Chicken Balls Recipe And Fish Ball Sauce Recipe

Street food is one of those food that you grow up eating. You know it's cheap but addicting and delicious. You also know that your parents might scold you for eating food from off the streets but there's something about street food that makes it taste better than anything that you can buy elsewhere. 

If your guilty pleasure includes indulging in eating street food, you'll be glad to know that you can make fish balls, squid balls, kikiam, and now even chicken balls at home so you don't need to hide the fact that you love the stuff from your strict parents. 

What Are Chicken Balls? 

Chicken balls are just like fish balls you see from street vendors, but instead of fish, it's made with ground chicken. Unlike other chicken balls recipes that you might see, this recipe is made from only chicken meat so you don't get any fishy flavors that might make you rethink what you're eating. 

Just like fish though, chicken can have a malansa taste to it so to combat this, a little ginger is added to temper that off-putting taste and make you gorge on these balls. 

How To Serve Chicken Balls

 

Serve your homemade chicken balls with a homemade fish ball sauce, too!

Photo by Jino del Mundo

Street food like this is honestly served best freshly made! This means having the fish ball sauce ready to be dunked into when you've speared all the balls that can fit onto your bamboo stick. The simple sweet sauce has a burst of umami but it can also be made a little spicy for that extra kick of heat. You can even serve this with spiced vinegar so you can some tangy notes with your sweet and spicy, too. 

Serve these on sticks so you can recreate that feeling as if you're outside with the other kids. 

How To Make Chicken Balls

The chicken balls are actually easy to make if you have a food processor or an electric food chopper. We highly recommend it since the electric food chopper made chopping and mixing the ingredients into chicken balls super easy. 

Just add all the ingredients into the bowl of the chopper and process! You should get a paste-like consistency. (Alternatively, you can pound the ginger and garlic in a mortar with a pestle and then whisk all the ingredients together until a paste is formed.) 

Once formed, chill it to make it easier to form into balls. The paste will be soft so a little hard to handle. Use two teaspoons to portion and shape the paste into teaspoon-sized balls. You can also use damp hands to form the balls as well. Place these on a tray and chill again until ready to boil. 

 

The chicken ball paste will be very soft so use two teaspoons to portion into balls.

Photo by Jino del Mundo

 

The chicken balls will sink, puff up, and then float to the surface when cooked through.

Photo by Jino del Mundo

 

These chicken balls are ready to eat when fried to a golden brown!

Photo by Jino del Mundo

To cook, boil a pot of water and gently drop the formed chicken balls in the water. These will first sink then float to the surface when cooked through. Scoop these out and set aside to cool. You might notice the balls will puff and grow in size when in the water and this is the magic of the baking powder in the mixture. The balls will again shrink when out of the water. 

To ready to eat, fry until golden brown, and serve with the fish balls sauce. 

Tips To Make Chicken Balls

1 Test seasoning by cooking a small ball. 

If you're unsure if the chicken ball mixture is seasoned as you like, cook a tiny portion! You really can't know if it tastes good until you eat it, and you can't do that when the mixture is still raw. So save yourself the heartache of serving chicken balls that aren't tasty and test it for seasoning first before portioning. 

2 Make a big batch and freeze. 

There's a great reason that fish balls, squid balls, and chicken balls are boiled first instead of fried immediately. It makes it super easy to store! The balls should be cooked in boiling water first to cook them and then to store! Just boil, let cook completely, then place in bags for when you get the craving for some delicious street food. 

How To Store Chicken Balls

The chicken balls are easy to store! If you've got the balls boiled aka cooked, these are easily placed in plastic bags or containers and frozen until you're ready to fry them. If already cooked, it's the same thing. These keep wonderfully well for weeks in the freezer! 

Chicken Balls Recipe And Fish Ball Sauce Recipe