Cooking with IKEA: plant balls with beetroot and a yogurt salsa

Meet the chef

Meet Andrea Toneatto, the IKEA chef behind this delicious recipe for plant balls.

Andrea is passionate about cooking and healthy eating (the best combination, of course). In fact, his passion is such that he trained as a chef at a hospitality school in Milan. Mamma mia! That's why Andrea has decided to wow us with this original recipe, where he turns a standard meatball dish into a whole new gastronomic experience and, best of all, it's super healthy! Sound good?

Want to try HUVUDROLL plant balls? Enjoy them at any IKEA restaurant! If you like them and want to enjoy them at home, remember that you can buy them from our Swedish Food Market along with a variety of other products.

This professional recipe requires very little effort! You'll be amazed at its incredible taste. Yum, yum!

Difficulty: very easy

Preparation time: 30 min.

Standing time: 120 min.

Ingredients (serves four):

• 1 bag of HUVUDROLL plant balls
• 30 ml virgin olive oil
• Table salt

• For the dressing:
  • 4 cucumbers
  • 500 g yogurt
  • A handful of mint
  • A pinch of black pepper
  • 2 limes
  • 1 clove of garlic

• For the side:
  • A handful of fresh basil
  • 4 beetroots
  • 32 cherry tomatoes
  • 2 tsp salt flakes

Method

First, make the side dish. You can prepare the rest of the dish while the side is in the oven.

Follow these steps:

• Preheat the oven to 200ºC.
• Once the oven reaches the right temperature, put the cherry tomatoes on a tray, roast for about 15 minutes and put to one side.
• Now for the beetroot. Individually wrap each in aluminium foil.

Tip from the chef: remember that for best results, the shiny side should be face down and the matte side face up.

• Place the four wrapped beetroots in the oven and leave to roast for about an hour at the same temperature (200°C). When they are ready, set to one side.

To make the salsa:

Andrea suggests a yogurt sauce to go with the meatballs. Follow these steps: 

• Peel and grate the cucumbers. Put in a colander and season.
• Leave to drain for about 30 minutes and then dry thoroughly with a tea towel
• Grate the clove of garlic.
• In a bowl, mix the salsa ingredients together: the drained cucumber, the Greek yogurt, the grated garlic, the two squeezed limes, the mint and the pepper. Leave to stand.

To make the oil garnish:

• To make the basil oil: put the oil and basil in the blender and blitz well until smooth. Leave to stand.
• Tip from the chef: keep a little fresh basil to decorate.

Serving

It is time to cook the plant balls and plate up!

• Oven-cook the meatballs for 10-12 minutes at 200ºC.
• Halve the roasted beetroots.
• Dress the dish with the oil prepared earlier, a sprinkling of salt flakes and a little black pepper to taste.
• Remember the basil that was set aside earlier? It's time to add it as the finishing touch to these delicious meatballs. Arrange it on the plate and you're ready!
• Alternative serving suggestion: skewer the meatballs and drizzle the salsa directly over them. They'll taste great!

Alternatives for this recipe

If you don't like a particular ingredient or want to try something different, Andrea suggests some alternatives for enjoying this dish with different sides:

1. Replace beetroot and cherry tomatoes with delicious roasted pumpkin.
2. Sauté the beetroot with garlic and raisins instead
3. Add a side of roast baby carrots – their sweetness goes particularly well with the spices in the meatballs.

Want to make this recipe suitable for vegans? Replace the Greek yogurt with a plant-based yoghurt to make this vegetarian dish completely vegan.

Serve the meatballs in style

If you want a professional-standard restaurant-quality dish, presentation is key for adding that touch of class. So here are some gastronomic presentation tips for your meatballs (or any other dish where you want to add some decorative flair)!

Neutral tableware, such as white or grey, will highlight the colourful nature of this dish, with its purple beetroot, bright red tomatoes and green leaves, although it also looks good against an intense background like a dark blue plate.

The rest of the table is just as important when it comes to presentation. A natural look is best, something that feels clean and highlights that this is home-cooked food. It's always a winner! Glassware (for the water jug, glasses, dish and so on) and textiles in natural hues (for the cloth napkins) are perfect for achieving this look. Oh! And if you are using a board or other accessories, wood will go very nicely.

Combine all the flavour of your delicious meatballs with a beautifully laid table. You'll enhance everyone's dining experience!

Why are these meatballs so special?

Our new range of HUVUDROLL plant balls are perfect for meat lovers and those who choose a meat-free diet. They are made entirely from plants (pea protein, oats, onion, apple and potato) but their texture and flavour rivals those of any meaty meatballs.

But that's not all! We're not just talking about a perfect disguise – there's much more to these meatballs than that. So what's their big secret?

To help meet its aim to be climate positive by 2030, IKEA has decided to take a step further and reduce its carbon footprint from food production. Did you know that almost 15% of global greenhouse emissions come from livestock? In addition, each of us could reduce our carbon footprint by as much as 73% by reducing our meat and dairy intake. That's food for thought, isn't it?

With HUVUDROLL meatballs, we can be more environmentally friendly (its climate footprint is just 4% of the original IKEA meatball) and eat sustainably without missing out on much-loved flavours. And all this at a fair price! IKEA wants sustainability to be a viable option for everyone, not just a luxury that few can afford.

"At IKEA we sell more than one billion meatballs every year (...) If we were to convert about 20% of our meatball sales to plant balls that would mean around 8% reduction of our climate footprint for the food business at IKEA," says Sharla Halvorson, Health & Sustainability Manager, IKEA Food.