These Keto Baked Italian Meatball Recipe (Cheese Stuffed) make a gorgeous appetizer, or a perfect entrée on top of a bed of zucchini noodles.
Meatballs are perfect comfort food! They make a great appetizer on game day or a mid-week meal that the whole family will love. And let’s be honest, it doesn’t get much better than cheese-stuffed flavorful and tender meatballs.
Italian Meatballs
We love taking meatballs to the next level with Italian flavors, like Italian herb mix (which usually has oregano, basil, thyme, and rosemary), plenty of garlic, and Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses. To keep the carbs a little lower, we serve our Keto Baked Italian Meatball Recipe with marinara sauce on the side for dipping instead of drowning the meatballs in it.
Do You Put Milk in Meatballs?
Before going keto we’d use the milk-soaked bread trick to get super tender meatballs, which is basically exactly what it sounds like: you soak a slice or two of white bread in milk, wring it out slightly, and mix it into your meat mixture before forming the meatballs. However, now that we eat low carb, we use almond flour, egg white, and grated onion to keep our Baked Italian Meatball Recipe super moist.
Baked Meatballs
There are a few different ways you can make meatballs. Pan-fried on the stovetop, simmered in tomato sauce, or in a slow cooker. But personally, we love how easy it is to make baked meatballs!
Between work, spouses, kids, pets, and other obligations, most of us are stretched pretty thin time-wise. When we find a way to get delicious food on the table faster, we get excited! Baked meatballs require minimal effort; they pretty much babysit themselves in the oven!
How to Make Meatballs
Meatballs are basically just seasoned, tender, flavorful, bite-sized, ball-shaped bites of meat. Making meatballs is easy to do and fun to get the kids involved in (pro tip: you might find it helpful to use disposable food-safe gloves if you get the little ones involved in handling the raw meat). Here are the basic steps:
- Make the meat mixture with any flavors you like; we like garlic, Italian herbs, cheese, and a touch of Worcestershire sauce. Also, don’t forget to use a binder! Here we use almond flour and egg white.
- Shape the meat into balls, and optionally, stuff them with cheese.
- Cook the meatballs any way you like! If you’re pressed for time, we think the easiest cooking method is our oven method.
Instructions on How to Cook Meatballs in the Oven
Cooking meatballs in the oven couldn’t be easier!
- Shape the meat into balls. You can use an ice cream scoop to help you get perfectly-portioned balls if you want.
- Arrange the balls on a large baking tray that’s lined with foil and sprayed with avocado oil. Lightly spray the tops of the meatballs with avocado oil.
- Bake at 375F until the meat is cooked through, about 20 minutes. You don’t even have to flip them!
- Serve on top of zoodles as a main course, or with marinara sauce for dipping as an appetizer, or any way you like.
Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs
Italian meatballs are delicious as-is, but we truly took them to the next level when we stuffed them with a flavorful cheese mixture! We use three kinds of cheese in our filling: mozzarella and Parmesan, as well as cream cheese for a binder. Additionally, we use an egg yolk as a binder (you’ll use the egg white as a binder in the meat mixture). We keep the seasonings simple with Italian herb mix, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper.
There is a little bit of a trick to being able to stuff this cheese mixture into the meat to make this Keto Baked Italian Meatball Recipe. First we use a 1 tablespoon-sized ice cream scoop to portion out the cheese into balls. After that, we freeze the balls so they’re easy to stuff into the meat mixture.
More Keto Appetizer Recipes:
- Garlic and Herb Savory Keto Biscotti from An Edible Mosaic
- Creamy Herb Filled Bacon Rolls from My Life Cookbook
- Chilled Old Bay Crab Salad Low Carb Stuffed Mushrooms from The Keto Queens
- Easy Queso Dip from Keto Connect
- Keto Summer Sausage Cucumber Bites with Cream Cheese Mousse from The Keto Queens
Keto Baked Italian Meatball Recipe (Cheese Stuffed)
Ingredients
Cheese Filling:
- 4 oz shredded mozzarella
- 2 oz cream cheese
- 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dried Italian herb mix
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
Meat:
- 1 lb 85% lean ground beef
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1 large egg white
- 1 small onion grated
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Optional:
- Low-carb marinara sauce for serving
Instructions
- For the cheese filling, add all ingredients to a food processor and puree until well combined. Scoop the filling out into 12 (1-tablespoon) balls. Cover and freeze until solid, about 2 hours.
- Meanwhile, mix together all ingredients for the meat in a large bowl. Scoop the meat into 12 equal portions and roll each into a ball. Cover and refrigerate until the cheese balls are frozen.
- Once the cheese balls are frozen, preheat the oven to 375F and line a large baking sheet with foil or parchment paper. Lightly spray it with avocado oil.
- Working with 1 meatball at a time, stuff a cheese ball into the center and shape the meat around the cheese. Continue until all the meatballs are stuffed with cheese.
- Arrange the meatballs on the prepared baking sheet and lightly spray the tops with avocado oil. Bake until the meat is cooked through, about 20 minutes.
- Serve warm, with marinara sauce if desired.
Notes
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products we believe in, which means that even though it doesn’t cost you anything extra, The Keto Queens will receive a small amount of money from the sale of these items.
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