Notes
There are a lot of different ways to make meatballs— in fact, just about every culture on earth has some version of the meatball in its cuisine. But this is the method I turn to most often because it’s just so damn easy.
This same method works with any kind of meat, and you can play around with adding different spices, herbs, and other flavorful ingredients. I like to broil these meatballs— it’s a quick way of cooking and results in some nice browning. You can also roast them or just sear them in a skillet. Ground chicken cooks quickly, so you have a lot of options.
Here I make use of two cool techniques that you can use in this recipe and many others. The first is that I add a small amount of baking soda to the ground meat. I do this almost any time I’m cooking meatballs, kebabs, or another form of ground meat. It helps with moisture retention, increases browning, and gives them a nice bouncy texture. It’s not strictly necessary— you can skip it if you’d like— but I find that I like the results better with it. I also grate or process the onion and then press the water out of it in a fine mesh strainer. This helps the onion incorporate better into the ground meat. It leaks less water, so you get more concentrated flavor, and the onions become a mash so the meatballs stay together better. If you feel like skipping this step, you can just chop the onions as finely as possible.
I love pairing these with a simple yogurt sauce.
Ingredients
- 1lb ground chicken
- 1/2 red onion, or 1 whole small red onion
- 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup fresh herbs, finely chopped (you can use any mix of cilantro, dill, parsley, and mint)
- salt
- olive oil
- thinly sliced red onion and fresh herbs to garnish
Process
Pre-heat your oven’s broiler on the high setting.
Start by putting the ground chicken into a bowl and sprinkling 1/4 tsp of baking soda all over the meat. Use your hands to lightly mix the meat together to distribute the baking soda, and allow the mixture to sit for 15 minutes.
While you’re waiting on the baking soda to work its magic on the chicken, grate your onion.
You can do this with a cheese grater or with a food processor (my preferred way). Grate it into a mash, and then place it into a fine mesh strainer and use a spatula to press as much water as possible out of the mixture.
After 15 minutes have passed, you can start to assemble the meatball mixture.
Salt the mixture generously, then add in your onion, the egg yolk, the herbs, the garlic, and a generous few cracks of black peppercorn.
The garlic should be minced as finely as possible— I like to do this with a microplane, as you can see in the photo below, which makes it super easy.
Use your hands to mix everything together to incorporate it evenly. Try not to mix it too much, as overmixing it will lead to dense meatballs. Just move it around enough to evenly spread out all of the ingredients.
Wash your hands, and then put a small amount of olive oil onto your hands. This will make it easier to handle the meatballs without them sticking. Alternatively, you can use a cookie scoop for this step.
Form the mixture into evenly sized balls and spread them out on a very lightly oiled sheet tray.
Put the meatballs onto the top rack of your oven under the broiler and cook them until they’re slightly browned and cooked through— about 10 minutes or so. Keep an eye on them and adjust the distance from the broiler as needed if the outsides are cooking too quickly.
When they’re cooked through, serve over a bed of yogurt sauce and top with fresh herbs and thinly sliced red onions.
Enjoy!
