Chicken Balls

Early this year when I visited India, one of U’s aunts gave me a cookbook that she wrote and dedicated to her mother. This book, Mother’s Recipes, is a collection of her mother’s recipes and the recipes she learned over the years staying in various parts of the state. The book has 100+ recipes and most of the recipes are easy to prepare. She gave a copy of the book to all her nieces, nieces-in-law, grandchildren and grandnieces. Her mother that is U’s paternal grandmother who is 100+ years old is a very good cook, so I heard. I have not tasted her food but have heard a lot about her cooking from my husband and my in-laws. This cook book is to showcase her culinary talent when she is still alive. For 2nd week of CCChallenge # 2, it is a recipe from this book, Mother’s Recipes.

I usually avoid deep fried food and only deep fried that I prepare are poori, onion pakoda and mirchi bajji. I use to make poori almost every week but nowadays, I have cut down even on that. If there is an alternate method to prepare a particular deep fried food, I always prefer that. I make chicken patties or kebabs once in a while and I always grill it in a pan or shallow fry it. When I saw this recipe, for a change, I thought I would prepare some deep fried food and made these chicken balls for today's lunch.

I followed the recipe as give with a few changes. She used boneless chicken and minced it along with the spices. I used ground chicken and mixed all the spices together. The recipe also says microwave or bake the chicken balls for five minutes and then fry the balls. I deep fried most of the balls and microwaved a few to just see how those taste. Microwaved and then deep fried balls were hard and were not as juicy as the deep fried balls. It could be that the microwave settings were different and my balls were over cooked and also, chicken here in the US is tender and cooks very fast, when compared to the chicken in India.

In the above picture, the three Chicken balls in the right side of the basket were microwaved and then deep fried. Those balls became a little shapeless after coming out of the microwave.. 🙂

Total Time: 30 – 45 minutes
Preparation: 15 – 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 20 – 25 minutes
Yields: 24 balls (depends on the size)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. Ground Chicken
• 4 Green Chilies ground to paste
• 2 tsp. Ginger Garlic Paste
• ¼ tsp. Garam Masala
• 1 tsp. Coriander Powder
• ¼ tsp. Roasted Cumin Powder
• ½ tsp. Green Chili Sauce
• ⅛ tsp. Soya Sauce
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1 Egg
• 2 tbsp. Cornstarch (also known as corn flour in India)
• ¼ cup chopped Coriander Leaves
• Oil for deep Frying (approx. 1 cup Oil)

Preparation:

• Take ground chicken in a bowl, add chili paste, ginger garlic paste, garam masala, coriander powder, cumin powder, green chili sauce, soya sauce, salt and mix well.
• Add egg, cornstarch, and cilantro to ground chicken mixture and mix well.
• Make small balls. Chicken mixture will be sticky. Using little oil chicken balls and keep side.
• Heat oil in a pan and deep fry 6 balls at a time on medium low flame until the balls are golden brown in color and completely cooked inside. This would take about 4 minutes. I used a small pan, hence had to fry 6 balls at a time. Check the note section for microwave directions.
• Remove the balls from oil; put them on a paper towel to train the oil.
• Fry remaining balls and serve them hot as an evening snack, as an appetizer or a side dish.

Notes:

• If using boneless chicken instead of ground chicken as given in the book, first grind together all the ingredients except chicken, egg, cornstarch, coriander leaves and oil. Then add the chicken pieces and grind. Do not grind the chicken to fine paste; it would be a little coarse. Then add the egg, cornstarch, chopped cilantro / coriander leaves and mix well to make the chicken ball mixture.
• If microwaving the chicken balls, place the chicken balls in a microwave safe plate; microwave the chicken balls for less than 5 minutes. I followed the recipe and microwaved some of the balls for 5 minutes and then deep fried them. I found the chicken balls a little dry, when compared to the balls that were deep fried without microwaving. If one chooses to microwave and then fry the chicken balls, I would suggest reducing the microwave time to 2 ½ – 3 minutes. Then deep fry the balls for 1 – 2 minutes until balls are golden brown and fully cooked. Also note that the chicken here in the US is tender when compared to the chicken back home and does not require too much of cooking time.
• Chicken balls will puff up when deep frying but will lose the puff once removed from the oil. They still will maintain the shape. The same happened when I microwaved the balls. But once out of the microwave, chicken balls deflated and infact became shapeless, as you can see in the second picture.