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Boulets à la liégeoise

Name: Boulets à la liégeoise
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 80 min
Total time: 110 min
Yield: 5
Ingredients: 500 g minced beef; 500 g minced pork; 4 piece slices of white bread without crusts, soaked in milk and squeezed; 1 piece onion, finely chopped; 1 bunch parsley, finely chopped; 2 piece eggs; salt, pepper and grated nutmeg; 2 tbsp dried breadcrumbs, to firm the mixture if needed; 4 piece onions, sliced; 1 pinch dried thyme; 4 tbsp brown sugar (cassonade); 2 tbsp red wine vinegar (a good dash); 1 l meat broth; 2 tbsp Liège syrup (sirop de Liège, apple and pear syrup); 4 piece cloves; 6 piece juniper berries; 2 piece bay leaves; 50 g sultanas; 1 tbsp cornflour or flour, slaked in a little cold water

boulets à la liégeoise / Luikse balletjes

Big meatballs of beef and pork, baked and then simmered in a sweet-sour onion sauce made with Liège syrup, brown sugar, vinegar, juniper, cloves and sultanas. In Liège they come with frites, as boulet-frites. The recipe is from the Pays de Liège tourist office.

Editorial illustration of the documented recipe; not a photograph of a kitchen-tested result.

Servings: 5
Preparation: 30 min
Cooking: 1 h 20
Total: 1 h 50
Difficulty: Easy

Equipment

Large mixing bowl
Roasting tin or ovenproof dish for the meatballs
Wide heavy pan for the sauce

To drink & serve with

Belgian frites
Both sources serve boulets with frites; the tourist office adds lettuce.
Belgium
Editorial suggestion: a Belgian ale.

Substitutions

Beef and pork mince → Pork-and-veal mince, as RTBF's version uses.
Liège syrup → Another thick apple or pear syrup; the sauce will be less dark and fruity.
Baking the boulets → Flour them and fry at 180 °C until coloured, then finish them in the sauce on a low heat for about an hour (RTBF).

Common mistakes

Making small meatballs: they dry out in the oven and are no longer boulets.
Skipping the browned onions: the sauce stays thin and sweet without depth.
Boiling the boulets hard in the sauce: they break up.

Storage & reheating

Good reheated. Cool quickly, refrigerate within 2 hours and eat within 2 days (UK FSA; US USDA allows 3–4 days). Reheat once, until steaming hot right through.

Safety

Contains gluten (bread, crumbs, flour), milk, egg and sulphites (wine vinegar). Minced meat must be cooked right through, with no pink in the middle.

Allergens

Gluten · Milk · Egg · Sulphites

Check labels: stock, bacon and sauces can contain further allergens.

A boulet, not a boulette

The Pays de Liège tourist office insists on the word. Elsewhere in French a meatball is a boulette; in Liège it is a boulet, a cannonball, "because this substantial dish will fill you up for a large part of the day". It is eaten as boulet-frites, and the city has a brotherhood devoted to it, Le gay boulet, which runs a yearly contest for the best one, the boulet de cristal.

The sauce is what makes it Liégeois. Onions are browned in the meat juices, caramelised with brown sugar and sharpened with vinegar, then cooked in broth with Liège syrup, the dark apple-and-pear syrup of the region, and with cloves, juniper and bay. Sultanas go in at the end.

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Two ways to cook the boulets

The tourist office bakes the meatballs for 40 minutes and builds the sauce in the same tin. The RTBF cooking programme Max & Fanny floured and fried its pork-and-veal boulets at 180 °C and then let them finish for an hour in the sauce on a low heat. Both end the same way: the boulets sit in the sauce long enough to take on its flavour, and both are served with Belgian frites.

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How it connects

Place

origin Liège In preparation

Recipe

pairs with Belgian frites
similar Stoofvlees
similar Köttbullar

Region

pairs with Belgium