Chicken Teriyaki and Pineapple Meatballs

I keep hearing about these Chicken meatballs from Costco and thought it sounded like a great plan for a healthier dinner. The other day Tisha was saying they were having these and brown rice for dinner, it sounded right up my alley. Since I live 60 miles from Costco and have a Sam's membership anyway, I went and looked at the ingredients list and came up with my own version...minus the junk in the others. In my continuing efforts of " Lifestyle Change" I am starting to replace a lot of beef and pork with chicken and turkey. Now don't get me wrong, I still love me some red meat, but I am cutting back where I can.

I am really tired of the whole "Lifestyle Change" phrase, but that is exactly what it is. It is not a diet, it is not starving, it is not never eating the foods I love. It is simply doing the best I can with what I can live with and still eating yummy food. After all, I didn't get fat because of my dislike of yummy food.

Ingredients:

2 lb ground chicken (I used chicken breast)
1/2 cup crushed pineapple (well drained)
1 tsp white sugar
1 TB soy sauce ( I use Hawaiian Soy because the sodium is far less )

1/2 tsp. ground oriental hot mustard (you can omit this, I just love it)

  1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp miso powder
1 tsp ground ginger
salt to your preference if desired (I omitted)

1 bottle Teriyaki Sauce. (I used La Choy Marinade and Sauce because it was the lowest calories and sodium)

Mix all ingredients will into ground chicken except sauce. 

Ground chicken is much more mushy than beef, turkey is the same way. So I seared the meatballs in a very hot skillet for just a few minutes.

Then put them into a mini muffin pan to bake in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes until done. I used a small scoop to get the portion size I wanted. And you see the gloves back there because I have a horrible aversion to touch ground meat with my hands. It is yucky.

While these were baking I sauteed up a few onions, bell peppers and coleslaw mix in a bit of olive oil. Sprinkled with a little Thai Chile Pepper then shoved to the side. I got my wok very hot, added more Thai Chile and threw in some pineapple tidbits and cooked them fast just to get some sear on them. 

After pulling the meatballs out of the oven I simply threw them back into the skillet, poured the jar of sauce over them, and heated for a few minutes. This served all 5 of us 4 meatballs each at 190 calories per serving (not including veggies and brown rice) and made 3 lunches for the boys and Rob. And was quite yummy!