Red Coconut Curry Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice
Published 12/18/2019 • Updated 7/5/2023
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Add some flare to dinner this week with these Red Coconut Curry Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice. They are packed with protein and great for meal prep throughout the week!
Meal Prep Meatballs
It’s been far too long since Fit Foodie has posted a meatball recipe. You guys drooled over FFF’s Kung Pao Chicken Meatball recipe (for good reason) and I think I made it every week for a couple months, so I clearly loved it too. We wanted to create a new meatball recipe that was easy, delicious, and versatile. The answer seemed simple–> CURRY MEATBALLS. We have started to dabble into the curry world on Fit Foodie with our Slow Cooker Curry and Sweet Potato Green Curry Casserole. We loved breaking out of our box a little bit and thought we should continue to brainstorm tasty curry recipes for spring and summer.
Curry is the BEST
Personally, I LOVE curry. I feel like you can use curry all year round. Slow cooker curry in the fall + winter and delicious cold curry salads and Buddha bowls in the spring + summer. Whether you have always loved curry or are just introducing curry into your diet, there is SO much to learn about all the different kinds of curry and curry dishes all over the world. Generally, curry contains a mixture of different herbs, spices and chilis mixed together to create a dry spice or a curry paste. What form the curry takes depends on what region and/or country the curry is coming from. There are curry dishes from India, Great Britain, China, Thailand, and more. So far on FFF, we have stuck to Thai Curry paste, mixing it with coconut milk, fresh basil, and seasonal vegetables.
Meatballs + Curry
Who wouldn’t love curry meatballs? We decided to use cauliflower rice instead of regular rice to give this meal an extra serving of vegetables and to honor our love of mixing hot + cold ingredients we rounded this recipe out with a tasty + simple cabbage salad. If you aren’t a big cauliflower rice fan, we made this recipe again last week and made a batch of jasmine rice and it was absolutely delicious. Also, feel free to sub any type of green salad for the cabbage salad. Really, what I’m saying is these meatballs pair well with any rice or vegetable. With fresh veggies coming to town at your local farmers markets, I’m sure you will have plenty of options for the veggie portion of this bowl. Just a heads up, topping this recipe off with fresh thai basil and squeeze of lime really make this dish a 10/10 recipe. So don’t forget limes when you’re when you’re grocery shopping!
More Meatball Recipes
Red Coconut Curry Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice
Add some flare to dinner this week with these Red Coconut Curry Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice. They are packed with protein and great for meal prep throughout the week.
Ingredients
For the meat balls
- 1 lb. ground chicken
- 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon dried basil
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 tablespoon chili paste
- 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup flour, any kind will work
- 1/4 cup rolled oats
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
For Curry Sauce
- 1 yellow onion, sliced
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 can full-fat coconut milk
- 3 tablespoons red curry paste
- 1/2 tablespoon sriracha*
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
Cabbage salad
- 4 cups purple cabbage, sliced
- 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 1/2 tablespoon honey
- squeeze fresh lime juice
- pinch of salt
Cauliflower Rice
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3.5 cups riced cauliflower, 14 oz. bag
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- First, preheat oven to 400ºF and spray a casserole dish or cake pan with coconut oil cooking spray. Set aside.
- Prep your cabbage salad by placing all ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and place in the fridge.
- Prep meatball mixture by placing all ingredients into a large bowl and mixing until combined.
- Using a tablespoon cookie scoop (note: these are bite-sized, not giant!), scoop out mixture and mold into a ball with your hands. It works best if your hands are slightly moist with water. Place in oiled casserole dish.
- Place meatballs in the oven for 10 minutes.
- While meatballs are baking, prepare curry sauce by placing olive oil into a medium fry pan. When oil is hot, add onion.
- Sauté onion for 2-3 minutes and then add the rest of the curry sauce ingredients. Bring to a boil.
- After meatballs have been baking for 10 minutes, add curry sauce to the casserole dish and bake for an additional 7-10 minutes.
- Finally, add all ingredients for cauliflower rice into a fry pan and cooked for 5-7 minutes.
- When meatballs are done, remove from the oven and place 1/2 cup of cabbage salad, 1/2 cup cauliflower rice, meatballs, and curry sauce in a bowl.
- Top with fresh thai basil and a squeeze of lime. Enjoy!
Tips & Notes
*Omit Sriracha if you don’t like spice.
* Nutrition is for 4 servings
* Nutrition is for 4 servings
Nutrition
Serving: 4 g, Calories: 548 kcal, Carbohydrates: 23 g, Protein: 27 g, Fat: 42 g, Fiber: 5 g, Sugar: 8 g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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This was sooooo good! I feel like whenever I make a dish with curry it never turns out to be flavorful. But alas! This was so good it left me wishing I had more sauce! Packed full of flavor! Next time I will probably make double the sauce for the meatballs & rice. I also made it with turmeric jasmine rice instead of cauliflower and it was delicious. Another good thing about this recipe is it wasn’t too complicated and din’t cost very much. Thanks for the awesome recipe.
**didn’t cost very much
Love the double sauce idea. I’m a sauce girl, too 🙂
I was on a bit of a meatball kick, and I had a jar of red curry paste in the fridge and several cans of coconut milk in the cupboard. So… I made a double batch of this! I had to make one after the other, though, as I had only one baking dish. Anyway, I’m not sure why these meatballs turned out so much softer and moist than the last ones I made. Maybe due to having oil in them? Either way, these were AMAZING. So moist and tender. I’ve never had cauliflower rice before, and I rather liked it with this and my staple mix of brown and black rice. I wasn’t sure if I was just supposed to throw all the rice stuff in a pot and go from there or heat the oil first and saute it. I tried both ways with the different batches and didn’t notice a difference. The flavor was overall very light, but it really grew on me. A while back I made a slow cooker curry (not coconut) and it was… not the best. I’ve been iffy about curry since, but this and another recipe I had recently (both coconut, to be fair) has really won me over. For coconut curry at least. lol
There were some hiccups. I derped and added the olive oil to the sauce before I realized it was for the pan. So… I guess the sauce was a little extra oily on that front. No biggie. What really made me anxious was that you didn’t list any of the burner settings for any stove top stuff… I did, however, wing it and do a (presumably) sufficient job. It made me feel accomplished in my cooking skills! To think that just a few years ago I would have lost my mind in panic at not having directions for every little thing…
Thank you so much for this recipe!
Just made these and the flavour combo is to die for! I used lite coconut milk (all I had in the pantry) and added some broccoli to the cauli rice and it still turned out great! Definitely a dish I’ll be repeating. Thank you! ???
Yay! So glad you loved it <3
This dish is amaze-balls :). It has become one of my staples and my bf and I just cannot get enough of it! I love how all the flavors in the rice, meatballs, and the salad go together soooo well. The only variation I do, is I use turkey for the meatballs. Thanks for sharing this!
Awww!! Love!
I cook something off your blog or Ambitious Kithcen weekly. I love your recipes and nothing ever disappoints. This is hands down my absolute favorite so far, I can’t wait to try the green curry version!
<3 YES!!! Curry is my everything.
What size of coconut milk do you use. My local grocery store carries multiple sizes
Has anyone tried freezing this for meal prep? How did it work?
Hey Kathleen, we haven’t tried freezing this meal yet! Let us know how it works if you give it a try!
Made them and froze them and they were great all through the week!
Hey! I meal prepped these a few weeks ago and froze them. Took two out of the freezer this morning for me and my hubby, popped them in the microwave for two minutes and they were perfect!
Looks great, thanks! Looks like you have these in a meal prep container. Do you recommend leaving the meatballs in the sauce if you want to have the dish later in the week, or keep them separate?
Hey Emily! I would definitely leave the meatballs in the sauce for the week. It keeps the meatballs in the sauce, though it is all about preference. I like leaving them in the sauce to absorb the flavors and to stay a bit more moist.
Hey Emily! I left mine in the sauce and it was great! No need to seperate.
DARN! Literally just did a post on cauli rice and wish this could’ve made it! I’m a meat gal at heart and looove meatballs. Great additional to the rice!
I love me a good meatball too.
Another of your recipes I can’t wait to try! (Any sort of coconut curry and cauli rice is always going to get my attention.)
Just to clarify upfront, I hate it when people want to know about swapping out ingredients – but now I need to be the annoying ‘problem’ person.
Due to an issue with using oats here – could you please offer an opinion about changing the rolled oats used in this recipe to quinoa?. I would appreciate your feedback.
Keep up the good work!
Many thanks,
Megs (in Australia).
Hey Megs!
You can just swap out oats for any kind of flour! Let us know how it works. 🙂