Thai Chicken Meatballs in Curry Sauce
Our Thai curry chicken meatballs are a family favorite. You can use any type of ground meat that you like to customize the meatballs to your preferred liking! These meatballs in curry sauce is also a great meal prep dish.
Inspiration for Easy Chicken Meatballs
Today was a doozie that the studio. After filming several client food videos and photographing the recipes the last thing we wanted to eat was what we captured on-set. It’s typical for us to not crave anything that we photographed or filmed that day. We needed dinner quick and the thought of going out to eat crossed our minds. But we didn’t want to go out to eat when we had a fridge full of ingredients and didn’t want to be burdened by a fussy dinner that took more than 30 minutes. Yup we were that picky about not wanting to eat out and not wanting to wait for dinner. Have you ever felt like that? Hungry and a little impatient? Lol, thus the life of post-photo dinner problems!
Video: Yummy Thai Curry Chicken Meatballs
Best Thai Meatballs Recipe in Curry
We were craving curry because that was quick to throw together an d we had a really good go-to curry recipes. But our chicken thighs were still frozen (drama!) and we were too hungry to think about thawing. What we found was a bit of ground chicken and did the math: ground chicken + curry craving= chicken meatballs in curry. Thai style! Voila! No more hunger pains and within 30 minutes with both of us prepping we had a fabulous pot of Thai curry chicken meatballs to heal our hunger. The tender meatballs and awesome curry sauce washed away all the exhaustion from the days production shoot. Now we’ve finalized the recipe for you here and hope you enjoy it as much as we did. That’s the end of the story of a day in the life of hungry photographers.
Tips for How to Make Chicken Meatballs in Curry Sauce
- Other options for ground meat if you don’t want to use ground chicken: pork, ground beef, lamb, ground turkey.
- If you want a vegan or plant based meatball, you can use beyond meat or impossible meat. And use soy sauce instead of fish sauce for a vegan option.
- We like a lot of flavor in our sauce. If you’re cautious about using fish sauce, just try a little bit of it. Seriously, even a little bit of fish sauce imparts so much of the thai flavor that makes these meatballs awesome. See below for our favorite fish sauces.
- If you’re still a little cautious about fish sauce, then you can use soy sauce.
- If you’re wanting red curry flavor you can use red curry paste instead of the regular yellow curry powder.
- Add a handful of fresh chopped thai basil or any of your favorite fresh herbs.
- All meatballs in curry sauce recipe details are in the recipe box below.
Our Favorite Fish Sauce Brands:
This has been our house fish sauce for decades. Great stuff! We’ll use it to make our dipping sauces as well as marinades.
100% all-natural first press extra virgin Vietnamese fish sauce. One of the best artisan fish sauce producers.
Another good fish sauce. Clean flavors, good depth. It’s the one Diane’s mom most often uses for cooking.
Thai Curry Chicken Meatballs
Ingredients
For the Meatballs
- 1 pound (454 g) ground chicken
- 3 cloves garlic , minced
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) grated fresh ginger (or 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger)
- 2 stalks green onions (minced)
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) salt , or to taste
- lots of fresh cracked black pepper , to taste
- 2 Tablespoons (30 ml) oil
For the Curry:
- 3 cloves garlic , minced
- 1 bay leaf (or kaffir lime leaf)
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) curry powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin , optional
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) cayenne pepper , optional or to taste
- 1 cup (240 ml) coconut milk
- 1 cup (240 ml) chicken broth
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) fish sauce , or more to taste
- zest of 2 limes
- Fresh lime juice , to taste (optional)
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) minced cilantro (optional)
Instructions
- Make the meatballs: In bowl, mix ground chicken, garlic, ginger, green onion, salt and pepper until evenly combined.
- Form into even sized balls about 1-1/2 inches (4cm) in diameter. Tips: A cookie scoop, large spoon, or measuring spoon will help keep the meatballs a consistent size. Oil or wet your hands as you roll to minimize chicken from sticking to your hands.
- Heat a large oven-safe skillet on medium-high heat. Add oil, and after oil is hot, meatballs and brown each side, turning often (about 2-3 minutes per side) until a crust forms.
- Remove meatballs from pan and set aside. Keep oil in pan.
- Make the curry sauce: In the same skillet over medium heat add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the bay leaf (or kaffir lime leaf), curry powder, ground cumin, cayenne pepper. Add the coconut milk, chicken broth, fish sauce, and lime zest. Stir until combined. Bring liquid to a low simmer.
- Place meatballs back into the skillet and simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes, or until the meatballs are fully cooked (timing will depend on meatball size and how much you seared the meatballs).
- If desired, squeeze in some lime juice and top with minced cilantro. Serve over rice, with slices of crusty bread, with flatbreads, or however you prefer to enjoy your curry.
Video
Nutrition Information per Serving
What to serve with these coconut curry chicken meatballs?
Always classic and comforting, we love eating these with white jasmine rice. But there’s other options too:
- Brown rice or other grains are great like quinoa, couscous or wild rice.
- Low carb cauliflower rice or riced cauliflower is a great keto-friendly option
- Noodles are fantastic too. For a quickie meal, just boil some packaged ramen noodles without the seasoning packets. Rice noodles are great too.
- Pasta is always a family favorite. From spaghetti to penne and even macaroni, there’s so many possbilities.
- Make a sandwich out of these! Wow the soft hoagie sandwiches are perfect for soaking up the sauce.
Can you Freeze These Meatballs?
Yes, you can totally freeze them. It’s a great make-ahead meal prep recipe. Just remember to use a rubber spatula to scrape off as much sauce as possible to save and freeze. The sauce is the best part!
Enjoy,
diane and todd
More–> Easy Curry Recipes Here
- Coconut Curry Chicken Thighs Recipe
- Roasted curry turmeric cauliflower with pistachios and coconut
- Spaghetti Squash with Curry Sauce
- All our quick curry recipes here
This recipe was originally published in 2018 and most recently updated 2023.
This is by far our new favorite curry dish. All I can say is wow! And it’s quite simple to make. One small adjustment: next time we will use
1.5 -2 lbs. of ground chicken for four generous servings. Maybe double the sauce too. These meatballs are too fabulous to have only 3 or so in your bowl, and the sauce is simply the best. We served with noodles but it would be great with rice too.
easy to make, tasted delicious. added cardamom for annextra kick and subbed mushroom soy sauce for fish sauce since I’m allergic. was Def yummy.
Adding cardamom sounds great. Thanks for sharing!
WOW! I’m a foodie. I absolutely love to cook and try new dishes. This one made the ‘Keep List’. My husband loved it so much that he asked me to make it again for dinner tomorrow night! It’s super easy and really comes together quickly. You have to try this. All I can say is wonderful wonderful!!! I never write reviews but this dish deserved 10 stars.
Excellent recipe for ground chicken. I made mine bit too salty.