Buffalo Chicken Meatballs

Inspiration

With the warmer weather upon us, we have been trying to eat lighter most nights. While we want to be conscience of what we are eating, we also don’t want to give up on any of the delicious tastes we crave. We knew how we wanted to create the sauce, coconut cream and hot sauce. But we weren’t sure how to make the meatballs to capture all of our favorite parts of buffalo wings while still keeping it light. I think we ended up capturing the perfect veggie to meat and sauce combo!

Tools

Cookie Scoop: This is optional, we prefer using a cookie scoop to make our Buffalo Chicken Meatballs so we get the same size each time. But scooping with your hands or a spoon work just the same!

Ingredients

Ground Chicken: Ground chicken or most chicken for that part, does a wonderful job at taking on the flavors you surround the meat in. Meaning that these meatballs truly take on a great herb flavor from the parsley. If you were to substitute the ground chicken for anything, we recommend ground turkey; ground beef would likely be too greasy to keep the flavor.

Cauliflower Rice: Instead of bread crumbs we opted for cauliflower rice in these Buffalo Chicken Meatballs. Use our trick of adding the cauliflower to a food processor for quick rice. If you don’t enjoy cauliflower, go ahead and use panko bread crumbs. However, there really is not much flavor from the cauliflower so we doubt you will find issue with sneaking in some veggies.

Grated Carrots: This sweet vegetable provides the perfect balance to your meatballs. Just make sure to squeeze out any excess water from the grated carrots before adding to the meatball mixture.

Coconut Cream: You will be shocked at how velvety coconut cream makes your buffalo sauce. This truly is the key ingredient to this recipe!

Hot Sauce: Use whatever is your favorite brand, we have made this with both Frank’s Red Hot and Texas Pete’s Hot Sauce.

Step by step

Begin making these Buffalo Chicken Meatballs by preheating your oven to 400 degrees. Next prep all your ingredients, grate the carrots, chop or use a food processor to create the cauliflower rice, mince the red onion and parsley. Next drain any water our of the grated carrots by using a cheese cloth. Add all of the Chicken Meatball ingredients into a bowl and mix well. Make into meatballs with your hands or by using a cookie scoop to get even meatballs. Bake on a racked pan for 30 minutes.

While the Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are baking start your sauce. In a sauce pan over medium head add the hot sauce and coconut cream and whisk. Once you start to get a simmer, add the salt, minced parsley, garlic powder, and onion powder. Continue to whisk and bring to a simmer again. Turn on low heat and let cook for about 10 minutes. Once the meatballs have reached 165 degrees internally, remove from the oven and smother in the buffalo sauce. Serve over pasta or add to a sub and enjoy!

From our kitchen to yours, cheers!

Other recipes you might like:

• Chicken Parmesan Meatballs
• Buffalo Chicken Bombs
• French Onion Meatballs