Healthy Buffalo Chicken Meatballs

Add these Healthy Buffalo Chicken Meatballs to your weeknight dinner menu, weekend meal prep rotation or enjoy them as a tasty and fun appetizer! Serve them on top of tender spaghetti squash strands or lightly steamed zucchini noodles for a delicious, satisfying and veggie-filled meal. A recipe the entire family will love!

Juicy, saucy, Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are easy to make, totally scrumptious and made with simple, real food ingredients.

This recipe comes together quickly and can be prepped ahead whether you’re including it as part of your weekend meal prep to enjoy as a reheat-and-eat meal or maybe you’re just trying to get a jump start on food preparation to make for an easy weeknight meal. These Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are perfect for both of those scenarios. You can either make them entirely or you can prep them up to the point of cooking. In addition, you can either make this recipe with homemade buffalo sauce or if you’re wanting to take the quickest approach you can certainly use a store-bought buffalo sauce of your choice. If you’re making these for kids, you may want to go with a more mild buffalo sauce as most kids are not too keen on spicy foods.

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Ingredients for Healthy Buffalo Chicken Meatballs

• Olive oil or avocado oil – we like Primal Kitchen Foods oils.
• Carrots, celery and yellow onion – minced finely and sautéed.
• Garlic cloves
• Ground chicken or ground turkey – use what you have on hand or what’s available to you. We love ButcherBox for its quality meat options.
• Almond flour – or flour of choice (if using coconut flour use about half the amount the recipe calls for)
• Buffalo Sauce – use your favorite store-bought buffalo sauce like this one from Primal Kitchen or our Homemade Buffalo Sauce
• Ranch dressing – use your favorite store-bought ranch like this one from Primal Kitchen or homemade Ranch
• Green onion & Cilantro – optional for garnish

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How to serve Buffalo Chicken Meatballs?

These Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are multi-purpose in that they can be served on top zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash for a delicious Whole30 friendly meal or serve as a tasty appetizer. Best of all, we’ve loaded them with veggies. But shhhhhh, don’t tell those non-veggie eaters that little bit. Pre-sautéing the veggies until nice and soft before mixing into the meat is a great way to keep them veggies a secret. Once the meatballs are cooked and tossed in a delicious buffalo wing sauce and drizzled with ranch, them non-veggie eaters will never know carrots, celery & onions are involved.

Can you make Buffalo Chicken Meatballs with ground turkey instead of ground chicken?

Sure can! In any recipe that calls for ground chicken or ground turkey you can almost alway substitute one for the other. Often times you may find one of them at the grocery store but not the other so use what you have on hand or what’s available to you.

Confused about poultry labeling? Check this post out to learn all about how to choose the best chicken in the grocery store. 

How to store Buffalo Chicken Meatballs?

If making meatballs as part of a meal prep or if you have leftovers, simply store the cooled meatballs in an appropriate sized glass, airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Can you freeze Healthy Buffalo Chicken Meatballs?

You sure can. Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are freezer-friendly. So if you’d like, go ahead and double the recipe and then freeze half for a future meal or appetizer. Then all you’ll need to do is thaw the meatballs out in the fridge overnight and throw them in a slow cooker on low to heat through. Easy peasy! Also, if you’re making them as an appetizer, you most certainly can cook them up ahead of time and place in a slow cooker on low to keep warm.

The Buffalo Chicken Meatballs are lightly covered with sauce, so feel free to double the sauce in the recipe if you’d like them more…”saucy!”

Looking for guidance with meal planning? Check out Real Plans, a highly customizable online meal planning service that includes over 300 of our very own recipes.

Other Healthy Buffalo Chicken recipes you’ll love!

• Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken (or Instant Pot)
• Creamy Buffalo Chicken Casserole (Whole30)
• Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Note: this recipe was updated on November 24, 2020. The original recipe was made in one-skillet but after much testing, we found that the meatballs hold together much better and are more evenly cooked when baked in the oven. 

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Photo Credit: The photos in this blog post were taken by Jess of Plays Well with Butter. 

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