Mini Chicken Meatloaves with Pineapple BBQ Sauce

These mini chicken meatloaves with pineapple BBQ sauce are perfect for meal prep. You can make a batch (or two) for the week ahead or freeze for later. The pineapple, which is a natural meat tenderizer, makes the meatloaves pillowy soft and gives a tropical feel in the BBQ sauce. Clearly, I have a thing for tropical fruit inspired BBQ sauces. 

Ingredients

You’ll need:

• Scallions: You’ll need the white and green parts, but keep them separate. Make sure to chop these fine – especially the white parts, which will go into the meatloaves before cooking. You chop them fine because you don’t want to bite into a huge chunk of scallion. 

• Ground chicken: Chicken is a natural choice to go with pineapple. You can also choose ground pork, which would work out perfectly. 

• Ginger: Grate or mince the ginger finely. If you don’t have fresh ginger available, dried ground ginger will work fine as well, but use 1 tsp. of ground ginger in place of the 1 tbsp. of fresh ginger. 

• Oatmeal: Oatmeal works perfectly to help bind the ground meat. You can use panko bread crumbs instead of oatmeal if you prefer. 

• Egg: This works with the oatmeal to bind the meatloaves together.

• Crushed pineapple: As I mentioned before, pineapple is a natural meat tenderizer and keeps the meatloaves from becoming tough. Plus, it adds a sweet Hawaiian/tropical note to the BBQ sauce by using some of the pineapple juice. 

• Ketchup: The basis of some of the most delicious BBQ sauces – it’s sweet tomato-y flavor can’t be beaten.  

• Seasonings: Garlic powder, salt, and pepper round out the seasonings for these meatloaves. 

What to serve on the side

I served these with baked sweet potato fries, but you also can’t go wrong with these Grilled Potato Salad Skewers with Zucchini or my Caramelized Corn and Green Bean Skillet. The corn and green bean skillet recipe is one of my top recipes of all time. They both would go perfectly with these Mini Chicken Meatloaves with Pineapple BBQ Sauce.