Chicken Pesto Meatballs
A quick and easy, flavorful weeknight meal. Serve over pasta, with rice, or in a salad for a variety of weeknight options!
Ingredients
Chicken Pesto Meatballs:
- 1/2 cup homemade or store-bought pesto if buying store bought, I strongly suggest going to the prepared foods section of the supermarket to see if they have any freshly made pesto rather than jarred
- 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 pound ground chicken
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
Pesto Pasta:
- 16 oz pasta of your choice my favorites are fusilli and orzo for this recipe
- 1/2 cup homemade or store-bought pesto
Instructions
- To make the chicken pesto meatballs, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
- Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta according to directions for al dente. Drain and set aside.
- To a bowl, add the pesto, panko, egg, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.
- Stir until fully combined.
- Add in the ground chicken and parmesan and mix until just combined (you don’t want to overmix them or the meatballs could be tough).
- Using a medium cookie scoop, form the mixture into balls and add to a cookie sheet – you’ll end up with 24 to 30 meatballs so you might need two cookie sheets.
- Bake the meatballs at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes, or until the meatballs reach 165 degrees F (using an instant read thermometer is useful here). Let the meatballs rest for 5 minutes.
- While the meatballs rest, stir the remaining pesto into the pasta until combined.
- Serve the meatballs on top of the pesto pasta.
Notes
If you make this recipe, share a photo on Instagram and tag me @icancookthat!