Gluten-free Pesto Chicken Meatballs
These Gluten-Free Pesto Chicken Meatballs are tender, flavourful, and made with Italian basil pesto, Parmigiana cheese, and ground chicken for an easy, protein-packed meal. They can be served with pasta, zucchini noodles, roasted vegetables, or a fresh salad for a quick weeknight dinner. Or, meal prep a batch ahead of time and freeze them for later!
What You’ll Love About Gluten-free Pesto Chicken Meatballs
These Gluten-free Pesto Chicken Meatballs are one of my fav weeknight dinners to make. You can have them with pasta, marinara or maybe with a side salad. There’s nothing worse than dry chicken meatballs and because chicken is a leaner meat, they need a little bit of help. I love to add butter to add fat and flavour.
These meatballs are so incredibly moist from the pesto and butter that you don’t need a sauce to eat them with, but I love to pair them with a homemade marinara sauce and side caesar salad. It’s delicious! This recipe makes about one and a half sheet pans full of meatballs and they do not last long.
We do usually have leftovers though, which I love! If you have a larger family and want leftovers, it may be helpful to double the batch and spend a little extra time prepping so that you can freeze some for busy evenings or have leftovers for the next day.
What You’ll Need to Make Gluten-free Pesto Chicken Meatballs
A few things to keep in mind:
- Ground chicken – First of all, try to find organic chicken if possible. If you can’t find organic ground chicken, then you can buy organic chicken breasts and break them down into ground using a food processor. Thats what I do!
- Basil pesto – Secondly, make sure you have a really good quality basil pesto with very simple ingredients and few preservatives.
- Butter – You will need a little unsalted butter to add to the meatballs. This helps keep them moist and flavourful!
- Onion – White onion, yellow onion or shallots all work for this recipe.
- Garlic – I just love fresh garlic in pretty much any dish and these are no exception! I recommend using fresh minced garlic, if possible!
- Parmigiana cheese – Parmigiana is straight from Italy and its the best! However, parmesan cheese works as well or even asiago.
- Gluten-free breadcrumbs – Use whatever gluten-free breadcrumbs you can find. If you’re not gluten-free, then panko crumbs or regular bread crumbs work great too.
Gluten-free Pesto Chicken Meatballs
Equipment
- 1 Baking Sheet
Ingredients
- 2 pounds organic ground chicken
- 1/2 cup basil pesto
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
- 1 medium-sized white onion finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1/2 cup shredded parmigiana cheese
- 1 cup gluten-free breadcrumbs or panko if not gluten-free
- 2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Add all of the ingredients to a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly until everything is fully incorporated.
- With a small cookie scoop, scoop 11 meatballs onto each pan for a total of 22.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20-22 minutes. Enjoy with caesar salad or pasta or both!