Instant Pot Swedish Kalops (Beef Stew)
Swedish Kalops is a comforting pressure cooker / Instant Pot beef stew in gravy, spiced with allspice and bay leaves, and flavored with rich beef broth and golden onions.
This winter comfort food recipe comes from our good friend and Pressure Cooking Today reader, Sigrid. Swedish Stew, or Kalops, is a favorite dinner from her childhood. In fact, this recipe was passed down from her great-great-grandmother.
Unlike the American-style beef stew you might be familiar with, kalops does not contain multiple vegetables.
Instead, it’s a simple, aromatic dish with a rich, creamy beef and onion gravy. The signature flavor of kalops comes from allspice.
What Is Kalops?
When adapting Sigird’s family recipe for the pressure cooker, I did some research to find out more about this traditional dish. I learned that the word kalops comes from the English word “collops” for slices of beef.
Swedes have been enjoying warm, comforting bowls of allspice-flavored kalops for nearly 200 years!
And there are many reasons that this dish has stuck around. It’s intensely warming and deeply flavorful. Perfect for a chilly night in Sweden, or wherever you are!
Making Swedish Kalops in an Instant Pot
This Swedish kalops stew recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, or Power Pressure Cooker XL.
Kalops is a perfect dish to make in an electric pressure cooker, which softens the pieces of beef into a meltingly tender and juicy beef stew.
The traditional way to make Swedish kalops is to slow-cook the stew for hours. However, you can make Swedish stew in less than half an hour with an Instant Pot / pressure cooker! And the flavors are just as bold and delicious.
What Is Wondra Flour?
You’ll notice that I thicken the kalops gravy with Wondra flour. Wondra is the brand name for par-cooked instant flour. Wondra is very finely ground wheat flour. It’s cooked and dried back into a powder.
It quickly absorbs liquid for fast thickening, which makes it great for gravies like in this recipe. Read more about Wondra flour and how to use it here.
If you can’t find Wondra, you can substitute regular all-purpose flour for the slurry. Be sure to return the soup to a boil after adding the flour and cook for a few minutes to cook off any raw flavor.
How to Serve Swedish Kalops
The most traditional way to serve kalops is with potatoes. Some recipes call for cooking potatoes directly in the stew. Others prefer to serve kalops over a bed of fluffy mashed potatoes.
We love our quick and easy pressure cooker mashed potatoes so much that we decided to make them alongside our kalops.
For the true Swedish experience, serve up your Swedish stew with pickled beets.
More Instant Pot Stew Recipes for Winter
When the weather gets chilly, it’s a great time to use your Instant Pot / pressure cooker for flavor-packed stews. Here are some of our favorite wintertime recipes:
- Old-Fashioned Instant Pot Beef Stew is a classic one-pot meal with tender beef, creamy potatoes, and plenty of colorful vegetables.
- Deer Valley Beef and Wild Mushroom Beef Stew is a more refined and creamy Instant Pot stew recipe with delicate wild mushrooms.
- Pork and Hominy Stew is our pressure cooker version of pork pozole. It’s full of bright Mexican flavors.
- Instant Pot Korean Beef Stew from Two Sleevers is a bit spicy, tangy, and full of umami flavors.
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Swedish Stew (Kalops)
Swedish Kalops is a comforting beef stew spiced with allspice, bay leaves and flavored with rich beef broth and golden onions.
Ingredients
- 1 pound beef stew meat (chuck) cut into 2-inch cubes
- Salt to taste
- Freshly ground pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 cup coarsely chopped onion
- 1 can (14.5-ounce) reduced-sodium beef broth
- 7-8 whole allspice berries
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/4 cup Wondra flour or all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup cold water
- 1/2 cup milk
- Mashed potatoes for serving
Instructions
- Season beef generously with salt and pepper.
- Select Sauté on the pressure cooker and add oil and butter to the pressure cooking pot. When butter is melted, brown the meat in batches for about 5 minutes per batch until all meat is browned on all sides. Do not crowd the pot. Transfer to a plate.
- Add the onion to the pot. Sauté for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened.
- Stir in a small amount of the beef broth to deglaze the pot. Be sure and scrape up any brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the remaining broth and return the beef and any juices to the pot.
- Add the allspice and bay leaves. Lock the lid in place. Select High Pressure and 15 minutes cook time.
- When the cook time ends, allow the pressure to release naturally for 10 minutes before finishing with a quick pressure release. When the valve drops, carefully remove the lid. Remove and discard the bay leaves and allspice.
- In a small bowl, whisk the flour and cold water until smooth. Add 1/2 cup of the hot broth to the flour mixture and stir to combine, then add the flour and broth mixture to the pressure cooking pot.
- Select Sauté and bring the gravy to a boil, stirring constantly, until thickened and there’s no more raw flour taste. Stir in the milk. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.
- Serve over mashed potatoes.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield: 4 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 450Total Fat: 14gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 49mgSodium: 663mgCarbohydrates: 62gFiber: 7gSugar: 8gProtein: 21g
Nutrition information is calculated by Nutritionix and may not always be accurate.
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I so appreciate Barbara’s research on this dish. For all I knew it was a recipe my great great grandmother made up. If you haven’t tried it, give it a try. It’s quick and easy and very good. The gravy is delicious.
Could I use crock pot instead? Looks so good. Thank you.
Hi Donna – yes, you can make it in a slow cooker. Brown the meat and then saute the onion in a skillet on the stovetop for best results. Deglaze the pan with the broth, then pour it into the slow cooker, add the brown beef and spices and cook on high for 4 hours until the beef is tender. Thicken with the flour slurry as described in steps 7 and 8.
We loved. Super easy and tasty. I’ll be honest, I forgot the milk step and it still seemed perfect.
I made this for my husband who is Swedish and Norwegian–I’m Swedish. It was delightful! So very flavorful! I tend to have allergies to pepper so I sprinkled the beef with salt and ground allspice! I was using a combination of the last of a deer we had and very lean beef so I sprinkled the chunks with a tad of EVOO and let it rest on the counter until ready to cook. My hubby said the leftovers were just as good as the original meal! Thank you! My sister and her husband have the recipe now!
I made it one day and served it the next. Lovely gravy.
My Polish/German/Jewish grandmother used to make something very like this, and she never went to Sweden before emigrating here in 1917 as a young girl. It’s curious how differernt tastes show up. She used to make a dried fruit soup with raisins, apricots and prunes in tapioca that I only had from a Scandanavian recipe.
Maybe she did spend some time there before fleeing to the US.
None of my grandparents would talk about their pasts. They all cried.
Thanks for sharing Jane – sounds like you have fond memories to cherish. The tapioca recipe sounds tasty.
Oh my goodness that looks delicious! My Italian Nana used cinnamon and cloves in some of her meat and gravy dishes-I can only imagine how good allspice would be. Can’t wait to give this a try-perfect comfort food on a cold winter night.
Do you think this would work with a leaner cut of meat? I am thinking of venison steaks that don’t have much if any fat marbling.
Looks delicious! Thanks for the detailed instructions.
Hi Meg – I’ve had good luck with using lean round steak in beef stews, so I think it would work well with venison steaks too.
If you wanted to put potatoes in it, how much do you think you could add? Do you think it would change the cooking time? Need for more broth? Thank you.
Hi Rhonda – I would cook the meat until it’s tender and then add the potatoes, similar to how I do my traditional beef stew https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/beef-stew-in-the-pressure-cooker/ Enjoy!
I only have ground allspice. Can I use that instead and how much?
Hi Karen – you can substitute ground allspice, but it’s strong so I would only use 1/4 teaspoon. Here’s some fun info about allspice https://www.mccormick.com/articles/mccormick/flavor-story-whole-allspice Enjoy!
Thank you!