Chicken Piccata Meatballs

Chicken Piccata Meatballs are made with easy homemade chicken meatballs and cooked with capers in a bright lemony sauce all served with pasta.

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Chicken Piccata Meatballs with Linguine

Traditional Chicken Piccata is made up of thin and lightly breaded chicken breasts cooked in a sauce made of white wine, capers, lemons, and chicken broth. This version is made with homemade chicken meatballs and maybe actually better than the original dish!?

These meatballs are light due to the ground chicken but super flavorful made with parmesan, garlic, and lemon. Once browned on the skillet the sauce is then built in the pan and they finish cooking in the super flavorful piccata sauce.

This recipe is made to make these meatball along with pasta but you can serve them on their own or with other carbs like rice or mashed potatoes.

I think this is one your family is really going to enjoy!

Ingredients

• Ground Chicken – Sometimes ground chicken can be hard to find, a lot of grocery stores don’t care a huge amount of it. If you need to you can use ground turkey as a substitute.
• Panko Bread Crumbs – While panko bread crumbs are preferred you can use regular bread crumbs if that is what you have.
• Parmesan – Freshly grated works best for flavor, and it is best to have a little extra for garnishing.
• Garlic – Fresh cloves to mince yourself is going to provide the best flavor.
• Lemon – You will be using the peel for zest and the juice so before cutting it in half make sure you zest the whole thing for the meatballs.
• Kosher Salt – Kosher salt works best for cooking, if you don’t have kosher salt you can use sea salt instead.
• Olive Oil – Extra virgin olive oil works best since this will be used for browning the meatballs.
• White Wine – I like to grab the cheap little individual things of white wine and keep them in my pantry purely for cooking. You can also use whatever white wine you have open or whatever you prefer to drink.
• Unsalted Butter – Use unsalted butter since we are adding the brine from the capers we don’t want the sauce getting to salty.
• Flour – To thicken the sauce and make a roux before adding the chicken broth.
• Chicken Broth – The base of the sauce. If you don’t plan on adding the pasta to the sauce you can reduce the amount to one cup of chicken broth.
• Capers with Brine – The little jar of capers with the brine.
• Whole Wheat Linguine – I prefer to use whole wheat linguine for added heath benefits but if you don’t care for whole wheat pasta you can use regular linguine. You can also use other pasta, spaghetti or angel hair pasta would also be a good substitute.

Instructions

Bring a large pot of water to boil for the pasta. While the water is heating up make the meatballs.

Add the ground chicken, panko breadcrumbs, parmesan, minced garlic, lemon zest, and salt to a mixing bowl. Using your hands gently mix everything until it is just combined, try not to over mix.

Grab a heaping tablespoon size piece of the meat mixture and roll into a ball, set aside. Repeat making meatballs until all of the meat mixture has been used. You should get about 16 meatballs in total.

Heat a large skillet to medium heat, I like to use my large cast iron. Once hot add the olive oil to the skillet. Place the meatballs into the hot oil. Cook about 2-3 minutes until golden brown, turn meatballs to another side. Cook 2-3 minutes, turn to a third side. Cook another 2-3 minutes (9 to 10 minutes total for this step) until this side of the meatball is golden brown. Remove meatball to a clean plate.

Add the white wine to the skillet. Let cook down for 1 minute. Add the butter and let it melt. Once melted add the flour and whisk into the butter.

Slowly pour the chicken broth into the skillet a little at a time and whisk into the flour mixture until it is smooth.

Add the meatballs back into the skillet. Around the meatballs add the capers with the brine, lemon juice, and garlic cloves. Gently stir everything together. Let the meatballs cook 8 to 10 minutes until fully cooked, stir everything occasionally. The meatballs will be fully cooked when they reach and internal temperature of 165º F.

Just after adding everything to the skillet to cook you will want to add the pasta along with a generous pinch of salt to the boiling water to cook so the pasta will be done around the same time as the meatballs.

Once the pasta is just slightly below al dente drain the water and add it to the skillet to finish cooking in the sauce. Once the pasta is to your liking in the sauce and the meatballs are full cooked remove from the heat. Serve right away and feel free to add generous amounts of parmesan cheese to your plate.

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