Use your slow cooker to make these easy, drool-worthy, gluten-free, Chicken Teriyaki Meatballs

If necessity is the mother of invention, then laziness must be it's grumpy old aunt. With necessity your inner warrior kicks into high gear, with laziness your inner grouch takes over and does everything it can to avoid extra steps such as trips to the market or dirtying too many dishes.

Chicken teriyaki meatballs in a white bowl with two handles and pink chopsticks

These chicken teriyaki meatballs were created out out of sheer laziness.. The result? I accidentally made gluten free chicken meatballs that were delicious!

If you love this recipe, please let me know in the comment section below!

How To Make Gluten Free Chicken Meatballs:

These chicken meatballs are made of ground chicken, Chex cereal crumbs, eggs, soy sauce (or gluten free alternative) and spices.
To make Chex cereal crumbs, you can either place the cereal into a zip closure bag and crush them with a rolling pin or you can place them in a food processor. A small processor, such as Nutri-Bullet would work well here. Just be sure not to over process the Chex. The goal is to process just enough to achieve bread crumb consistency, not flour consistency.
The ingredients are easy to mix together, but if you haven't worked with ground chicken before, be careful - it is different than ground beef and turkey. Ground chicken can get mushy if you over work it causing it to have trouble holding the shape of a meatball.
The secret to making this recipe work is to mix the ingredients together and then refrigerate for half an hour prior to forming meatballs.
Using a small ice cream or meatball scoop to pull just the right amount of the mixture out of the bowl for each meatball helps as well.

Chicken meatballs in a white bowl accompanies by rice noodles

How to make Lazy Chicken Teriyaki Meatball sauce

This sauce consists of water, corn starch, honey, garlic, soy sauce (or gluten free alternative) and sesame oil.
To save having to wash yet another bowl, this mixture can be made right in your slow cooker while your chicken meatballs are chilling.
Start by adding cold water and corn starch to your slow cooker. Turn it up to high and whisk these two ingredients together.
Add in honey, garlic, soy sauce (or gluten free soy alternative) and sesame oil .
If you are looking to keep it gluten free, there are many alternatives to traditional soy sauce.
Any slow cooker 3.5 quarts or larger should work. However, a Crockpot Casserole, or a larger slow cooker with more cooking surface is best because there is more opportunity for the individual meatballs to brown.

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Chicken Teriyaki meatballs and sauce in Crockpot casserole prior to cooking

Bringing it all together

After the chicken mixture has had a chance to chill, remove from fridge and use ice cream/meatball scoop to form into equally sized meatballs.
Turn slow cooker down to low at this point.
As you form each meatball place it in to the sauce in the slow cooker.
When all meatballs are in the slow cooker, spoon sauce from the bottom over them. Alternatively, if you are available, you can open up the slow cooker and turn the meatballs over half way through cooking (this is a purely optional step).
Cook on low for 3-4 hours and then switch to warm until ready to serve.
You can test to make sure your meatballs are done by using a meat thermometer. Chicken meatballs are ready to be served when they reach an internal temperature of 165ºF
Freezer friendly! This recipe should make about 55-60 medium sized meatballs (about 2" in diameter).

Suggestions For Serving:

Lazy Chicken Teriyaki Meatballs are delicious served over brown or white rice or cauliflower rice. But the fan favorite has been serving them with rice noodles.

Substitutes:

To keep this gluten free, I used crushed Chex cereal and Braggs Liquid Aminos in place of bread crumbs and soy sauce. However, Panko crumbs would make a perfect substitution for the rice based Chex.
Not a fan of teriyaki? No problem, you can substitute with a savory or sweet tomato based sauce as in the following recipes:
- Savory red sauce
- Sweet and sour sauce

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