Meatballs are awesome for a keto diet! At least, they can be if you make them from scratch at home (hint: try my keto meatball recipe). If you’re eating store-bought meatballs or splurging on eating out at a restaurant, as tasty as they might be, they aren’t quite what you would expect. Keto meatballs don’t just happen in the “real world.”
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If you’ve ever made a traditional meatball recipe, you probably see where I’m going with this. Meatballs aren’t just balls of meat; they are delicious little flavor spheres of meat mixed with, you guessed it, carbs. Those meatballs aren’t actually low carb, and they certainly aren’t keto friendly. Don’t get catfished by meatballs, try making a keto meatball recipe instead.
Meatballs usually have breadcrumbs, flour, rice, or some other carb-loaded filler to provide a light, tenderness that delivers that signature meatball texture. When I first attempted a keto meatball recipe, my logic was that these things were utterly useless and added no value to the meal, just extra carbs, and calories. So I tried my luck with excluding the “filler” altogether. The outcome? Tough, dense, dried out pieces of meat. Meatball? Sure. Good? Not so much.
Think about when you bite into a burger patty versus a meatball. Now imagine if that burger patty was the same texture but as thick as a meatball. Not the same thing, right? Meatballs are supposed to be soft and tender, not difficult to chew.
I played around with different things and have found that almond flour makes a really excellent breadcrumb substitute as far as texture goes. It’s my favorite replacement for this by far. I did try using coconut flour once, but it seemed to dry the meatball out and didn’t help the cause at all. Almond flour kept things light and moist.
Two other great substitutes were riced cauliflower and shredded zucchini; both bulked out the keto meatball recipe a bit while providing that light texture I was hoping for. And you guys know how I feel about my low carb vegetables. If you are trying to squeeze more vegetables into your diet, have a nut allergy, or find that nuts cause your weight loss to stall, then give shredded zucchini or riced cauliflower a try. Just sub out the almond flour in the recipe for your veggie of choice and update the nutrition table below with the nutrient data for your vegetable.
Ingredients
- 1 pound Ground Turkey Breast - 97% lean
- ½ cup Almond Flour
- 1 whole egg
- ¼ cup onion chopped
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tablespoon coconut aminos sub liquid aminos or soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon red boat fish sauce
Instructions
- Mix all the ingredients and shape into 30 meatballs approximately 1" across. (If you prefer larger meatballs, adjust for longer cook time and divide the whole recipe nutrition by how many meatballs you actually make to get nutrient data per meatball.)
- Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat. Optional: if needed, coat with your cooking oil of choice. Sesame oil would work really well with the flavor profile of the ingredients.
- Cook the meatballs for 5-6 minutes or until evenly cooked throughout and browned on the outside. Repeat the process in batches until all meatballs have cooked.
Nutrition
Hi, I'm Tasha–nutritionist, recipe developer, and multi-published cookbook author.
Very good writing in this recipe post, Tasha. Impressive. I love the idea of subbing in shredded zuc or cauli for almond flour. will try it. - ryan
While looking for my favorite keto meatball recipe, consisting of beef, pork, and cheese I stopped here because I was shocked to see keto and turkey in the same sentence. I looked through the ingredients list and am left wondering... where's the fat? With protein at 129 and fat at 39 these aren't keto by themselves. Even if you covered them in mozzarella cheese, the protein would far outweigh the fat. Perhaps swimming in butter or a cream soup they would suffice.
Hey Steve! Not all of the recipes I develop are high in fat. I offer a variety of recipes with variable fat content, some low and some high. There are a variety of approaches to nutritional ketosis and I hope to offer a little something for everyone. I personally adhere to the Volek and Phinney definition of nutritional ketosis (The Art & Science of Low Carbohydrate Living is such an awesome read if you haven't checked it out) - limit carbs, adequate amount of protein to support lean body mass, and fat is a variable that you can lower to create a calorie deficit and increase to eat maintenance level calories. Common misconception that everything needs to have a high fat content to be keto. Here is an interview with Dr. Phinney that might be of interest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkdFkPxxDG8 around 06:40 to like 9 minutes in they discuss fat intake during weight loss versus weight maintenance. I also created a little video a while back to illustrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5caTlPUTUk Hope that helps clarify why you may see lower fat on my site. Have a good weekend! 🙂
I just included side dishes and a dessert (thanks for making that possible with this recipe) to up my fat intake. We had delicious chocolate avocado pudding I never have enough fat left to have.
I ended up making a dipping sauce of equal parts sour cream and mayo with fish sauce, garlic powder, and sesame oil.
Marvelous dipping sauce. Thank you!
I also make a dipping sauce for them:
Mayo
Ginger powder
Red pepper flakes
Lime juice
Besides I think this would go well with some avocado and a fat bomb 😉
I really like this site...
Thanks!
Delicious. Moist. Flavorful. Tender. My family LOVED them.
Awesome! I'm so glad you and your family loved these! Thank you for the positive feedback, totally made my day! ?
These were amazing!! Would be good with some kind of green curry. I added carrots and zucchini, but somehow forgot the egg haha. They turned out great nonetheless!
Glad you liked them! Good to know they work without eggs, especially for the readers with egg allergies. Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it!
Hey Tasha,
Your almond flour links to Bob's Red Mill Almond Flour. Their almond flour in a quarter cup has 6 grams of carbs yet your recipe which uses a half cup has zero grams of carbs. How is that possible?
It's not zero carbs, it's like 0.4 per meatball total carbs, 0.2g net carbs per meatball. But the nutrition label plugin I use rounds down the same as US labels. It drives me crazy, I apologize. It's the best one I could find, but I'm afraid it's not perfect; it pulls the nutrition data from the USDA database, adds the quantities together, and divides it by the number of servings to create the label... but it rounds down.
I was building nutrition data tables myself in Excel/Google sheets to get the data really precise, but after polling my readers they let me know it was overkill and preferred this presentation. Since it's all automated, I don't have as much control over the rounding. I hope that clears things up. Sorry for the confusion!
Hi Tasha,
The recipe looks great! What is the serving size used in the nutrition chart?
Thanks!
Hi there, Did you do anything special to the zucchini noodles in the pic? Thanks!
Would it be ok to use turkey with a higher fat percentage? Would I need to adjust with a bit more almond flour?
You could definitely use meat with a higher fat content! I don't think you'd need to add extra flour, but I haven't tried it myself.
Awesome! I'll give it a try next week and let you know. Thanks!
Do you have an option for baking these? Time and temperature required for that?
If you are planning to bake, I'd shoot for 375 for about 15 to 20 minutes. Check doneness around 15 minutes and add time as needed. You want to make sure they are not pink in the middle. Hope that helps!
These were delicious! Served with a big salad with avocados and and a yuzu chili sesame dressing. Will definitely make them again!
Hi, I see this recipe makes 30 meatballs, but I don't see how many meatballs/serving? Sorry if I just missed it..
these were awesome. i tripled the recipe and added cooked spinach and a chopped orange bell pepper to the mix. i baked in the oven on parchment paper. meal prepped for tonight's dinner, tomorrow's lunch and some for the freezer for quick meals.
Hi! Wondering what would be a good sauce to go with this, similar to bbq sauce? Thanks in advance 🙂
I was wondering the same thing. Is clearly isn't a tomato sauce kind of dish. With the fish sauce (or I'm using soy sauce) flavor, this has a more Asian-style.
I was wondering the same thing. Is clearly isn't a tomato sauce kind of dish. With the fish sauce (or I'm using soy sauce) flavor, this has a more Asian-style.
These were fantastic! I opted to bake these and your suggestion of 20 minutes at 375 was spot on. I would suggest flipping them at about 15 minutes in so both sides get browned. The almond flour also seemed to give the meatballs a crispy outside which was nice since baking meatballs tends to soften the outside a bit. I didn't have fish sauce so substituted a tablespoon of tomato paste which gave them a really nice flavor.
What is a serving size, please? Thank you. Making them now...smell good!
Awesome! Super easy. My toddler loved them too!
These have a really unique flavor and were super easy to throw together, thank you for the recipe!! Been looking for some lower fat, higher protein meals to round out my keto goals because I get a lot of fat from other sources like cream and cheese during the day. This is perfect!
I followed the advice of another commenter and made a sauce of mayo, sour cream, fish sauce, sesame oil, and garlic powder. Also baked for 20 min at 375F.
Hi couldn't help but notice 2 very important things left off the nutritional info : serving size and total carbs thank you will try tonight
I just made these and they are so good. Rarely do I not add my own touch when I cook, so for these I snipped in about 1/3 cup of fresh basil and 1/4 cup of snipped flat chives (probably ramps) from the backyard. I would definitely do these again.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe. The meatballs were moist and positively delicious!!! Love, love, love the flavor of sesame oil.
Loved the recipe. I smoked mine then added them to a cream sauce served over a bed of cauliflower rice.
I'm curious how you got 30 balls out of 1 pound though. I doubled the recipe and only got 33 balls.
Hi, Ray!
It’s been a while since I’ve tested this specific recipe, but my guess is we are making different sized meatballs (mine being much smaller). I’ll need to re-test the recipe and weigh out the individual meatball sizes for more specific instruction. We’re also going through the site to provide even more detailed nutrition information, so I’ll get that updated to reflect per meatball and per “serving size” for more meaningful macros (and other nutrient data).
Glad you enjoyed the recipe, but I agree it could use some additional clarity for best success! Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. 🙂
Your suggestion to replace the flour with zucchini was A+++!!! My kids ate every bite.
Thank you for the positive feedback! Kids are the toughest critics, so if they liked it AND joyfully ate veggies to boot, I'm a happy camper. 🙂
first time, this was great! I didn't have the fish sauce and it was still delicious! Thanks!