Greek Keftedes
Greek meatballs bound with bread soaked in wine, scented with mint and oregano, and fried until dark. Eaten hot with lemon or cold from the fridge, which is arguably better.
Photograph credit: 20240428 meatballs with tomato sauce Restaurant Elia anagoria by Anagoria · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Making Greek Keftedes Ahead
Refrigerate up to 4 days and freeze 3 months. Reheat at 180°C / 350°F for 10 minutes.
Making Greek Keftedes
Tap a step to highlight it, or turn on Cook Mode for large type and step-by-step focus.
-
Tear the bread into a bowl, pour over the wine, and leave 10 minutes. Squeeze it out hard and crumble it.
-
Grate the onion and squeeze it in a cloth — onion juice makes the mixture too wet to shape.
-
Combine both minces with the squeezed bread, onion, garlic, egg, herbs, cumin, salt, pepper and vinegar.
-
Mix with your hands for 3 minutes until it becomes noticeably sticky and cohesive.
-
Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
-
Roll into 30 walnut-sized balls, then flatten each very slightly.
-
Roll each in flour and tap off the excess.
-
Heat 1 cm of olive oil in a frying pan to about 180°C / 350°F and fry in batches of eight for 6 to 7 minutes, turning, until deeply browned all over and cooked through.
-
Drain on a rack and serve hot or at room temperature with lemon wedges.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
Something wrong or unclear in this recipe? Report a problem with this recipe.
Worth Knowing
- Squeeze both the bread and the onion. Wet mixture gives meatballs that spread and steam rather than brown.
- Mint is not optional. It is the defining flavour of keftedes.
- They are excellent cold the next day, stuffed into pitta with tzatziki.
Some Background
A panade of bread soaked in wine and squeezed out holds moisture in the meatballs through frying — the starch traps water that would otherwise be driven off, which is why keftedes stay juicy where plain mince patties go dry. Resting the mixture for an hour lets the flavours marry and firms it for shaping.
What to Put Next to It
Tzatziki and warm pitta · A Greek salad · Ouzo with ice, or a cold beer
If You're Missing Something
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
- Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.
Questions About Greek Keftedes
How long does Greek Keftedes take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of chilling, so allow 1 hour 35 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
The Numbers per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (how much frying oil the food takes up cannot be known from the recipe). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
You Might Also Like
More Greek cooking and appetizers ideas from Weekly Delight.
Greek Eggplant Salad
Roasted eggplant dressed while warm with olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano, then mixed with tomato, red…
Spanakopita
Spinach and feta between shattering layers of filo, brushed generously with olive oil and butter. The trick is…
Dolma
Vine leaves rolled round a filling of rice, onion, herbs and lemon, simmered in olive oil and stock and served cold.
Dolmades
Vine leaves rolled around rice, herbs, onion and pine nuts, packed tight in a pot and simmered under a plate with…
Fava
A smooth Greek purée of yellow split peas simmered for 45 minutes with onion, blended with olive oil and lemon…
Melitzanosalata
Smoky roasted aubergine mashed with garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and parsley into a rustic Greek dip.