Ikea Meatballs Upgrade This Classic Party Meal With Ease

Anyone who has ever been to Ikea knows it's a veritable wonderland of stylish modular kitchen designs. You can find everything from $20 organizer shelves for decluttering your cabinets to delicious Swedish meatballs. Available in the oddly cozy cafeteria-style food court, Ikea's Swedish meatballs are famously delicious, especially when drizzled with the signature brown gravy. Served alongside steamed veggies and mashed potatoes with a dollop of lingonberry jam, they're the perfect way to refuel after exploring Ikea's latest innovative furniture displays.

One of the best ways to enjoy these meatballs is on top of a pizza. While meatball pizza is nothing new, Ikea's meatballs make this deliciously indulgent dish ridiculously easy to make, taking it from a specialty weekend dinner to weeknight treat territory. Frozen bags of Ikea's Swedish meatballs are pretty inexpensive, as are the chicken, fish, and vegetarian versions available in the miniature grocery section near the exit of most Ikea stores.

Sliced in half and perched atop a store-bought crust, these herby and delicious meatballs are the perfect pairing with traditional pizza toppings like marinara and mozzarella. But for something a little more innovative, you can use brown gravy as the pizza base, load it with shredded white cheddar, drizzle it with lingonberry jam, and finish it with fresh herbs. Since Ikea sells the lingonberry jam and some interesting varieties of cheese along with the meatballs, it's easy to make a meatball pizza that's solely Ikea-inspired.

Though every version of Ikea's meatballs is packed with distinctive flavor, the overall taste is savory and rich, so they pair well with a wide variety of other pizza ingredients. As mentioned, you can simply chop them up and use them as an easy protein to go on your favorite style of pizza, from meat-lovers' to green pepper and mushroom. The chicken version is perfect for making Buffalo-style pizza with hot sauce and plenty of bleu cheese.

Ikea also has choices for the plant-based crowd, including pea-protein plant balls and vegetable balls. The plant balls are designed to taste like real meat, so they're great for pairing with rich sauce and cashew cheese to create a surprisingly tasty vegan pizza. The vegetable balls do taste like vegetables, with seasonings to bring out the toasty nuances of the carrots and chickpeas inside, making them a tasty and interesting option for any vegetable pizzas.

The trick to getting the best flavor is to thaw the meatballs, cut them into pieces, and sauté them until they're browned and beautifully crisp. Otherwise, they may release excess moisture onto your pizza, creating puddles of watery cheese and soggy crust. You'll also want to pat them dry after thawing them, as water will bead up on the outside. Cut them in half for big, hearty bites of protein, or dice them to scatter more uniformly among other pizza toppings.