Tracing Your [Meat] Balls (Scan Meatballs)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Scan Meatballs
Date:	30/12/03 (191 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy, Quick, Cheap

Disadvantages: Under-seasoned, Food miles

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Balls. Meatballs. Fascinating stuff.

Scan Swedish Meatballs (branded as Swedish Kitchen) are pretty good for a convenience food, dontchaknow. They're already cooked, so they need no more from you than heating through. They bake in the oven in only fifteen minutes. They "dry fry" (no fat needed) in five minutes. They microwave in a 750 watt appliance in just two minutes. You'll find them in the supermarket chiller, but you can keep them in the freezer and cook them without defrosting. You can even eat them cold, so my mother says, although cold meatballs don't sound very appealing to me.

Taste-wise the flavour is, well, it's a meatbally kind of flavour. Think "proper" meatballs, not the ones that come from cans. They taste meaty! For me, the overall impression is rather bland and under-seasoned, but then I like strong flavours. However, the Scan meatballs have a good, heavy texture and very few pieces of fat or gristle. They don't taste of puréed pap; they taste of reasonable cuts of pork and beef, minced together with some carbohydrate binder, which is exactly what they are. A whopping 73% of each little meatball is meat - 52% pork and 21% beef - with the remainder being made up from potato, meat stock and flavourings. There isn't an E number, an additive or a preservative in sight. I think this explains how "authentic" they taste - like a home-made meatball, but from a cook afraid to experiment with a few herbs and spices.

They're versatile little bods, too. We don't eat them often at Murphy Towers, but we do keep a packet or two in the freezer, for the rare days when we really don't have the time or the inclination to cook properly. Warmed through and added to a tomato-based sauce, they go well with spaghetti or rice. On a cold day, we eat them with mashed potatoes and onion gravy. Scan meatballs also make an easy, stress-free addition to a hot buffet, if you
ever do that sort of thing. We keep them also for the various little "fussy eaters" who come to tea as guests of my children. On a "fussy eater" day we cook them with baked beans and chips for a meal none of the horrid, vegetable-phobic little blighters has yet turned down and without giving in to the evils of the chicken nugget. Hurrah!

They come in packs of 350g and you'll pay £1.99 for them at www.tesco.com. For your two quid, you'll get over thirty meatballs ? I did tell you they were little! However, one packet will happily feed two adults and two children if they're not being greedy. And it's perfectly possible to use part of a pack, provided you reseal the remaining meatballs into a freezer bag and don't leave them open in the tray. As you can see, they're not expensive. I think many so-called convenience foods are over-priced items, packaged in amounts that wouldn't fill a mouse, let alone a hungry Murphy. Scan meatballs aren't like that - they're a reasonably-priced, quick-to-prepare convenience food that will actually satisfy your appetite. They have a reasonable flavour and aren't stuffed to the brim with flavour-enhancers and additives. Unlike most of their cousins on the convenience food shelf, they're actually quite nice! They are no replacement for good, home-cooked meatballs, but they're certainly not rubbish. Better still, they're gluten-free and dairy-free, so suitable for people with intolerances (bear in mind, though, that the meatballs are made in factories which also use dairy and gluten ingredients, so it's a guide, not a guarantee). They're not outrageously heavy on the calories, weighing in at 200kcal per 100g, neither are they outrageously heavy on the salt at 0.7g per 100g. I'd say both those statistics would put Scan meatballs on amber alert for the healthy dieter's menu, but keep them safely off the red on a junk food indicator.

And
lastly: I know, I know, I go on about the evils of transporting food from country to country. I know Scan meatballs are made in Sweden. I know it's wasteful of resources to bring them all the way over here. But we don't eat them very often, and they are a useful stand by. Also, they come with the SPA logo which means they're right-on enough for me to buy and not feel too guilty. The SPA logo means Scan meatballs are "Swedish Farm Assured". According to Scan, "This initiative encompasses all the very best practices in animal farming including good animal care, health care and no use of hormones or antibiotics. So you can be sure that your meat has come from a healthy animal". Don't believe that's worth anything? Well suck it and see when you buy a pack. Next to the Use By date, you'll find a code number. Go to www.healthy-tasty.com (the site of the SPA's accrediting body) and enter the code number. I've just entered mine. From here, I can now read all about the farmers rearing the pigs and cattle for my meatballs ? they're from Halland in Sweden, work as a collective, and I even know their names! I can find out about Scan, the processor, and I can even find out which haulage firm transported the product to the UK, and what measures they're taking to ensure their trucks are the cleanest environmentally that they could be. Cool, huh?

Thassit. Cook "properly" when you can. Buy locally when you can. Eat Scan meatballs when you can't!

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