This easy dinner is a hybrid of two Italian favorites–classic meatballs and chicken parmigiana. Serve Chicken Parmesan Meatballs with Homemade Marinara over whole wheat pasta with a side salad and some garlic bread. You family will be totally impressed, and they don’t need to know that it only took you 30 minutes to prepare!
Making meatballs can seem like a lot of work. Mixing the meat, forming the balls, cooking them in batches in a skillet. And cooking your own marinara? Forget it. That all seems daunting when you want a quick dinner. Pass me the bottle sauce and frozen meatballs.
Luckily, these Chicken Parmesan Meatballs with Homemade Marinara only take 30 minutes to make with minimal labor, thanks to a few shortcuts!
I originally posted a version of this recipe about two years ago. Since then, I’ve come up with Quick Zero Point Marinara, which takes less time and is just as tasty as the original marinara recipe.
Some Shortcut Tips
The timing of when you start to work on each part of this meal is key to keeping it at 30 minutes.
- Start your marinara and preheat your oven. (5 minutes)
- As the marinara simmers, start boiling that water for your pasta and mix together the meatball ingredients. Shape them into heaping tablespoon balls. A trick that makes this so much quicker for me is using a mini-muffin tin to portion out the 24 meatballs. (10 minutes)
- As the meatballs cook, boil and drain your pasta. Set aside until ready to serve. (10 minutes)
- Simmer meatballs in sauce. (5 minutes)
serving options
First of all, this makes 6 meatballs per serving, which is A LOT of food, especially if serving with pasta and a side salad. You might find, as I often do, that 4 meatballs is plenty. Subtract 1 SP per serving if you do that.
To make these meatballs taste more like classic Chicken Parmesan, top with reduced fat mozzarella and/or extra parmesan cheese! You can add 2 tbsp mozz and 1 tsp parm per serving for just 2 extra SP. Add more mozz if you like, just make sure you look up your portion in the WW app.
Pasta isn’t your only option, by the way! We used leftover meatballs and marinara to make Chicken Parmesan Meatball Subs. O-M-G!
Take a hot dog bun or French roll. Spray with cooking oil. Sprinkle with some Italian seasoning and garlic powder. Toast up in the oven at 425 for about 2-3 minutes. Add your meatballs and cheese and broil for just a minute. Absolute heaven!
This was on a full French roll (5 SP) with 4 meatballs (2 SP) plus 2 tbsp light mozzarella cheese (1 SP). A huge hoagie like you’d get at an Italian deli for only 8 SP on Purple (the plan I’m on right now)!
I’d love to hear from you if you make this recipe! It makes my day when you share your pics on Instagram and tag me (@litecravings). Don’t forget to use #litecravingsrecipes to make sure I see it. If I don’t get a chance to scroll through my tags quickly enough, I won’t see your post. I always make a point to look through the hashtags, though, so I’ll see it there.
Chicken Parmesan Meatballs with Homemade Marinara
Ingredients
FOR THE MARINARA
- 28 oz can crushed plum tomatoes
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp each dried basil and oregano
- 1/4 tsp each red pepper flakes and kosher salt
- 1 small dried bay leaf
FOR THE MEATBALLS
- 1 pound ground chicken breast
- 1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1 egg
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 an onion, minced
- 1/2 tsp lemon zest
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- ground pepper to taste
- optional: reduced-fat mozzarella cheese for melting on top (extra points)
Instructions
- In a large pot, saute garlic in cooking spray over medium heat until just slightly browned, about 1 minute.
- Add in tomatoes. Add about 1 cup of water to one of the cans, sloshing around to get the remaining tomatoes out. Add the tomato water to the skillet or pot.
- Add all remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, then simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
FOR THE MEATBALLS
- In a medium bowl, mix together all ingredients. Scoop heaping tablespoons of mixture into the cups of a mini muffin tin (24 meatballs). You could do this on a regular baking sheet, but I find it so much easier in mini muffin tins. Make sure you liberally spray the cups with cooking spray.
- Bake for at 400F for 5 minutes then broil the top for 2 minutes. Add to your sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes.
Is there supposed to be cheese on top? I didn’t see it in the recipe, but the pic looks like there is cheese. Very good by the way! Thanks!
For the pic, I did end up adding a bit of Trader Joe’s Lite Mozzarella. Just one extra point!
I made these last night and they turned out really well. I even used the muffin tin which was a good technique. I didn’t add extra cheese on top because I forgot to pick some up, but they were good without it. The sauce was really good, although I did use an immersion blender to smooth it out, hoping my 5 year old would eat it (he wouldn’t, he said it was spicy…but it wasn’t to me).
I’m so happy you liked it! Yeah, the extra cheese is totally optional since they’re so good on their own.
These are divine! I made the meatballs and put them in your zero point marinara sauce and have been eating them all week. On spaghetti, but I also put some on a Trader Joe’s hamburger bun with lite mozzarella for a meatball sandwich. So, so good!
So sorry for the late response. I LOVE your alterations. Putting those sandwiches on my menu for next week now!
I do not have a mini muffin pan how can I make them in a regular muffin pan? Thank you!
Sure! You would just portion them as twelve larger meatballs, so 2 heaping tablespoons for each tin. Bake a little longer or until the internal temp is 165F. You can have 3 bigger meatballs for the same points!
I made this recipe and it is absolutely one of my favs! Will definitely be making them again!
Is it really 5 minutes for the meatballs?
I mean chicken balls.
In my broiler, yes. All ovens are different, though.
Ooooooh Mmmyyyyy Gooooood!! This is Mommy AND 7 year old approved!!!! Who’s really picky about trying new things!! Soooooo delicious!!! Thank you so much for the recipe. We’re weird about chicken so we cooked ours for 20 minutes and then broiled for 2 and then added to sauce and did 5 more. But Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!!
This just made my night!! Thank you for the lovely review. 🙂
Is this 5 sp per serving because you use ground chicken and not ground chicken breast? How do you think it would come out with 0 sp fat free chicken breast?
These are amazing and so easy to make!! The muffin tin method will forever change how I make meatballs! We put these on hoagie buns, and they were delicious! Geri has THE BEST recipes, so glad I found this blog 🙂
Love hearing that, Patricia. I’m happy to help! 🙂