On Sundays the grocery stores are closed, but that’s a good time to look through the ads and decide what I want to make in the coming week. Ground chicken is popping up more frequently at the Discounters, which is nice because I have a huge backlog of chicken meatball recipes to try out. This recipe has been hanging around for literally years now.
Once again, the meat was sold “preseasoned” with salt, pepper, and extracts of assorted plants. Once again I did not let that stop me. I halved the salt from the recipe, but left everything else as written.
This ball has corn starch instead of breadcrumbs, so you can serve it to any wheat-adverse family members who might come over for dinner. Ground chicken doesn’t need bulk as much as it needs to be less sticky.
Unfortunately, it stayed sticky.
After the fourth ball, I gave up trying to form spheres and just made some lumps.
In the pan I used peanut oil, because it has a relatively high smoke point and a subtle nuttiness to support the ginger and coconut milk in the sauce.
The oil also gave the balls a crunchy outer crust, which was delicious. It’s messier than baking in the oven but it was worth the extra clean-up.
The sauce is made with, for reasons I don’t fully understand, chopped bok choy. I went to two grocery stores looking for bok choy, to no avail. Too lazy to continue on to a third, I decided to substitute red bell pepper, which we always have on hand. It was fine.
I may have used twice as much peanut butter as called for in the recipe, because I can.
I roasted unsalted peanuts from the snack aisle in a pan while the sauce and rice were cooking. I don’t think this step was actually necessary, but it did add a weird bit of dark color to the dish and won me a “Wow, you even roasted the peanuts!” from Mr Radish. Might try it again.
(There is no cilantro because in my hunt for bok choy, I forgot to buy cilantro.)
Crispy brown on the outside, but soft and fluffy on the inside. I will definitely be making these meatballs again!
