This recipe calls for ground chicken. Ground chicken is hard to find in the US for some reason. To make this yourself you can place boneless, skinless chicken thighs into a food processor. Chicken breasts can work but I don’t recommend it because they are too lean and your meatballs may be dry. If you need more info on creating ground chicken for yourself, checkout this article from Mason at masonfit.com.
Chicken Meatballs
Equipment
- Zwilling Fresh and Save Vacuum Bags Use the code "MEALPREP" at checkout for 10 free vacuum bags
Ingredients
- 5 lbs (2270 g) ground chicken i used 96% lean. You can make this in a food processor if needed
- 1 cup (80 g) rolled oats
- 2 (100 g) eggs beaten
- 1 tbsp (12 g) garlic powder
- 1 tbsp (12 g) onion powder
- 1½ tsp (10 g) salt
- 2 tsp (8 g) pepper
- oil spray
Instructions
For the Meatballs
- Preheat your oven to 400°F.
- If you need grind your chicken, do so. I make ground chicken by placing boneless skinless chicken thighs into the food processor until it resembles ground meat. I do a bunch at once and freeze the excess.
- In a large bowl, add your ground chicken, rolled oats, eggs, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Mix it together until everything is fully incorporated.
- Line a few large baking sheets with foil in preparation for the meatballs. It may help to spray lightly with oil.
- Using a cookie scoop, create meatballs and spread out on to your sheet pans. Space them out evenly with some room between each so that they will brown more easily.
- Once you have all of the meatballs created, form them into a tighter ball by tossing each meatball between your hands a few times. It will help to spray your hands with a bit of oil to keep the chicken from sticking.
- Roast your meatballs in the oven for 17-20 minutes.
- Doing one sheet pan at a time will lead to better browning. If you try to place a pan onto each rack, the one on the top rack will struggle to get brown due to the steam being released from the bottom pan. They will still taste awesome and I do two at once for speed but just be aware that you will sacrifice some browning. When the meatballs are finished, remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Once all of your meatballs have been cooled, transfer them to one single sheet pan and move to your freezer to flash freeze. This just means that you freeze them, uncovered in a single layer, so that they have a chance to freeze individually.
- Once they have frozen solid, transfer them over into a ziplock bag, remove all of the air and move them into Snack City in your freezer.
- I made 83 meatballs out of this recipe. The nutrition information you see here is for 83 meatballs. If you end up having more or less than that, your nutrition information will be slightly different. Use the table below this recipe to enter how many meatballs you made for the better nutritional estimate.
Serving
- To reheat these, I air fry them at 400°F for about 5 minutes or until they are hot. You can also microwave them.
- I eat them with some ketchup, cover them in buffalo sauce, or incorporate them in a regular meal.
Video
Nutrition
NUTRITION INFO
The information in the following table are estimates for the total nutrition of the recipe, as written. If you follow the recipe listed above, as written, you can use these tables to determine the nutrition information if you wanted to split the recipe, as written, into more or less servings than what is originally listed. If you update the number of servings in the “Servings” field of the recipe above, the information in these tables are no longer accurate as you have updated the ingredients.
This Post Has 16 Comments
Thanks great help
thank you, glad you enjoyed it 😎
These are sooooo good. We made them with buffalo sauce and they quickly became our favorite.
thank you, glad you enjoyed them 😎
So Delicious! I’ve made this a couple of times now and will be making many more. I’ve experimented having them with different fast-food sauces and they are so good together! My favorites are BBQ sauce and sweet & sour.
Thank you 😎
I had no idea you could cook meatballs in the oven like this. It used to take us forever trying to stuff them all into a frying pan. They came out great!
glad to hear that 😎
Can you use an air fryer to cook? How long?
Yes, I would do probably 12 minutes at 400F to start
How long the meatball last on the fridge
On the fridge, about 6 hours.. In the fridge, about 3-5 days =D
Huge hit. I will need to buy a meat grinder because pre-ground chicken breast was way too much money.
Using ground skinless chicken breast you can add moisture and great texture by using gelatine bloomed in chicken stock
Chicken stock 60 grams per pound
Gelatine 3.5 grams per pound
reference is from Kenji – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld5cECqIFU0&t=239s
one thing I started doing with meatballs a few years ago is to abandon the idea that they have to be “balls” and once I make them into the little balls, I squish them into small discs instead. For me, this had 2 advantages: (i) there was more surface area to brown, creating more flavor and (ii) they cooked quicker and more evenly. Curious if anyone else found this method beneficial
These are great, they’re my first build in my own Snack City, in a house with 3 semi-adult children, these will go a long way. Super versatile, love’em!