There’s nothing we love more in our house than meatballs or meatloaf for an easy dinner.
Sounds like typical ’90s kind of dinner, right?
Obviously yes, but hear me out!
These turmeric chicken meatballs aren’t your basic ball ‘o meat. In fact, I’ve actually made them both paleo and gluten free by using coconut flour instead of breadcrumbs.
I was excited about how amazing they turned out because this was my first time subbing coconut flour instead of the usual breadcrumbs.
I’m working with McCormick on a few recipes incorporating their amazing spices that are always in my cupboard. A spice that I’ve been obsessed with is their ground turmeric; I’ve been putting it in EVERYTHING: roasted veggies, quinoa, lattes and even homemade facemasks. (Not kidding honey + turmeric is a face brightener).
ANYWAY time to talk about the balls. These bold-flavored turmeric chicken meatballs are made with lean ground chicken (or you can use ground turkey), garlic, egg, coconut flour, ground turmeric, ground cumin, dijon mustard and fresh herbs like parsley and cilantro.
One of the reasons that I love this recipe is because it’s made on ONE sheet pan and is also perfect for meal prep. I love pairing it with roasted fingerling potatoes, but really you could add any type of veggie you’d like. Or even sweet potatoes (damn, now that I think about it, that would be delish).
And my next favorite part: HERBY GREEN TAHINI SAUCE. It’s so simple and perfect on top of the meatballs, and FYI it also makes an awesome salad dressing.
So now it’s time to get your meal prep on. If you make this recipe, be sure to tag #ambitiouskitchen on Instagram or leave a comment and rate the recipe below!
More one pan meals to try:
One Pan Tandoori Chicken with Spiced Coconut Rice
One Pan Thai Coconut Yellow Curry Chicken & Rice
30-minute Spicy Thai Peanut Chicken & Sweet Potato Noodle Stir Fry
Kung Pao Chickpea & Brussels Sprouts Stir-Fry
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Paleo Turmeric Chicken Meatballs with Green Tahini Sauce
Ingredients
- For the veggie base:
- 1 pound tricolor fingerling potatoes, quartered
- 1 white onion, cut into large chunks
- 2 tablespoons olive oil or avocado oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- ½ teaspoon salt
- For the meatballs:
- 1 pound 94% lean ground chicken (can also use turkey)
- 1 teaspoon McCormick ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon McCormick ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon McCormick garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
- 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon packed coconut flour
- Green Tahini Sauce
- ¼ cup tahini
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
- 2 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro
- 2 tablespoons warm water, to thin
- To serve:
- 3 cups organic baby spinach
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Add potatoes, onions and garlic to pan. Sprinkle with cumin and salt. Drizzle olive oil then use clean hands to toss everything together so that potatoes and onions are well coated. Spread out evenly on baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes.
- While the potatoes are baking, make the meatballs: In a large bowl, add ground chicken, ground turmeric, ground cumin, garlic powder, dijon, parsley, cilantro, salt, pepper, egg and coconut flour. Use your hand to mix until well combined.
- After potatoes come out of the oven after 20 minutes, stir them, then make room for the meatballs on the baking sheet by pushing some of the potatoes to the side.
- Use a medium cookie dough scoop to scoop meatballs onto baking sheet. You should get 12 meatballs total. Bake for 18-23 minutes or until meatballs are fully cooked.
- While the meatballs bake with the potatoes, make the green tahini sauce by adding the sauce ingredients to a blender. Blend for 30 seconds or until smooth. Add additional water to thin out the sauce if necessary, you want it to be spoonable, but not overly liquidy.
- To assemble meal prep bowls: Add spinach to the bottom, potatoes on one side and meatballs on the other. Spoon sauce over the top of the meatballs. Enjoy! Serves 4.
Nutrition
This recipe is sponsored by McCormick Spices, a spice brand I use in my kitchen. Thanks for supporting AK and the brands that help make this site possible!
Question before I make the recipe, If the potatoes and meatballs bake for roughly the same time why aren’t they added together? I think the minced garlic burn at 400, how much powder should I substitute?
Hi! The potatoes take around 40 minutes and the meatballs take 18-23, which is why you’ll bake the potatoes first before adding the meatballs. With the olive oil nicely coating the garlic, etc. it shouldn’t burn, but you can also sprinkle a teaspoon of garlic powder over the veggies instead.
This was absolutely amazing!!! Thank you for ALL your recipes, every single one I’ve tried has been delicious!
So glad you’re finding delicious recipes here, Mattie! Love this easy dinner 🙂
This has become a permanent addition in my “faves” section of my recipe binder. I have made it several times since finding this recipe on Pinterest last fall. I usually double the batch of tahini dressing because it’s so damn good and we can’t get enough of it. I love the meatballs, however, I have found that they tend to be on the dry side. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to moisten them up a bit?
Hi, Rita! SO happy to hear you love these 🙂 I sometimes finely grate sweet potato into my meatballs/burgers to amp up the moisture content. That might work in here!
So flavorful and easy! I love how while one thing is cooking, you’re working on the next item. And you don’t have a huge cleanup. The green tahini sauce is to die for!! Definitely adding this to my roster!
Yay!! So glad to hear you loved these, Nina 🙂
These meatballs were perfect for meal prep. Added them on top of grain bowls and thinned out the green tahini sauce using a little more warm water for the dressing.
Love it! Glad you enjoyed!
Wow!! So so tasty and satisfying. Used curry powder instead of turmeric and all purpose instead of coconut flour. And instead of serving with spinach I roasted some broccoli to add. Love all the flavors–ended up wanting a little more acidity so I topped with pickled shallots which was delish.
Perfect! Sounds delicious 🙂
This recipe was amazing! Even hubby approved. We added Brussels sprouts to the potatoes and jalapeños to the tahini sauce for a bit of a kick. Definitely a new staple meal at our house!
Love it! Glad it was a hit!
This was delicious! I accidentally left out the minced garlic but it’s still full of so much flavor. I got four meals out of it. The recipe is written well, I appreciated how it flowed since there are three separate parts to prepare. Don’t miss out on this one! Easy and delicious.
Love it! Such a great meal prep dinner!
Wow! I already had potatoes in the oven and was wondering what I could do for a protein. Ground chicken was what I had thawed and was able to make these meatballs and the sauce so quickly! So yummy. Love any tahini sauce you make. Meatballs were juicy! Delicious combo with fresh herbs and excited for left overs. Thank you for always hitting home runs with your recipes.
Perfect! Great idea to serve with some potatoes. So happy you’re loving the recipes here!
I made this for our whole 30 lunch meal prep and it’s SO GOOD! I made a flax egg to replace the egg in the meatball and it worked great. Still very juicy.
Perfect! I’m glad that worked out well 🙂
This is my first Ambitious Kitchen recipe and…. I’m hooked! I appreciated the recipe being written out the way it is because you don’t waste time prepping meatballs and sauce while the potatoes could be cooking. There are so many recipe blogs out there but only a handful where the recipes are creative, healthy and obviously written by someone who knows how to cook! This is one of them and I can’t wait to try more! Thank you! P.S. I think the sauce would go better in a food processor since I had to do a lot of blender side scraping to get everything combined.
Absolutely! So happy you loved this one 🙂 Great tip on the food processor, too. I hope you find more recipes here that you love!
obsessed with this! meal prepped for the week & every one of my coworkers had questions & wanted some! so tasty & filling.
Amazing! So happy to hear that!
Love this recipe!
We made this tonight and it was SO good. Definitely will become a staple in our lifestyle. We added a little fresh garlic to the sauce just to give it a little extra zing. Super delicious!
So happy to hear that! All about that extra garlic 😉
Delicious- I love these pan dinners. I did sweet potato & medley of other fresh veges. I used Turkey mince – yummy. Enough for 2 nights of meals for hubby & I.
Thank you
Love it! Perfect to meal prep for two 🙂 Try these next!
Hello! I absolutely love this recipe and plan to make it for some friends next week. Can you recommend a starter that would go well with it? Thanks!
Amazing!! These brussels sprouts would be delicious, this easy asparagus, or even these fun stuffed mini peppers! Okay and this garlic bread would be delicious, too <3
Hi, I was so excited to make these as they looked and sounded sooo delicious …however they we sooo dry!!! I did cook them according to the time suggested but the texture was horrible, like eating cardboard 😖 I am not sure what went wrong but I don’t think I will be making them again ☹️ I am thinking it could be the coconut flour? I have never used coconut flour in meatballs before 😳 we are trying to go gluten free so I thought this was perfect …but not sure now.
Hi Pavla! Very strange – I would suggest reducing the cook time a bit next time (everyone’s oven is different!)
Hello! I love this recipe but have a question about the sodium content for just the meatballs. If I plug the recipe into a nutrition calculator using all of the same ingredients you have listed, it populates a sodium content of over 5,000mg per serving (I am using 3 meatballs as a serving per your note that the recipe yields 12 meatballs and serves 4). Can this be accurate?? I have triple checked my entry and it matches your ingredient list. Any chance you can share the nutritional info for just the meatballs so I can see where I’m going wrong?
Thank you!!
Hi! I just did a quick check for the meatballs and each serving has only about 400mg of sodium. I would double check and make sure the ingredients you entered have accurate nutrition info on their own, too!
Wonderful, thank you for confirming!!
Absolutely loved this. I featured it in my meal plan this week – check it out! https://www.mictomacro.com/blog/2018/2/26/weekly-meal-plan-turmeric-detox
I made these today for a friend who is recovering from surgery….first of all, a lot of fun to make!! I grated fresh turmeric since I had it, and overall just had a blast making this! Plus, I stole a meatball and a bite of potato and onion with the sauce! I can’t wait for her to text me how much she loved it, because I know it’s coming! Great recipe Monique!
There’s something about homemade meatballs that are so much fun to make! I hope your friend loves them too 🙂
I made these a couple of days ago. I had ground turkey on hand so made the meatballs with that. My husband and I found them to be extremely tasteless. I added the spices in the recipe which are all good things, but maybe it needs lots more. The vegetables of course were great, but I can’t consciously make these meatballs again – my husband will not eat them.
Hi Julia – very strange! I’ve made these a couple of times and found the spices to be just the right amount. You could try bumping up the salt a bit next time to bring everything out more.
hello! Can you share the nutritional information without the potatoes? And how many meatballs does it make?
Thanks!
Hi Lisa! This makes about 16 meatballs. I haven’t calculated the nutrition for the meatballs + sauce by itself, but an online nutrition calculator should work to do so!
OMG! These were delicious! Thanks for the recipe. I made it with sweet potatoes, otherwise everything as listed. So good! I could eat the sauce by the spoonful.
Amazing! So happy you enjoyed these 🙂 And yes that sauce is my new favorite.
HI Monique I cannot have eggs, would you know if I could eliminate them.. if not any suggestions ?
Wow, these look great! Lately I’ve been craving chicken meatballs, not beef/pork. I think the flavors are more versatile. Also, I love that your dressing has veggies in it! I’ll definitely be adding this to my meal-prep rotation!
http://www.slackergirlfitness.com
I love chicken over beef/pork for meatballs! And yes – always sneaking in veggies where I can 🙂 Enjoy!
Mine are in the oven now, will have the best lunches this week! Thanks! Also having your Chicken Tandoori tonight & your oatmeal bake for weekday breakfasts! This was all a fluke, wasn’t until I was at the store this morning that I realized they were all your recipes!
Delicious! So glad you’re enjoying all of these – perfect for meal-prepping 🙂
THIS WAS SOOOO GOOD no need to change anything
So happy you enjoyed! 🙂
What is the best way to warm them up the next day? This definitely will be for my work lunches all week!
I usually just warm up the meatballs + potatoes in the microwave! Then feel free to serve over spinach from the fridge if you’d like 🙂
This recipe is money! Super delicious and easy. We bumped up the spices for extra flavor and subbed carrots for potatoes, and it turned out beautifully. Super tender and flavorful. Will definitely make again. Thanks for the awesome recipe!
I’m so happy you guys enjoyed this one! Perfect for swapping in your favorite veggies. Enjoy!
Love the idea of carrots! I will add to the dish. Thanks! Made this today and definitely will make again. So easy. The sauce is simple and amazing. My meatballs were a bit dry but I over baked 🙄. Geesh
Carrots will be delicious! Glad you enjoyed (even with a little overbaking!)
OMG this was SO delicious & I cannot tell you how happy I am to have just enough leftover for MY lunch tomorrow!!! Thank you Monique 🙂
I’m so happy you loved this! Perfect for leftovers 🙂 Best lunch ever!
Would this be eaten cold or hot? To me the meatballs scream hot, but the spinach says cold!
I serve them hot just over spinach! But feel free to serve them with any veggies you’d like 🙂
Sheet pan dinner for the win! The ingredients in these meatballs sound perfect and delicious! A meatball with a twist!
Aren’t sheet pan dinners the best?! These ones are so flavorful – hope you get a chance to try them!
Any suggestions other than cilantro? Basil? Extra parsley? Mint? Thx 🙂
You can leave it out or use basil! Enjoy 🙂
I’ve never had a chicken meatball before! These sound delicious!
They’re awesome! Perfect for adding all of these delicious flavors.