How To Make Juicy Chicken Meatballs

All the qualities we admire in a classic meatball — the crisp brown exterior, the tender interior, herby and fragrant with garlic — can be found in chicken meatballs, too. Juicy chicken meatballs.

By seeking out ingredients that add fat to what some consider a meat too dry for meatballs, we add both flavor and moisture to a lighter, cheaper meatball. Don’t believe me? Come along as I show you have to make a better meatball with ground chicken, so that you can have juicy meatballs any night of the week.

Juicy chicken meatballs utilize ground chicken, a cost-effective alternative to the beef, pork, or veal in traditional meatball recipes. And of course, there are the rare occasions when we’ve got ground chicken on hand already and a meatball craving strikes — no need to run out for ingredients with this recipe.

Chicken meatballs are even easier to work into a dinner plan than more traditional meatballs; spaghetti and meatballs really is just the beginning. Chicken meatballs can be baked in teriyaki sauce and served over rice for a twist on teriyaki takeout, or buoyed in chicken broth for a modern take on chicken noodle soup.

Sure, chicken meatballs require a little more finesse to prevent dry meatballs, but by selecting the right kind of ground chicken and using a classic meatball technique, we can all but guarantee these meatballs will be juicy no matter how they are cooked.

Choose ground chicken (mixture of white and dark meat) or ground chicken thighs (if you can find it). All chicken breast might sound good if that’s the cut of chicken you normally buy, but if you are looking for juicy meatballs, make sure at least a portion of the meat you use is dark.

Many supermarkets carry just ground chicken — white and dark meat together — in the poultry case, but you can ask your butcher to grind chicken thighs for your meatballs too.

A panade is a mixture of starch — usually bread pieces or breadcrumbs — with liquid. Panades are most often made with milk, buttermilk, or stock; they help moisten ground meat and keep it from overcooking.

For juicy chicken meatballs, use a mixture of fresh breadcrumbs and whole milk. Mixing seasonings into a panade, rather than directly into the ground meat, means there is no overmixing, which leads to more tender, juicy meatballs.

Most classic meatballs are pan-seared and simmered in red sauce before being served with spaghetti or in meatballs subs. This was indeed our favorite way to cook these chicken meatballs too, as it produced the juiciest meatballs. Sometimes, though, you want to use the oven or you want to slow cook them to have for dinner after work.

Here are six other cooking methods you can use to get these juicy chicken meatballs on the table. You’ll know the meatballs are cooked when they register 165°F on an instant-read thermometer.

• Oven roasted: Bake on a parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet at 400°F for 12 to 15 minutes.
• In a mini-muffin pan: Lightly grease a mini-muffin tin and place one meatball into each well. Bake at 400°F for 12 to 15 minutes.
• Stovetop without sauce: Heat a thin film of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add the meatballs, making sure not to crowd the pan. Cook, turning every minute or so, until browned on all sides, 10 to 12 minutes total.
• Browned under the broiler, then simmered: Place the meatballs on a greased rimmed baking sheet and broil on high for five minutes. Transfer to a pot with sauce and simmer with sauce for five to seven minutes.
• Slow cooker with sauce: Pour sauce into a slow cooker. Submerge the raw meatballs in the sauce. Cover and cook on the LOW setting for two hours.
• Cooked in broth: Bring your soup or broth to a boil. Add the raw meatballs, reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes.