Kitchen Diaries: Cheese-stuffed Chicken Meatballs

A few weeks ago I cooked some pasta for my family. I made a tomato sauce with ground beef and diced zucchini (because we had tons of zucchini in the fridge.) My mom liked it a lot and bought more packs of pasta and bottles of pasta sauce.

Apologies for the photo quality. Photos were taken with my camera phone.

The next time I made the same sauce except without the beef and replaced it with chicken thigh cutlets. She requested that I don't use beef because, for some reason, she gets headaches after eating beef. I Googled and it looks like it happens to other people too. Is it really possible to get headaches from eating beef? If so, what is the medical explanation for it?

The sauce

Last night I cooked pasta for the family again and decided I'd make some meatballs to go along with it. But since I can't use beef I found a recipe that makes use of chicken in making meatballs. Plus they're stuffed with cheese. Everything is more awesome with cheese.

I've made pasta with tomato sauce enough times that it's a quick and easy meal for me to prepare. But I underestimated the time to make the meatballs. I think I put too much milk in the meatball mixture and made it too mushy to work with. I remedied it by adding more panko breadcrumbs and it seemed to help, but the mixture was still sticky.

The finished product

I usually use pre-made pasta sauce, like Ragu, when I make pasta, which is why it's easy. Pre-made pasta sauce is already seasoned but I still add some onions, garlic, and spices to give it more flavor. This time I decided to make it a bit healthier by making the sauce from "scratch". It's not really from scratch since I still used canned diced tomatoes and tomato paste instead of using fresh tomatoes. But I chose a brand of diced tomatoes in the supermarket which had the least amount of sodium. I am not sure if that makes a difference in the dish's health aspect, but that's how I tried to make the sauce a bit healthier.

My sister's plate

My sister placed her serving of pasta in an oven-proof dish and topped it with some mozzarella and parmesan cheese. Then she put it in the toaster for a few minutes, trying to achieve "baked" spaghetti, haha.

Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Cheese-stuffed Chicken Meatballs

Pasta (we used spaghettini, but you can use whatever type of pasta you want)	1 pack (around 1 lb)
For meatballs:
Ground chicken	Around 750 g (3/4 kg)
Egg	1 whole
Milk	2 tablespoons
Breadcrumbs (I used panko)	1/2 cup
Parmesan cheese, grated	1/2 cup
Flat-leaf parsley, chopped	2 tablespoons
Garlic, minced	2-3 large cloves
Mozzarella cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes	As needed
For sauce:
Diced tomatoes (I used one that didn't have any salt added)	2 cans
Tomato paste	Around 150 g
Garlic, minced	3-4 large cloves
Onion, chopped	1 whole
Zucchini (medium-size), diced	2 whole
Green bell peppers, chopped	2 whole
Italian seasoning	To taste
Freshly ground black pepper	To taste
Salt	To taste
White sugar	To taste
Garnish:
Parmesan cheese, grated
Red pepper flakes
Chopped basil leaves

1. Cook pasta according to instructions on the package. Shock pasta with cold water after draining to stop cooking. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and mix to keep noodles from sticking. Set aside.
2. In a big bowl, mix ground chicken, egg (beat before adding), milk, bread crumbs, grated parmesan cheese, garlic, and parsley. Season with a good amount of freshly ground black pepper. Mix well with your hands (I just used a fork since it was already there haha)
3. Form medium-sized meatballs. Poke a cube of mozzarella cheese into each meatball and seal. 750 grams of ground chicken makes a lot of small-medium sized meatballs. You can also opt  to make bigger meatballs if you want fewer ones, but make sure to adjust the size of your cheese cubes as well.
4. Brown meatballs in a pan with a bit of cooking oil over medium-high heat. Set aside.
5. Add a bit of oil to a medium-sized pot or sauce pan and put over medium heat. When oil is hot enough add onions and saute for around 1 minute.
6. Afterwards, add onions and cook for another minute.
7. Pour in the contents of the two cans of diced tomatoes and tomato paste. Season with black pepper, salt, sugar (just a bit to enhance the taste of the tomatoes), and italian seasoning. Adjust seasoning according to your liking (don't forget to taste!)
8. Add the chicken meatballs and the green bell peppers to the sauce. Mix to make sure that the meatballs are immersed in the sauce. Cover pot and cook over medium-low heat for around 8-10 minutes, or until meatballs are fully cooked. To check I took out one of the bigger meatballs of the batch, placed it on a plate, and sliced it open to see if it was fully cooked on the inside.
9. Add zucchini to the pot, mix, and cook for 1 more minute.
10. Tada! Sauce is done!

If you're lazy you can still make this with pre-made pasta sauce. Admittedly, this sauce was blander than the previous ones I've made, but the green bell pepper adds a really good flavor to the sauce and it was fun adding the seasoning by trial and error to make sure it tasted like pasta sauce and not just tomato-ey soup.

I am just a hobbyist cook and I'm learning from each dish I make. Maybe you can share some of your pasta and pasta sauce tips?