Chicken Meatballs

This is the recipe that made me decide it is time to buy a food processor.

Original recipe here, adapted for your tasting pleasure below.

Having only a manual food processor that can't handle tough foods, I cooked 1 cup of carrots to soften them.  While those were on the stove, I put 1 cup of zucchini, a couple cloves of garlic, some parsley and 1/4 of my almond meal in the food processor and beat them to death.

Then I put that all in a bowl and attempted the same thing with a couple chicken breasts.  Utter failure.  So I upgraded to a blender (we have a small smoothie blender) and ground up the chicken in two batches.  One of those batches included the carrots, which led to a very orange chicken.  I put that all in a bowl and mixed it.

Very tasty looking chicken and veggies.

I also mixed in an egg, some salt and pepper, and a healthy dose of chili powder.  After that, I started forming my meatballs.

I filled up two pans of those bad boys!  Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350*F.

We had so many meatballs we ended up freezing a bunch of them.  These went perfectly with spaghetti and sauce, or for a Paleo version (aka what I got to eat), spaghetti squash.  For the second pan, I also added a little heat to the meatballs with some cayenne pepper.

I was really pleased with how many leftovers this recipe made - for using only two chicken breasts, we had enough for several meals.


Baked Chicken Meatballs
1 cup zucchini, chopped (about 1 zucchini)
1 cup carrots, chopped (about 2 carrots)
½ cup parsley, coarsely chopped
3 medium cloves garlic
¼ cup blanched almond flour or almond meal
1 egg
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
¼ teaspoon chili powder
S&P to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. In a food processor or blender, pulse together the zucchini, carrots, parsley and garlic
3. Add almond flour, egg, and chicken
4. Then add salt, pepper and chili powder and process until thoroughly combined
5. Drop tablespoon sized balls of the chicken mixture onto a parchment lined baking sheet
6. Bake meatballs for 20 to 25 minutes
7. Serve!