Meatballs for the Christmas buffet – small, round and ready long before Christmas Eve

Allspice in the mixture, a tray in the oven and a bag in the freezer

5–6 servings on the Christmas buffet
Time: 30 min + 10–12 min in the oven
Difficulty: Easy
11 ingredients
9 steps

Photo: Håkan Dahlström, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

On the Saturday after the first Sunday of Advent, three baking trays lined with baking paper sit on the kitchen table. Someone rolls the balls too big, someone too small, and someone has already asked if they can taste the mixture (the answer is no – more on that further down). An hour later there are around thirty small meatballs in the freezer, and one of the hot dishes for the Christmas buffet is done three weeks before Christmas Eve.

Meatballs on the Christmas buffet aren't the same dish as everyday meatballs with mashed potatoes. They're smaller, served without sauce and usually have allspice in the mixture, so they smell a little of Christmas. You should be able to pick them up with your fingers, they should sit nicely next to the red cabbage and the ham, and they should taste just as good lukewarm as hot. This page is about exactly those. If you're looking for the everyday dinner with brown gravy, it's in meatballs with mashed potatoes and brown gravy. The whole Christmas buffet, dish by dish, is gathered in christmas food.

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Oven or frying pan?

Both work, and the choice comes down to how many meatballs you're making and how you want them to look.

The oven is best for big batches. Two trays hold a whole batch, you're not stuck at the hob and the meatballs come out the same size and evenly cooked. The downside is that they get a little flatter underneath and don't get as dark and glossy a surface.
The frying pan gives you the classic Christmas meatball: round, dark brown and glossy with butter. It takes longer, since you fry in batches, and it spatters.
Both: brown the meatballs quickly in butter in the pan, just enough to colour them all over, and let them finish on a tray in the oven for 6–8 minutes. That gives you the pan's surface and the oven's speed.

If you're making a double or triple batch, the oven is the only sensible option. Three trays in turn take about half an hour, while the same amount in the pan can easily take an hour and a half.

Four steps to remember: soak, roll, cook, freeze

Christmas meatballs are easy if you think of them as four steps that can be done at different times.

Soak: breadcrumbs in milk, at least ten minutes. Don't skip it – it's the difference between juicy and dry meatballs.
Roll: wet hands and meatballs of the same size, so they're done at the same time.
Cook: in the oven or a pan, until the middle has reached 70 °C.
Freeze: cooked, cooled and spread out, so they don't freeze into one lump.

It's the last two steps that let the meatballs be ready long before Christmas.

Christmas week: what to do when

Meatballs are one of the dishes on the Christmas buffet that can be made earliest. Here's a schedule for Christmas 2026, when Christmas Eve falls on a Thursday. The plan for the whole Christmas buffet, with ham, herring and desserts, is in the Christmas buffet step by step.

First Sunday of Advent, Sunday 29 November, to mid-December: make the meatballs, cook them and freeze them. This is the best time if you have room in the freezer.
Tuesday 22 December: move the frozen meatballs to the fridge. A bag of small meatballs thaws overnight; a large tub may need a day.
Monday 21 to Wednesday 23 December: if you'd rather keep the meatballs in the fridge than the freezer, cook them now. Let them cool quickly and put them in the fridge with a lid on. Cooked any earlier than that, they'll be too old for the leftovers in the days after Christmas.
Christmas Eve, Thursday 24 December: reheat the meatballs in the oven shortly before the meal. Put them in an ovenproof dish with a lid or foil, at 175 °C for 15–20 minutes, until they're hot all the way through. If Jansson's temptation is already in the oven at 200–225 °C, the meatballs can go in next to it under foil for 10–15 minutes.

Tip: If you're glazing the ham on Christmas Eve instead of the day before, put the meatballs in once the ham has come out. Then the ham rests while the meatballs heat up, and the two don't fight over the oven.

How many should you make?

At a Christmas buffet with lots of dishes, around ten to fifteen, most people eat fewer meatballs than at an ordinary dinner. Allow about 5–6 small meatballs per adult, which is about 90 grams of raw mince. A child aged roughly 4 to 9 eats 3–4 meatballs, and a child of 10–12 almost as many as an adult. Many children skip the herring and take more meatballs instead, so don't count the children down to half.

So a batch made with 500 grams of mince, about 30–35 small meatballs, is enough for 5–6 adults when there's also ham, Jansson's, sausages and herring. Count teenagers from about 13 as adults.

Scale the recipe straight up: 1 kg of mince for 10–12 adults, 1½ kg for 15–18. Double or triple everything in the mixture, the spices too, but taste the test meatball before you roll the whole batch. If the Christmas buffet is small, with only five or six dishes, and the meatballs are one of the dishes that carry the meal, allow about twice as much per person. How much of each dish gets eaten at the Christmas buffet is in how much Christmas food per person.

Safety: cooked-through mince, the fridge and the table

70 °C in the middle. Mince must be cooked through. The colour isn't enough as a check, since mince can turn brown on the outside before it's hot enough inside. Measure in one of the biggest meatballs.
Raw mince and hands. Wash your hands with soap after rolling, and before you touch bread, cheese or anything else that won't be cooked. Never put the cooked meatballs on the same platter or baking paper they lay on when raw.
Cool it down quickly. Spread the cooked meatballs out on the tray so they cool quickly. A cold balcony table works well in December if it's a few degrees above zero or colder. A pile of hot meatballs in a deep tub shouldn't go in the fridge until it has cooled.
The fridge at 4 °C. At 4 °C food keeps about twice as long as at 8 °C. Cooked meatballs in a tub with a lid often keep for several days in the fridge. Smell and look before you serve.
The table. Don't leave the food out for more than four hours at room temperature. On a long Christmas buffet you can put out half the batch and keep the rest in the fridge or the oven.

Freezing meatballs

Cooked meatballs are the easiest and best to freeze.

Let them cool completely on the tray.
Put the tray in the freezer for about an hour, until the meatballs are hard. That way they don't freeze together.
Tip them into freezer bags, press out the air and write the date on the bag.
Store them at minus 18 °C. They don't become dangerous from being stored a long time, but the fat in the pork mince turns rancid over time. Eat them within a couple of months for the best flavour.

Raw meatballs can be frozen too, the same way – on the tray first and then in bags. Thaw them in the fridge overnight before you cook them, so they get cooked through in the middle. Always measure with a thermometer.

Reheat frozen cooked meatballs straight from the freezer if you need to: 175 °C in an ovenproof dish under foil, for about 25–30 minutes. Stir halfway through and cut a meatball open before serving – it should be hot all the way through. The safest option for the Christmas buffet is still to thaw them in the fridge the day before.

If there are meatballs left over after Christmas, they can be frozen again, even if they've already been in the freezer once, as long as they were thawed in the fridge and haven't been left out for more than a few hours. They get a little drier the second time. Otherwise they're perfect in pyttipanna in the days after Christmas.

Allergens, gluten-free and dairy-free

The standard batch contains three of the common allergens: milk (milk, cream and butter), egg and gluten (breadcrumbs). In children, milk and egg are the most common food allergies. If someone at the table has an allergy, make their meatballs first, on clean trays and with clean utensils.

Gluten-free

Swap the breadcrumbs for ¾ dl gluten-free breadcrumbs, or 1 dl oats labelled "gluten-free". The amount of milk stays the same.
An old alternative is 1 boiled, cold, mashed floury potato instead of the breadcrumbs. It binds the mixture and makes the meatballs soft, and potato is naturally gluten-free. The potato is already moist, so cut the milk to about ½ dl, or the mixture will be too loose to roll.
Ordinary oats aren't enough for coeliac disease, since they often contain traces of wheat, rye and barley.

Dairy-free

Swap the milk for water, oat drink or stock, and fry the onion and meatballs in rapeseed oil or a dairy-free margarine.
Lactose-free milk and cream are not dairy-free. They help with lactose intolerance but not with cow's milk protein allergy.
Check the label on the stock. Ready-made stock can contain both milk and wheat.

Both gluten-free and dairy-free

Gluten-free breadcrumbs and water work best, with oil in the pan. If you're using oat drink or oats, choose ones labelled "gluten-free". Ordinary oat drink is made from oats that can contain traces of wheat, rye and barley.

Egg-free

Leave out the egg and use the potato. The mixture gets a little looser, so roll the meatballs a little smaller and let them chill in the fridge for half an hour before frying.

Shop-bought meatballs often contain milk, egg and wheat or other cereals. Read the ingredients list every year, since the contents can change.

Meatballs with children

Meatballs are one of the best Christmas dishes to make with children, since most of the work is rolling.

3–5 years: stir the breadcrumb mixture, crack the egg into a cup and roll meatballs with wet hands. The meatballs come out different sizes, and it doesn't matter if the small ones go on a tray of their own.
6–9 years: measure the spices, roll even meatballs and count how many fit on the tray.
10 years and older: can fry in a pan with an adult beside them, and stick the thermometer into the biggest meatball.

Don't taste the batter. Raw mince shouldn't be eaten, and that goes for children most of all. Fry a test meatball instead and let the children decide whether it needs more allspice. Wash hands with soap after rolling, both the children's and your own.

Chopping onions and working at the oven are jobs for adults. There's more about sharing out the jobs in the kitchen in cooking with children over a fire, and most of it applies at the hob too.

For many children, meatballs and sausages are the obvious dishes on the Christmas buffet. If you have small children at the table, put the meatballs and the prinskorv near their places.

The meatballs on the Christmas buffet

The meatballs belong to the hot round, together with the ham, Jansson's temptation and the prinskorv. The order on the Christmas buffet is usually herring and fish first, then cold meats and cold cuts, then the hot dishes and finally the sweet things. That's why the meatballs don't need to be piping hot when they come out, just warm. That gives you half an hour to play with in the oven.

A Christmas buffet rarely has sauce for the meatballs. The flavour comes from the allspice and the browned surface, and all they need is a little mustard, lingonberry jam or beetroot salad. Red cabbage works too, since its acidity cuts through the fat.

If the Christmas buffet is going to be eaten outdoors, the meatballs can be heated in a cast-iron pan over the fire. How that's done is explained here: Christmas dinner outdoors.

Vary the meatballs

With nutmeg: swap the allspice for a pinch of grated nutmeg and a little white pepper. That's how meatballs were seasoned in several of the old cookbooks.
With game mince: swap half the mince for game mince. Game mince is lean, so keep the pork mince and consider using cream in the mixture.
With veal mince: mix veal and pork for milder, paler meatballs.
Small and plenty: roll meatballs of 2–2½ centimetres and serve them on cocktail sticks. A batch then makes 60–70, and the oven time is 6–8 minutes.

Common mistakes

Too little time for the breadcrumbs to swell – the meatballs turn out dry and crumbly.
The mixture is worked for too long – the meatballs turn dense and chewy.
Dry hands – the mixture sticks and the meatballs get lumpy. Dip your hands in cold water.
Too many meatballs in the pan at once – they stew instead of browning.
Only checking the colour – the meatballs can be brown outside and too cold in the middle. Measure for 70 °C.
Hot meatballs in a sealed tub straight into the fridge – they cool slowly and warm up the fridge.

Frequently asked questions

How long should meatballs be in the oven?

10–12 minutes at 225 °C, or 200 °C in a fan oven, for walnut-sized meatballs of about 3½ centimetres. Meatballs of 2–2½ centimetres need 6–8 minutes. They're done when they've reached 70 °C in the middle.

Can you make Christmas meatballs in advance?

Yes. Cook them a few days before Christmas Eve and keep them in the fridge, or cook and freeze them as early as the beginning of December. Thaw frozen meatballs in the fridge the day before and reheat them in the oven on Christmas Eve.

How long do cooked meatballs keep in the fridge?

Cooked food often keeps for several days in a fridge at 4 °C, sometimes up to about a week, if it has cooled quickly and is kept in a tub with a lid. It's better to cook them two or three days before than a week before, and freeze them if there's longer to go.

How many meatballs per person for the Christmas buffet?

About 5–6 small meatballs per adult and 3–4 per child, when there are lots of other dishes. 500 grams of mince makes about 30–35 meatballs and is enough for 5–6 adults. At a small Christmas buffet with few dishes, you'll get through about twice as much.

How do you make gluten-free meatballs?

Swap the breadcrumbs for gluten-free breadcrumbs, oats labelled "gluten-free" or a boiled, mashed potato. With potato you only need about ½ dl milk. Check the labels on spice mixes and stock too.

Can you freeze raw meatballs?

Yes, freeze them on a tray first and then tip them into bags. Thaw them in the fridge before you cook them, and check that they reach 70 °C in the middle.

More for the same table: gravlax with hovmästarsås and pickled herring for the cold round, and glazed Christmas ham for the hot round. All of Christmas, from Advent to Tjugondag Knut on 13 January, when Swedes traditionally end the Christmas season, is in the Christmas guide.