Kalops is actually a rather old traditional meat stew for Sweden. Local variations may occur of course as with all traditional food. 🙂

I started writing this post a few days ago, but never got around to finishing up until now 🙂 I tried a shortcut on my beef stew, saving a little time. Worked just as good as if I had done all steps that are in the original recipe, the sauce ended up a bit lighter in color then it would have other wise though.

I skipped the browning of my meat, putting everything in the pot and putting the lid on from start 🙂 The actual cooking time will still be the same, but the time I need to give it attention is shortened, not by much, but enough to give me time to write here 🙂 Seriously the reason for doing it was I needed to put a dough on as well, to get some bread for breakfast.

The meat I got this time was veal, but normally you’d use beef 🙂 The meat traditionally used is from the front end and especially suitable for cooking in stews. I could not find out the English word or equivalent for it. Does require a bit of boiling time, but has a nice taste to it.

Anyways, here’s the recipe::
Kalops
serves 4-5

• roughly 1 kg boneless meat
• 4-5 carrots
• 2 onions (I took one read and one regular)
• 1 clove of garlic (not in the original recipe, so you can leave it out if you want)
• about 15 whole white pepper grains
• about 15 whole allspice grains
• 2-3 bay leafs
• salt

How to:

1. Cut up the meat, carrots and onion in rough pieces. Make sure the vegetables aren’t to small, they’ll only get mushy then. A nice size is meat in 2-3 centimeter cubes, and carrots in 2-3 centimeter pieces. The carrots don’t need to be cut length way. As for union, just do quarters of them. Put everything in a nice big pot (you’ll need one on at least 3 liters).
2. Add one liter of water and the spices, gentle on the salt here, better to add more later if needed. Bring to a boil and let it boil slowly for 1 hour – 1 hour and a half depending on the meat quality and size of the meat cubes.
3. When the meat is ready, make a thickening for the stew, taste and if needed add more salt. If you did it my way and didn’t brown the meat, some soy sauce for the color (and saltiness) can be nice. Try to fish out the bay leafs.
4. Serve with boiled potato and some vegetables, traditionally we’d serve it with pickled gherkin or beetroot.

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