Healthy Ground Turkey Meatball Recipe
This post contains affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.
Healthy Turkey Meatballs are the perfect quick dinner! Low fat, high protein and delicious plain or in sauce! Easily made gluten free too.
Whether you’re Italian or not – there’s no denying that there are few better things in life than a big bowl of pasta and meatballs!
These Healthy Turkey Meatballs are loaded with flavor, high protein, and super easy to make.
Why You Should Make This Recipe
- Low fat: These meatballs are made with ground turkey making them is lower in fat than traditional meatballs which are often made with ground beef and ground pork.
- High Protein: These meatballs are high in protein making them a great snack or meal!
- Great for meal prep: These meatballs freeze well and are quick to make.
Healthy Turkey Meatball Ingredients:
Substitutions
Ground Turkey: You can sub ground chicken or ground beef for the ground turkey. You can also try our Ground Beef Meatballs Recipe or Ground Chicken Meatballs.
Egg: If you have an egg allergy you can skip the egg, but we do recommend it. It helps bind the meatballs.
Breadcrumbs: You can use whole wheat breadcrumbs or regular breadcrumbs.
Gluten Free: You can substitute gluten free breadcrumbs OR coconut flour to make this recipe gluten free.
Fresh Herbs: Fresh herbs are so much better than dried! If you have fresh basil or parsley on hand, sub in 1 tablespoon of minced fresh herbs for 1/2 teaspoon of dried herbs.
Extra Veggies: You can add in chopped spinach or kale for extra veggies. I like to pulse spinach in the food processor so it gets super fine. You can’t even taste it!
Parmesan Cheese: Cheese is optional in meatballs but we highly recommend it. It helps to make the meatballs super tender and flavorful.
Doubling the batch: You can easily double this batch of meatballs. We highly recommend it. See below for tips on freezing/storing.
How to make Healthy Turkey Meatballs
- Add all ingredients into a large bowl.
- Mix until combined.
- Roll the batter into about 1.5 tablespoon balls and place on cookie sheet. Tip: Use a cookie scoop for consistency!
- Bake at 400° for 10 minutes, then flip and bake for another 10 minutes on the other side.
How to make turkey meatballs on the stovetop: You can easily make these meatballs on the stovetop. Heat a pan with olive oil. Add the meatballs to the pan and cook for 10-15 minutes, turning every 3 minutes until all sides are browned.
How to make turkey meatballs in the air fryer: Air Fry at 400° for 12-15 minutes until golden brown, allow to cool + enjoy!
How to make turkey meatballs in the instant pot: We don’t recommend making these meatballs in the instant pot, but it is possible. Place meatballs on top of trivet, stacking as needed.
Cover instant pot and make sure the pressure release is set to sealing. Lastly, set instant pot to pressure cook for 7 minutes.
Liz’s Tips for the Best Meatballs:
Use a large cookie scoop for forming even, equal meatballs! I scoop the batter with a cookie scoop and then roll them for uniform meatballs.
Make a full batch or double batch and freeze some of these clean eating meatballs. It will make your life SO much easier. These freeze perfectly in a big ziploc bag and then you can just defrost them as you need them!
Cook the meatballs in tomato sauce after baking them. They’re delicious on their own, but so yummy when you let them cook low and slow!
Storage
Refrigerator: These meatballs will last in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Freezing: Freeze cooked meatballs in an airtight container for up to 6 months. You can also freeze in a reusable ziploc bag. We don’t recommend freezing the meatballs raw.
Reheating: I microwave these meatballs to reheat them, but you can also cook them on the stovetop until warm or put them in the toaster oven.
What to Serve with Turkey Meatballs
These turkey meatballs are perfect on their own but here are some other ideas:
- With Crockpot Tomato Sauce – The key to the best turkey meatballs ever is cooking them IN sauce after they have been baked. I like to let my meatballs cook low and slow for hours in our homemade sauce. Cooking in jarred sauce also works!
- Over pasta: We like to serve these over Homemade Ricotta Cavatelli – so yummy!
- Over zoodles (zucchini noodles)– If you don’t have a spiralizer you have to get one! As much as I love eating a bowl of pasta – spiralized zucchini is a great lower calorie option. We also like hearts of palm noodles.
- Over a salad – These meatballs are great over spring mix with a yummy dressing. We like our Greek Salad Dressing Recipe or with our Kale Salad with Lemon Dressing.
ground turkey meatball faqs
The healthiest meatballs are high in protein and low in carbs/fat. These meatballs are made from lean ground turkey and you can use almond/coconut flour instead of breadcrumbs to make them lower in carbs!
Turkey meatballs are healthier than beef for a few reasons. Ground turkey is lower in calories and fat than ground beef – making turkey meatballs a healthier choice than beef meatballs.
These turkey meatballs have roughly 70 calories per meatball.
Adding an egg to meatballs is a good idea. It works as a binder that helps hold the meatballs together
You can make meatballs stick together a few different ways. Breadcrumbs, milk, and eggs all act as binders for meatballs.
Turkey meatballs fall apart if they have too little egg, milk, or breadcrumbs in them.
You want to ensure you have the right ratio of meat and binders in your filling to make juicy meatballs that stay together.
Will meatballs fall apart without breadcrumbs? No, meatballs will not fall apart without breadcrumbs, but they might not be as tender. If you’re not using breadcrumbs in this recipe, you can sub with coconut flour and it will help to bind them.
Other healthy turkey recipes:
We love ground turkey! It’s so versatile and delicious. We have a whole list of the Best Healthy Ground Turkey Recipes but here are some of our favs!
Easy Turkey Meatballs
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground turkey
- 1 egg
- ½ cup breadcrumbs
- ½ cup minced onion
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic about 3 cloves
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon dried parsley
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Instructions
Oven Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and prepare a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined.
- Shape 2 tablespoons of the mixture into a ball, and repeat until 16 meatballs have been formed. Place on a baking sheet.
- Bake the meatballs for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F or until they are golden brown.
- Serve with your favorite sauce and pasta.
Instant Pot Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl until combined. Roll into approximately 2 inch balls and place on cookie sheet.
- Freeze meatballs for 10 minutes to make them easier to handle.
- Once meatballs have been frozen, place trivet insert into Instant Pot. Pour 1 cup of water into bottom of pot.
- Place meatballs on top of trivet, stacking as needed.
- Cover instant pot and make sure the pressure release is set to sealing. Set instant pot to pressure cook for 7 minutes.
- Allow pressure to naturally release for 5 minutes. Release any remaining pressure and remove with tongs.
- See Notes for additional tips/tricks for cooking meatballs in instant pot.
- Serve with your favorite sauce and pasta.
Air Fryer Instructions
- Preheat air fryer to 400 degrees.
- Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined
- Roll into approximately 2 inch balls and place in greased air fryer basket
- Air Fry at 400 for 12-15 minutes until golden brown, allow to cool + enjoy!
- Serve with your favorite sauce and pasta.
It says 4vservings of 4 meatballs at the top of the recipe. In the nutrition section it says serving size 6 meatballs. Can you tell me which 1 is accurate?
Sorry for the typo. This makes approximately 4 servings of 6 2 inch meatballs. The servings will vary greatly depending on how you roll the balls so if you’re tracking calories/macros I would recommend putting this into your app/calculator and dividing by however many meatballs you make.
ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!
Turkey meatball has great balance of salty and sweet flavors and soft texture. Adding cheese would be great to add touch.
Can I cook the raw meatballs in my sauce? I do so with beef( many Italians do, also sausage!)… adds so much meaty, rich flavor to the sauce, but not sure about lean turkey since not much fat.Thanks…
We love to cook these meatballs in the sauce after they have been baked to ensure they are fully cooked and don’t fall apart. Hope you enjoy!!
I’m excited about making these. Can they be baked in a muffin pan in a silicon cupcake holder?
There’s really no need to do that. I would just roll them in balls and bake on a baking sheet. You’ll just be creating extra dishes for yourself, and I worry they’ll get soggy as the excess water cooks off.
Love! I added fresh parsley, ground fennel seed, minced fresh garlic too. I doubled the recipe using 1 pound of 99% lean and 1 pound of 93% lean Turkey. Thanks for this recipe.
Making these now. Wondering if you’ve experimented with adding mushrooms or black beans? Can wait to make batches of these!
I haven’t added mushrooms – I think those would get soggy. I’m sure the black beans would be fine. I would only add maybe 1/2 cup to the batter!
Easy to make. I cooked them in the oven as above and then made a sauce and put them in to absorb the flavours – delicious!
I never thought making meatballs could be so easy. This is a recipe my family already asked me to make again. I have some picky eaters in the family. Not only did he ate mine and had 4 more meatballs. That was huge win! Fresh ingredients and so easy to found. Now I’m just thinking of the many ways to eat them with.
Thank you for sharing
These were amazing. I was pleasantly surprised!!! I’ll be making them again for sure.