Chicken Meatballs with Feta and Spinach
A few years ago I was a nanny for a really horrible family. The kids were spoiled and nasty and the mother was always home, and usually in bed. That job made me realize that raising children is hard, and even harder in Orange County, so good job those of you who have somewhat decent children. I did all their grocery shopping and cooking for this family (which was the best part), and these meatballs were something that they asked for almost every week, along with this quinoa salad. I sometimes made them in burger patties which is something that you could also do.
Besides being reminded of that horrible job, I really like this recipe because it gives you are nice moist meatball which is hard to achieve with ground chicken (or turkey) without adding a lot of fat. There are great Greek flavors going on with spinach, feta and garlic and these would be perfect with spaghetti squash, in a grinder, or in soup. As you can see in the pictures below I decided to go with some zucchini noodles, which I will follow up on with a post tomorrow. Spoiler: you don’t need a fancy spiralizer!
Have fun!
- 1 lb ground chicken
- 1/3 cup chopped parsley
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta
- 2 cloves garlic, grated
- 1 Tbsp minced red onion
- 1/3 cup defrosted, chopped frozen spinach, (water squeezed out and chopped fine)
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
- pinch of red pepper flakes
- pinch of salt (feta already has a bit in it)
- olive oil to drizzle
- Preheat broiler, and line a baking sheet with foil.
- Combine all ingredients in a medium-large bowl using your hands and being careful to not squeeze the meat or overmix it. Just combine ingredients so they're dispersed evenly.
- Scoop out meatballs using a spoon or scoop if you have one, to your desired size. I made mine about 1 heaping Tbsp and had about 16-18 meatballs. Shape them into balls using your hands (they should be pretty moist so just do the best you can). Drizzle with olive oil.
- Place pan in broiler, (keeping close watch because all broilers are different), and broil on one side until golden brown. My broiler took about 8-10 minutes to do this.
- Turn over meatballs and cook on the other side until golden brown as well. If they're not done by now pop them in the oven at 350 and let them finish cooking. You can test them for doneness by cutting one in half and seeing if the chicken is still pink.
January 10, 2018 @ 1:26 am
I will make this meatballs for my children however we haven’t got a mince chicken in UK so I will try it with turkey mince
xx
January 10, 2018 @ 4:46 pm
Hmm… I’ve never tried it, but I hear you can use chicken breasts and run them through your food processor if you have one? Otherwise a fine chop might work? Let me know how it goes!
January 19, 2018 @ 10:18 am
These meatballs are great! So much flavor. I used ground turkey because that’s what I had. My family was not very enthusiastic about having turkey meatballs and spaghetti squash so I did add a vegetable marinara sauce. Everyone loved these meatballs and even had seconds!
January 19, 2018 @ 6:29 pm
Ground turkey sounds like a great idea. Smart to use the marinara sauce. Pesto might be nice too. Glad you guys liked them!