Bitterballen (2024)

FAQs

What do bitterballen taste like? ›

Bitterballen are actually Dutch meatballs, a very popular snack served at bars along with beer. Sometimes they are shaped as logs or sometimes as balls. If I were to describe what they taste like, the closet I can come up with is deep fried mushrooms, is your mouth watering yet?

Croquettes are a cylinder shaped snack made from meat or any other fillings dipped in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Bitterballen are similar but are large round balls, served with mustard as well, you will more often see this eaten at parties.

When you're in Amsterdam, you have to try bitterballen. This savoury Dutch snack is one of the city's most famous food staples - and it's one hell of a tasty treat. Loved by locals and tourists alike, bitterballen is a breaded meatball that's been deep fried - a bit like a croquette but sphere-shaped.

Bitterballen are one of Holland's favorite snacks. In the early and mid-1900s, they were the housewife's perfect way to transform yesterday's meat leftovers into today's appetizer. Served shaped as a log (kroket) or in bite-size rounds, bitterballen were often served as an aperitif, or tapa, before lunch or dinner.

Bitterballen are very similar to the more common croquette (kroketten in Dutch) in ingredients and preparation/cooking methods, as well as flavour, though the larger kroketten have a distinct oblong sausage shape, but with a similar diameter.

The first proof of bitterballen dates from the time the Batavians lived in Holland (200 years BC) in the province of Gelderland. They used to eat roasted ox with vegetables and bread.

Traditional Dutch food is meat and potato or fish based for dinner and bread and cheese based for everything else. Beef stew and stamppot are two of the more common, hearty Dutch meals. Raw herring and other North Sea fishes are commonly consumed as well.

A traditional Dutch delicacy is Haring, or raw herring with onions. Other seafood such as shrimp, oysters, lobster, and eel are popular in cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Kibbeling, small chunks of battered white fish, has become a national Dutch dish.

They were probably the first to start importing peanuts in Europe and several very large companies have seen huge successes from this, feeding the Dutch appetite for not only peanut butter but also satay sauce.

What are the food taboos in the Netherlands? ›

In the Netherlands there are only a few things that you can eat with your hands publicly without it being frowned upon: chips, pizza, bread and meat with a lot of bones, like chicken or spare-ribs. Using your hands and fingers to eat rice, vegetables, potatoes or meat without bones isn't on!

The most-consumed fruit and vegetables in the Netherlands are bananas, apples, oranges, mandarins and tomatoes. For the supply from developing countries, (tropical) fruit is the most important category with strong growers such as avocado, banana and blueberries.

You can easily heat up the bitterballs in the airfryer. Would you rather buy deep-frying snacks for the fryer? This is also possible with us!

Pork remains the most popular meat in the Netherlands, with an annual share of 36.5 kilograms per person, followed by poultry (22.1 kg), beef (15.4 kg), veal (1.3 kg) and goat meat (1.2 kg).

1 each: 72 calories, 5g fat (1g saturated fat), 22mg cholesterol, 88mg sodium, 4g carbohydrate (0 sugars, 0 fiber), 4g protein.