Chicken meatballs are one of my favorite things to eat! Keto meatballs consistently pop up on my weekly menu plan. They're delicious and simple, but lend themselves to a variety of flavors. These chicken meatballs stuffed with provolone cheese are always a hit with the family.
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Maybe it's the gooey, melted cheese center? Or perhaps the tender, slow-cooked chicken? Whatever the reason, my entire household goes crazy for these cheesy chicken meatballs. I love this recipe because it's one of those things you can prep ahead of time, then set and forget while the crockpot works its magic.
The Chicken Meatballs Stuffed with Provolone Recipe
This chicken meatballs recipe is incredibly versatile. I tend to keep it pretty basic to make sure the carbs don't add up, but you can tailor this to suit your tastes. Try a different cheese, add your favorite seasonings to the sauce, get creative!
I like to start by preparing the provolone cheese before I get my hands dirty. Just cut into little cubes, 14 grams (½ ounce) per piece will evenly divide the cheese to distribute throughout your meatballs.
Combine the ground chicken with the eggs yolks, almond flour, and salt. I use my hands to do all the mixing since the next step is shaping the mixture into meatballs. It's much easier to mold meatball shapes with your hands instead of utensils, plus it's way more fun. To get the most consistent sizes and keep better track of your macros, I recommend weighing the meat mixture out with a kitchen scale. If you follow my recipe to a T, each raw meatball will weigh 27.5 grams (0.97 ounces) before adding the cheese.
The sauce is straightforward, just diced up tomatoes and a bit of chicken broth. You can fine tune to your liking, but I usually leave any salt out until the end and salt to taste as I serve. I'm never quite sure how a sauce's flavor will develop in the slow cooker until I dive in for a taste at the end. If you're in a rush, cook on high for 4 hours. I usually aim for between 6 to 8 hours, myself.
A couple of hours in, take care to stir the contents of the crockpot gently. If I'm around the house while these are cooking, I'll give it a mix every couple of hours out of curiosity. But if you have things to do elsewhere, don't even worry about doting on your crockpot. Rest assured, everything will still taste amazing. That's the beauty of slow cooking; you can toss it all in one pot and forget about it until dinner!
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound chicken ground
- 2 egg yolks
- ½ cup almond flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 10 oz provolone cheese cubed
- 1 cup tomatoes diced
- ½ cup chicken broth
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, combine ground chicken, egg yolks, almond flour, and salt.
- Shape the mixture into 20 meatballs, weighing 27.5g per piece. Adjust the size of the meatball to your liking if you prefer larger meatballs.
- Press a cube of provolone (14g per cube) into each meatball and reshape, if necessary.
- Add the tomatoes and chicken broth to the slow cooker; gently submerge the meatballs in the sauce.
- Cook on high for 4 hours, medium for 6 hours, or low for 8 hours, taking care to gently stir the meatballs after 2 hours.
Nutrition
Hi, I'm Tasha–nutritionist, recipe developer, and multi-published cookbook author.
How many meatballs is a serving?
Hey Sue! The nutrition facts are for 1 meatball. For recipes like this, I try to keep the nutrition info based per unit to keep the math easy for people tracking their macros and calories. The recipe without revision makes 20 meatballs total, so the serving size would be dependent on your personal macros and goals. Hope that helps!
Hi Tasha! Did you use fresh diced tomatoes or canned?
I used less cheese than called for and made sure the meat fully covered the cheese. Despite that, a lot of the cheese is leaking out of the meatballs and is making the sauce a milky, goopy mess. I'm sure it will taste good, but it's not very appetizing looking.
Same thing happened to me. I didn't find this to be an appetizing dinner. Not a single meatball had cheese, even though none were broken open. The cheese just disappeared into the sauce leaving me with a hollow center in each chicken meatball. Not only that, the chicken was dry. I had to stop cooking well before 6 hours - the sauce was too little. If I'd left it for 6 on medium I'm afraid the sauce would have cooked off. I love a lot of recipes on this site. Truly. Just not this one.
I didn't care for this. All the cheese leaked out into the sauce and I was left with hallow chicken meatballs that were dry. The sauce cooked off well before 6 hours so turned off the crock pot a little after 4 hours. Good thing I didn't leave them to cook the full 6 hours and go shopping. LOVE so many recipes on this site - just not this one.
Based on the prior comments and a thought experiment I decided to tweak a bit and make this on the stove top instead of a slow cooker and it turned out great! First I made the meat balls and fried them in olive oil until they were brown and cooked through. I let the marinara sauce simmer while I was doing this (used home canned tomatoes and chicken broth, added garlic and oregano) then added the meatballs to the sauce pan.
I ended up using a small fraction of the cheese called for (like 2oz) because I just couldn’t get the meatball to completely cover it otherwise but melted more provolone on top when I was finished. I think next time I make it I will add seasoning to the meatball beyond salt and pepper, maybe a pasta sprinkle mix? I’m sure doing it on the stove top took a whole lot longer and changed the texture but I am super happy with the results.