Make Your Own Vegan Swedish Recipes
Learning to cook your own food is a very empowering way to release yourself from having to buy expensive plastic-wrapped ready-meals and takeaways, often made with inferior ingredients. Choose your favourite cuisine, and master it yourself at home. Then every night is restaurant night!
These vegan Swedish meatballs (The Veg Space) are a cut above IKEA! Made with protein-rich chickpeas and dairy-free cream, they are cheesy-flavoured, thanks to nutritional yeast.
Before cooking, read our post on food safety for people and pets (many foods are unsafe near animal friends). It’s best to just bin allium scraps (onion, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives) as like tomato/citrus/rhubarb scraps, acids could harm compost creatures.
For tinned ingredients, pop lids inside cans (or pop ring-pulls back over holes) to avoid wildlife getting trapped).
Swedish food is often focused on dairy and fish – so you would think. There is a big plant-based movement now in Sweden, including for raw food (a bit strange, considering the winter temperatures!) But there are many good recipes to try (rhubarb is as popular in Sweden, as it in England). Lingonberries are also more local than American cranberries!
A few years back, the Swedish-Japanese founder of Oatly (an oat milk brand) was already well-known, due to his TV ads where he stands in a field singing (completely out-of-tune) Wow No Cow. So the company decided to put ‘like milk, but for humans’ on its packaging.
The Swedish Dairy Marketing Board tried to sue him. But of course it backfired. Oatly’s sales grew so much that the legal case was dropped. And the founder said he wished he’d put the words on his cartons years ago!
Vegan Herring in Mustard Sauce
If you’re feeling ambitious, try this recipe for vegan herring in a mustard sauce (Planticize). The recipe creator is an American, who has lived and cooked in Sweden, for several years.
Vegan Swedish Princess Cakes
Swedish Princess Cakes (Zucker & Jagdwurst) were indeed named after a princess, who enjoyed eating them. They are little sponge cakes filled with vegan cream and marzipan, with raspberry jam (add a little beetroot powder, to make them pink).
Vegan Semlor (Swedish cream buns)
Everyone in most of Scandinavia enjoys these, often served with coffee in restaurants and other eateries. These blueberry Semlor Buns are made with oat milk and vegan butter and yeast (keep fresh dough away from young children and pets).
If you like this recipe, check out Marisa’s book Naturally Sweet Vegan Treats. Not all the recipes are Swedish, but the Stockholm-based author has created puddings and cakes, all made with natural ingredients and sweeteners.
