Sesame Miso Chicken Meatballs are the perfect little appetizer for a fun gathering or a quick and easy topping for a bowl of Asian ramen noodles. 

Sesame Miso chicken meatballs are infused with sesame oil, ginger, green onion, miso paste and then rolled in toasted sesame seeds and has a delicious ponzu sesame dipping sauce. They are super easy to make, baked to perfection and received 2 thumbs up from the hungry crew.

Of course you can use pork or beef as an exchange for the ground chicken but the ground chicken reminds me of the flavours of delicious yakitori (Japanese grilled chicken on skewers).

Sesame Miso Chicken Meatballs are gluten-free, dairy free and easy to forget how many you have eaten, as I seem to just keep popping in one after the other. Drats...now I have to make another batch. You know recipe creation is difficult but then of course we need to have a quality assurance analyzer to make sure it passes the test. I have eaten a LOT of sesame miso chicken meatballs this week. 🙂

Miso is a fermented soybean paste and gives many Japanese dishes their delicious umami savoury flavor. You can use miso as an alternative to soy sauce or salt and it gives your dishes a deeper delicious flavor. If you are sensitive to gluten, then you are going to have to look for miso alternatives and there are many that are made without wheat or soy sauce. I used a an organic Japanese brown rice Miso from Clearspring and it is made with only brown rice and no barley. Miso is a delicious and easy way to add flavor and umami to these delicious Sesame Miso Chicken Meatballs.

Ponzu sauce is essentially soy sauce, yuzu (Japanese citrus fruit), mirin (Japanese rice wine for cooking), dashi broth and a touch of sugar. Heck I can't even get yuzu here in Hong Kong, so I know that most of you would not be able to source this product either. Therefore, I simplified the whole recipe to include items you can find no matter where you are living.

As our family uses tamari sauce (gluten-free soy sauce alternative) to avoid gluten, I made my own homemade ponzu sauce by simply mixing tamari and fresh squeezed lime juice together. I added just a touch of sesame oil to give the sauce a richer taste. If you have mirin, dashi and yuzu in your pantry, by all means use that too. The Sesame Miso Chicken Meatballs are delicious all by themselves and would be fabulous in a bowl of ramen noodles. However if you are serving them as an appetizer, then I suggest serving them with the ponzu sauce as it gives them a bright fresh citrus savoury flavor.

Wishing all of you a super weekend!