Chicken Marsala Meatballs

These chicken marsala meatballs have all the delicious flavors of chicken marsala rolled into a meatball. They work great for dinner paired with a couple of side dishes. Or, you can also serve these as appetizers at your next holiday gathering. Using these as a Thanksgiving or Christmas appetizer will certainly be a crowd-pleaser.

We all need a good meatball recipe in our lives, and these Chicken Marsala Meatballs are just the ticket. That might be the Italian in me speaking, but I’m sure non-Italians agree. I also think we all need a meal that we can make without a recipe. A recipe that we have down pat and could make blindfolded. Chicken Marsala is one of those recipes for me. It was one of the first things I learned to make when I started adulting. You can’t beat a braised chicken in a sweet and savory wine sauce with mushrooms. Back in those early adulting years, I used cheap cooking marsala wine from the grocery store (I mean, I wasn’t even 21 yet, people). These days, I use authentic sweet Marsala wine.

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Ingredients

Baby Bella mushrooms: These mushrooms are also called crimini mushrooms. Instead of adding the mushrooms in the sauce with these Chicken Marsala Meatballs, I decided to put the mushrooms in the meatballs to bump up the flavor and keep them from drying out as mushrooms hold a ton of taste but a lot of water too. Non-mushroom lovers may be reluctant to see the mushrooms in the sauce, but now they won’t even know they are there!

Olive oil: Since ground chicken is leaner, you need a little bit of fat to help keep the meatball tender.

Ground chicken: It’s so easy to find ground chicken in grocery stores, but in case you have trouble you can also substitute ground turkey in a pinch.

Egg and panko breadcrumbs: These two ingredients help keep the chicken marsala meatballs bound together. Too much or too little of either of these things can cause the meatball to break apart.

Grated parmesan: Fresh is always best for parmesan, but use whatever is your favorite. You can also sub in grated pecorino cheese, but keep in mind that you might have to decrease how much salt you season with as pecorino is saltier than parmesan.

Spices: I used garlic powder, onion powder, and a bit of salt and pepper to season these meatballs.

Chicken stock: I opt for the lower sodium stocks so that I can control the saltiness of a recipe. My favorite is Kitchen Basics Unsalted Chicken Stock always.

Marsala wine: I definitely recommend using authentic Marsala wine (unless you are under 21!) Marsala wine is a fortified, higher alcohol wine (the one I used was 18% ABV) hailing from the Italian island of Sicily. Wine Folly recommends a simple entry-level marsala wine ($10-15) for cooking. 

Cornstarch powder: You only need this if you have trouble thickening the sauce. You want the sauce to be thick enough to coat the meatballs, so you can use a bit of starch to thicken the sauce if needed. You can also sub in tapioca starch if that’s more available to you.

Parsley: This is optional, but sure does look nice and gives a fresh kick of flavor. Always buy the flat-leaf parsley, it has a much better flavor than the curly parsley.

How to Make Chicken Marsala Meatballs

You’ll need to first preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then, you’ll grind up the mushrooms and then saute them for about 7-10 minutes. Mushrooms contain a lot of water, so you’ll need to “sweat” some of the liquid out so that you don’t have soggy meatballs.

In the meantime, you begin to prep the meatballs by combining the ground chicken, egg, panko, parmesan, garlic/onion powder, and salt/pepper in a bowl. When the mushrooms are done cooking, you’ll add those to the bowl and roll into meatballs of your desired size. I rolled my into smaller meatballs and got about 30-35 meatballs.

You’ll want to keep the mushroom pan for making the sauce while the meatballs cook. You’ll pop the meatballs in the oven to roast for about 18-20 minutes or until thoroughly cooked through.

While the meatballs roast, you can make the marsala wine sauce. You’ll reduce the marsala wine down along with some chicken stock. If you need to thicken the sauce a bit, you can use some cornstarch dissolved in some cold water to thicken it up. You want the sauce to be thick enough to coat the meatballs. Once the meatballs are done toss them in the skillet with the sauce.

Tips for Serving as an Appetizer

If you are using them for a party appetizer and need them to keep warm, you can do this through a few methods listed below, but make sure no matter what that you keep an eye on them to make sure that the sauce doesn’t dry out and burn. If you notice this or want to prevent this from happening, you can just add a little bit of chicken stock to keep the meatballs and sauce from drying out.

You can keep them warm by:

• Putting them in a shallow casserole dish in an oven preheated to about 200 degrees.
• If you have a slow cooker, crockpot, or Instant Pot, you can keep the meatballs in there on the warm setting.
• If you have a large skillet or dutch oven, you can keep them on the stovetop on the lowest possible setting.

Side Dish Ideas for Serving as a Meal

• Red Skin Mashed Potatoes
• Air Fryer Carrots
• Smashed Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Glaze, Pepitas, and Cranberries

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