Get your appetizer swag on and get ready for buffalo chicken meatballs. This recipe is super simple and it makes for a great appetizer or fun dinner even our kids will eat.
These buffalo chicken meatballs were born out of our love for all things buffalo chicken and our constant search to find new foods our kids will eat. When you have 3 reasonably picky eaters, it can be like that. But they’ve always loved Trader Joe’s meatballs and after fixing these Blue Apron Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches, not so long ago, we discovered they loved those as well. So much so, in fact, that we came up with our own recipe for Buffalo Chicken Sliders and there was a 2 week period over the summer when our son ate them for nearly every meal. And so…
Buffalo chicken meatballs were bound to happen eventually. We never turn down the opportunity to make something with buffalo chicken flavors (like buffalo wings) and we have been on a meatball kick lately (well, if you count these meatless eggplant meatballs). So we figured, “why fight it any longer?”. Time to ball out.
Buffalo Chicken Meatballs the Easy Way
The recipe itself is really simple and can be mixed all in one bowl. It’s just ground chicken, breadcrumbs, cheese, egg, salt, garlic powder, and your favorite hot sauce (we like Frank’s Red Hot). Then you just roll out your meatballs — we find a heaping tablespoon makes for a good-sized meatball — and bake. Done!
I believe the original recipe we looked at called for parsley as well — and we do like the idea of some fresh herbs in a meatball — but, we didn’t have any parsley on hand the first time we made it and so the recipe just evolved without it. But that’s one of the great things about this recipe, it’s easy to experiment. We also sometimes will up the amount of hot sauce because we love things spicy (and so I can walk around the house saying “That’s a spicy meatball!” with a exaggerated and bad Italian accent). We tend to push it just to the point where our kids start to complain, then we back off a little. After all, one of our goals was a meal that works for the whole family! But you get the idea; Experiment, have fun. Speaking of which…
Buffalo Turkey Meatballs work as well if you only have ground turkey on hand. We made these once as a happy accident (I didn’t realize I had used ground turkey until I had already mixed everything together) and there were subtle taste differences, but everyone enjoyed them as well.
Buffalo chicken meatballs are also a popular party appetizer so you can multiply this recipe if you’re serving a crowd. Even when it’s just us, we find that we’ll often double this recipe because we believe in batch prepping so we have leftovers for the next day.
We love to serve these with additional hot sauce and blue cheese dressing (of course). The dressing is for the grown-ups, believe it or not, our kids don’t like blue cheese dressing. I know, right? What’s wrong with them?
On to the recipe:
Buffalo Chicken Meatballs
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground chicken
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp ground pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp red hot or buffalo sauce
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
- Scoop with a tablespoon and form mixture into balls.
- Place balls on a sprayed sheet pan (or sprayed and foil lined for easier cleanup).
- Cook for approximately 20 minutes. Serve with blue cheese dressing or additional buffalo sauce.
2 Comments
Lisa Lotts
December 1, 2017 at 12:24 pmSo anything in meatball form is going to be a huge winner – but buffalo chicken??? My husband will go gaga for these. And since they’re baked – not fried — and no chicken skin in sight — these are a huge improvement in the healthy foods department! Winner, winner – Buffalo Chicken Dinner!
mywifecancook
January 5, 2018 at 4:56 pmThanks! We are obsessed with these lately!