Kroketten, a Dutch speciality

the roux

When living abroad there are things in life food wise that you can miss from time to time. For us, yes even Darren and Fleur like them, it's a 'Kroket'.  Thank you Natascha and Pepijn who own a hotel in Germany Haus am Berg for sharing their recipe.

You will get about 20 Kroketten out of this amount. They freeze easily.

Meat + parsley mixture

Shopping list:

1 kg Beef (not the highest quality)

3 Cubes for stock (meat)

3 Bay leaves

5 Table spoons of fresh parsley

100 gr Real butter

100 gr Flour

3 Eggs

200 gr Breadcrumbs

Pepper, Salt and Nutmeg according to taste

Oil for the fryer

And now the hard work!

Cut the meat in small junks

Bring 1.2 ltr water with the cube, laurel and the meat to boil.

Lower the heat and let the meat get cooked, this will take about 1 hour.

Cut the parsley (I did it in the small kitchen machine)

Sieve the stock, you need about 6 dl (Keep some extra if needed later)

Get the meat out of the pan and cut it very fine (I've used the kitchen machine again)

Little fingers helping

Now we are going to make the stew.

Melt the butter in a pan and stir the flour in (I have sift the flour first to avoid lumps)

for 2 minutes.

Then pour half of the stock until you get a smooth sauce. Keep stirring, it's getting harder!

Then add the other half of the stock bit by bit, keep stirring.

Add the parsley and meat, keep stirring for another 2 minutes.

Season with a little nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Take a large bowl and add the mixture, which need to be cooled down before it has to go in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

If possible put the bowl outside if cold enough or indoors in the coolest part of the house (time saving).

When the mixture is cold and firm.

Mix 2 eggs with a little bit of water.

Put the breadcrumbs on a flat plate.

Cut the meat mixture in little rolls (kroketten) and roll through the breadcrumbs.

Then roll through the eggs and again through the breadcrumbs.

Heat fryer till 180 degrees and add maximum 4 kroketten at the same time, for about 4 minutes.

Serve on white loaf of bread with some mustard. Or as we did with chips.

The final result

The kroketten you don't use immediately, will freeze easily. When you fancy another kroket, put the frozen ones in the fryer, but on 150 degrees, otherwise it's hot outside but still cold inside.

Eet smakelijk!