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THE LOCAL RECIPES

RECIPES

Swedish food: How to make sweetened lingonberries

Possibly the most Swedish food there is. Food writer John Duxbury shares his recipe for sweetened lingonberries with The Local's readers.

Published: 30 September 2016 06:59 CEST
Updated: 31 August 2018 07:30 CEST
Swedish food: How to make sweetened lingonberries
Sweetened lingonberries. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish Food

Rårörda lingon are a popular accompaniment to main courses in Sweden, especially some of the classic Swedish dishes such as köttbullar (meatballs), äggkaka (egg cake), kåldolmar (stuffed cabbage rolls), stekt strömming (fried Baltic herring) and raggmunkar (potato pancakes). They are made by adding sugar to the berries and stirring them until it dissolves.

Lingonberries grow in the wild in Sweden on small bushes in woodlands and on moorlands. They ripen in August and September when many Swedes pick their own berries, but they are also sold at markets. Although the berries look attractive they are not pleasant to eat raw as they are quite bitter.

Rårörda is really two words joined together: rå means raw and rörda means stirred.

Summary

Serves: 4

Preparation: 5 minutes (spread over one day)

Ingredients

100g (4oz) lingonberries, fresh or defrosted

at least 50g (2oz) caster (superfine) sugar

Note: The quantities above are sufficient for four servings, but I usually make a larger batch. Simply weigh your lingonberries and add half their weight in sugar initially. For example, if you have 900g (2lb) of lingonberries you will need to start with 450g (1lb) of sugar.

Method

1. Pick over the berries to remove any leaves or twigs, rinse them and then drain them so the berries are reasonably dry.

2. Weigh the berries and put them in a bowl or a jar.

3. Add 50 percent by weight of caster sugar. Stir or shake every now and again until the sugar has all dissolved, which might take a day or more. Have a taste and add a little more sugar if desired, but avoid adding so much sugar that it will not dissolve. Some people squash some of the berries with the back of a spoon to release some of their juice to make it easier to dissolve the sugar, but I try to avoid doing this as I think rårörda lingon looks better with as many whole berries as possible.

4. Store until required in sterilized jars. Sterilize jars by washing them in a dishwasher or by putting the rinsed jars in an oven at 125C for 10 minutes. Let the jars cool before filling them.

Tips

– Fresh lingonberries are currently available in many supermarkets in Sweden. I'm from the UK and have never seen fresh lingonberries for sale there, but you can often find frozen lingonberries for sale in specialist stores or online.

– Rårörda lingon will keep almost indefinitely thanks to the high level of benzoic acid in the berries which acts as a natural preservative. However, the colour will fade after a couple of months, so it is best not to keep them too long.

– Keep rårörda lingon in a cool dark place, such as in a fridge.

– Lingonsylt (lingonberry jam) keeps better, but the texture and flavour is not quite as good.

– Ikea sells lingonsylt, but not rårörda lingon.

Recipe published courtesy of John Duxbury, founder and editor of Swedish Food.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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