OH DOES IT GET ANY BETTER?
These aren’t just chicken meatballs made with buffalo sauce. They’re the juciest chicken meatballs you’ll ever experience due to a little buffalo butter magic, then stuffed inside a warmed pita and topped with an incredibly delicious blue cheese buffalo yogurt sauce.
But here’s the thing. You can shove your face with however many meatballs you want and do so completely guilt free. Not really, but you get where I’m going. Ground chicken is even leaner than turkey, making these meatballs little lean mean machines.
There really is nothing to them besides mixing the meat with some yums like breadcrumbs, an egg, minced celery, and a buffalo BUTTER sauce. Has anything ever sounded better than a buffalo butter sauce? It’s exactly how it sounds: melted butter mixed with buffalo. It’s thicker and creamier and does something magical to these meatballs.
The beauty about making meatballs is you can shape these however big or small you want. Since I’m all “go big or go home,” I rolled these as big as I could. My three inch meatballs yielded six. Make these half the size and you can yield double, if not more. When arranging in your dish, they should be arranged nice and snug. They’ll cook evenly and won’t fall apart on ya. The normal 1 1/2″ sized meatballs will take 15-20 minutes in the oven. These bad boys took nearly 30. Ideally you want your meatballs to reach an internal temperature of 165, so if you’re not sure if they’re done, just stick em’ with the meat thermometer.
Your first bite into the meatball will be like nothing ever before. The celery and butter and buffalo give the meat the perfect amount of moisture and I promise from now on you will always pour your sauce into the meatballs instead of basting on top. IT IS MAGIC PEOPLE. I personally thought the meatballs could have been eaten without a dipping sauce, but what’s the fun in no dipping sauce?
I took about a cup of plain Greek yogurt, buffalo sauce, a squeeze of lemon, and blue cheese and mixed it all good. If you don’t like blue cheese, add half a Ranch Dressing seasoning packet to the yogurt and bam, healthy Ranch dipping sauce.
I warmed up a few pitas and then stuffed everything inside. There’s just something about this combination that makes me weak and I really really really hope you experience these soon.
- 1 lb. ground chicken
- 1 large celery stalk
- 4 T. butter
- 1/3 c. buffalo sauce
- 1 egg
- 1/2 c. breadcrumbs
- salt and pepper
- 3/4 c. nonfat Greek yogurt
- 1 T. buffalo sauce
- squeeze of fresh lemon
- blue cheese crumbles
- Preheat oven to 450
- Wash the celery and chop into three pieces. Throw in the food processor and pulse until finely minced.
- Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl and stir in the buffalo sauce. You can do this over the stove if you're feeling fancy. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Add the chicken, sauce, celery, breadcrumbs, and egg to a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Mix until everything's all combined.
- Spray a baking dish with non-stick spray, just to be safe.
- Form the meatballs however big or small you want them and place them nice and snug into the baking dish.
- Bake until a meat thermometer reads 165, roughly 25 minutes. The smaller meatballs will take about 20 while the larger will take 25 or more.
- Combine everything together and adjust ingredients as needed. If you don't like blue cheese, add half of a Ranch Dressing seasoning packet to the yogurt and mix!
- Serve inside a warmed pita!
[shopeat_button]
These look amazing! Pinned!