are all good options. Chop your leftover meat into a fine dice before combining with other ingredients.

Onion: I grate my onion on a micro plane grater so it is a very fine consistency. You can also substitute 1 teaspoon onion powder or 2 teaspoons dried minced onion.

Herbs and spices: Frikadellen recipes call for many different herbs and spices and some only call for salt and pepper. Interchange these as you prefer. I have seen recipes with allspice and nutmeg in addition to herbs like parsley or dill. The ideas is to make this your own for you and your family to enjoy.

Add Mashed Potatoes

Many Americanized frikadellen recipes from the mid-20th century include mashed potatoes. When I first read these recipes, it seemed somewhat odd. However, the addition of mashed potatoes stretches the recipe and removes the need for bread or breadcrumbs.

Combine equal amounts of mashed potatoes and leftover chopped meat – 2 cups each is ideal for a family of four. Add 1 egg, 1-2 teaspoons of dried herbs, salt, pepper, and stir together until everything is combined. Follow the recipe below to pan-fry the meat patties.

Make it a Meatloaf

I use this same recipe to make meatloaf because I prefer the flavor over the more Italian-style meatloaf I grew up on. I don’t change much other than to add Worcestershire sauce and a quarter-cup more milk for moisture.

You can bake this in a standard meatloaf pan at 350°F for about an hour or until the center reads 165°F. Let the meatloaf rest for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

A Traditional German Recipe

There are recipes for frikadellen in American newspapers as far back as the late 1800s. Recipes first appear in German language newspapers then, somewhere in the 19-teens, recipes begin to appear in newspapers printed in English as well as recipe booklets.

These recipes are basic and instruct homemakers to combine leftover chopped meat with bacon fat, onion, and bread that has been soaked in water or milk. Sometimes herbs and spices are added. Some recipes instruct rolling the patties in flour or breadcrumbs before frying. Most include added fat which would help keep the patties moist when using precooked meat.

The below clip is from the December 12, 1907 Scranton, Pennsylvania, Wochenblatt – Weekly Paper. The column is titled “For the Kitchen” with a recipe for “Roast Veal Meatballs”.

The recipe isn’t much different than others I’ve seen except for the addition of anchovies.

Now for the fun part… I sent this to a German friend who struggled, as did I, to read the old typeface. After identifying the typeface as “Walbaum Fraktur”, several hours of playing match-game, and a few messages, we managed to get a somewhat loose translation.

And I thought old English typefaces were hard to read! I learned a lot, however.

Take a good piece of leftover roast veal, make two or three eggs with the necessary butter into a soft scrambled egg and chop this together with the roast very finely. Then you mix in some scraped bacon (as in bacon fat scrapped from a brick), salt, chopped anchovies, onions, two raw eggs, grated rolls and rusks, stir everything together well and for a long time, form flat cutlets from them, bread them with egg and roll, bake them in butter. Serve them in a mushroom sauce, but if you don’t pour over, you just serve alongside. They can also be used to garnish vegetables.

December 12, 1907 Scranton Wochenblatt

The Scranton Wochenblatt was published from 1865 to 1918. Like many of its counterparts, the paper was forced to cease publication amidst anti-German sentiment across the U.S. that resulted from WWI.

Americanized Fricadellons

As with many cultural recipes, there comes a time when we, as Americans, tend to spin off into something a bit less traditional. Such is the case with frikadellen. By the time we survived two world wars, anything German had gone out of favor. We renamed German foods during the world wars so we’d be less “German” while eating them. But… that’s a whole other conversation.

This anti-German sentiment is also why my German grandma (my mom’s mom) called us Dutch. My dad was also raised in a household that largely denied it’s German heritage.

Grandma wouldn’t cook German meals, although it came out a lot in the way she cooked and ingredients she used. She wouldn’t speak German even though she could, and she never really discussed being German… even though she was the first in her family to marry outside the German community where we lived.

But, I digress.

In 1950, when my Grandma was 27 years old, the Culinary Arts Institute published “500 Delicious Dishes from Leftovers”.

Guess what recipe is on page 20?

Yep – “Fricadellons with Noodles”.

So, I’ll not even guess why we changed the spelling, but I do see the “c” in place of the “k” frequently in American recipes. Ultimately, this just botches the German language. When you search for recipes online today, you’ll see the proper spelling.

This recipe, like many others, calls for leftover meat. Instead of roast veal or lamb, however, it’s leftover ground meat. The rest is very similar to the traditional recipes printed in old newspapers.

There is a variation for a “ring mold” which was popular in the 1950s. This would essentially have resulted in a meatloaf shaped like a wreath.

I find it ironic that this variation is in the recipe booklet because I do the same thing… just in a standard meatloaf pan. It makes a tasty meatloaf and even tastier meatloaf sandwich the next day for lunch!

Food Safety and Cooking Tips

Just a few food safety and cooking tips to keep in mind while cooking frikadellen

• Cook beef to a minimum internal temperature of 165°F (74°C)
• When working with raw meat, either wear food-safe gloves that you can toss in the trash or wash your hands before touching anything else.
• Use a food scale if you want to check the weight of each patty. This will ensure you have patties that are similar in size. Place plastic wrap over the scale or use a small plate to set your meat on to keep the scale clean. Just remember to use the tare function to zero out the weight after place in plate on the scale.
• Anytime you pan fry food, you may experience “pops” from fat or oil that is in the pan. Be sure to wear an apron to protect clothing and be watchful of your food. Don’t walk away from it.

See more guidelines at USDA.gov.