BUFFALO CHICKEN MEATBALLS | slow cooker chicken recipe

Hello, my friends, it's Dani, and today I'm showing you how to make my slow cooker buffalo chicken meatballs. Now, these are a super fun alternative to a traditional buffalo wing. They're made with lean ground chicken, you could also use turkey, baked in the oven, and then finished in the slow cooker. These meatballs are great for meal prep, perfect for a crowd, and also delightful if you just enjoy a good meatball, because personally, I love a good meatball. Now, you can easily double or triple this recipe, then you would just store them in an airtight container, and they would happily last in your fridge for up to five days, or in your freezer for up to three months. And we really love to serve them with my homemade Greek yogurt blue cheese dressing, and if you stick around to the end of the video, I'm gonna show you how to make that as well. So the first thing I'm gonna do is preheat my oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, then over here I have a rimmed baking sheet, which I'm gonna line with some parchment paper, you could also do this with a Silpat mat, or a little bit of cooking spray, you just wanna make sure that the meatballs don't stick. Then everything else happens in one large bowl. So in my bowl I have one pound of organic lean ground chicken, this could also be ground turkey if you prefer. And to that I'm gonna add one egg, a half a cup of panko breadcrumbs, now panko breadcrumbs are a Japanese breadcrumb, they're a little bit airier and lighter than a traditional breadcrumb. And I also have half a cup of cauliflower rice, which I buy frozen, and then I just let defrost on the counter. This is not only a great way to add some extra veggies to the dish, but it's a really easy way to pull back on the breadcrumbs. Next I'll add a half a teaspoon each of garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, one of my personal favorites, sea salt, and black pepper. And then for a little bit of color and fresh flavor, I'm gonna add in a quarter cup of finely chopped parsley as well. And if you don't have any fresh parsley, then just add a heaping tablespoon of dried parsley. Once I have everything in my bowl, I'm going to use my hands, because it's the easiest way to do this, to mix everything together. And you're gonna notice that this mixture is pretty sticky. So it can be really helpful to have a bowl of cold water nearby when you're ready to roll your meatballs, because that's gonna help prevent the mixture from sticking to your hands. So this looks good. Once I've got it all mixed together, I'm just gonna give my hands a quick wash. Then I'm gonna just dampen them with the water, and then scoop up about a heaping tablespoon of the meat mixture and loosely roll it into a ball. It's kind of like a roll and shape, roll and shape until it looks just like that. Then I'll place that on my prepared baking sheet and repeat until I've worked through all of the meatball mixture, being sure to keep my hands nice and damp as I go. And you're gonna see that if you keep them about the size that I have them here, you'll end up with 20 meatballs. Then from here, I'm just gonna pop them in the oven for 10 minutes. This is not going to cook them through. They are not edible after 10 minutes, but what it does is it just sets the meatballs up. If I were to put them directly into the crock pot when they were not set up, they would end up kind of cooking into each other, and they might not hold their shape. Now, alternatively, if you were looking for a really quick cooked meal, you could just leave them in the oven and cook them for 20, 25 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the meatball hits 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss them in your buffalo sauce and enjoy. But I personally prefer to finish them in the slow cooker because number one, they are super tender when they're done. And number two, oftentimes I will prep them up to the baking stage, and then I'll store those partially cooked meatballs in the refrigerator. And then during the week, when I don't have time to do all the prep work, I can just pop them into my slow cooker and a couple hours later, we have what tastes like a fresh cooked meal. Okay, so after 10 minutes, you're gonna see that the meatballs have set up. So from here, all I do is transfer them into my slow cooker. And if you need to do some in a double layer, that's totally fine. And then I'm just gonna cover them with three quarters of a cup of buffalo wing sauce. Now, personally, I love the Primal Kitchen buffalo wing sauce. I honestly think this is the best tasting wing sauce that I have tried. And it's really tangy and creamy, and it's dairy free. So it gets all of that richness from cashews. So I highly recommend this one. I will link it for you down in the description box below, and I'll also provide you with a discount code if you wanna give it a try. But you can, of course, also use whatever your personal favorite buffalo wing sauce is. They would all get the job done. So from here, I'm just gonna pop on the lid, set the slow cooker to low, and let this go for two, two and a half hours, and the meatballs are gonna be like perfectly cooked, tender, delicious, and ready to go. Now, as promised, while that's happening, I'm gonna show you how to make my favorite Greek yogurt blue cheese dressing. This dressing is so good. It's tangy and rich and creamy. And instead of using a base of like sour cream and a lot of mayo, we're using some Greek yogurt, which is amazing, because it's also high in protein, and it gives us that same rich, creamy texture. So in my bowl, I have three quarters of a cup of plain Greek yogurt. You could do non-fat, 2% full fat, whatever you fancy. And then I have one tablespoon of mayo, just because I really like the tang that mayo adds. Then I'm gonna add in two cloves of crushed garlic, or you could do one really big fat one, and two and a half ounces of blue cheese crumbled up, which is about a half a cup. Now, I recommend that you buy your blue cheese in a block and then crumble it yourself, because you're always gonna get the best flavor, the best texture, and the best quality. Then I have a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a quarter cup of milk, I'm using a 2% milk, and then a fat pinch of sea salt, and some black pepper. That is it. Give it a good mix. You're gonna see, it's really rich and creamy, and you get that beautiful blue cheese flavor from the blue cheese, and that creamy texture from the yogurt. It's so good. My husband and I love adding this to salads during the week, and I also love having it on hand. So if the kids come home from school and they want a snack, they're more inclined to munch on some veggies if they can dip it in something delicious like this. We love to serve these with some celery and carrots, and that creamy Greek yogurt blue cheese dressing, but we also enjoy them over the top of a salad, alongside some roasted veggies, or some steamed veggies, or on top of some brown rice or some quinoa. The options are truly endless, and of course, they are the perfect appetizer for Super Bowl Sunday, or really any game day for that matter. So I'm super excited for you to give them a try, and when you do, come on down to the comments below and let me know what you think, and let me know how you enjoyed them. Like, what did you eat them with? Curious minds want to know. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Dani Spees, and I'll see you back here next time with some more clean and deliciousness. Cheers.