Italian Ground Turkey Meatballs

Have a pound of Italian ground turkey without any plans on what to make with it? I have you covered! These Italian turkey meatballs are super easy to make and can be used for spaghetti and meatballs, subs, and all kinds of things.

I’ll teach you how to make them three ways: air fried, oven baked, and pan fried. So no matter how you like to party, I have you covered on that front as well.

Ingredients for Italian Ground Turkey Meatballs

In addition to Italian ground turkey, here’s everything you’ll need:

• eggs
• Italian breadcrumbs
• shredded mozzarella (use freshly grated if possible)
• marinara or pasta sauce
• garlic powder and crushed red pepper flakes
• fresh parsley (optional)

Regular ground turkey works just fine, by the way. If you have some Italian seasoning, you may want to add a dash, but that’s optional. Other great additions might be a bit of fresh garlic and Calabrian chiles like I used for my creamy Italian pasta with ground turkey or another direction like the basil pesto in my ground turkey and cauliflower skillet.

It’s also worth mentioning this recipe would work great with ground chicken, pork, and beef.

Tips for Forming Meatballs

Making a paste with all the non-turkey ingredients first ensures you won’t over mix the meatballs before forming. There’s a reason you don’t throw everything in a stand mixer or hit it with a hand mixer! Over mixing meatballs can make them tough.

If you want perfectly even meatballs, I recommend using a food scale. I like placing the bowl on top of a scale to easily monitor how much is being removed as opposed to placing the meat on a scale and adding tiny pieces.

The recipe makes 16 meatballs, but you’re welcome to make smaller or larger meatballs. My meatball mixture weighed in around 720g total. Divide that by the number of meatballs you want to make.

Just be aware cook times will be affected. Though my sweet chili chicken meatballs have a similar cook time with 12 larger meatballs.

How to Cook Turkey Meatballs Three Ways

Let’s take a look at how to air fry, bake, and pan fry these turkey meatballs.

For Air Fried Meatballs

Air frying is the easiest method, in my opinion, so we’ll start there. In an Instant Vortex Pro, a tray of 16 turkey meatballs cooked to an internal temperature of 165ºF in 6-8 minutes at 400ºF. I don’t preheat the air fryer so this includes any time the air fryer takes to come up to temperature.

For Oven Baked Meatballs

To bake these Italian turkey meatballs, place them directly on a sheet pan after forming and bake at 400ºF for 16-20 minutes. The oven doesn’t do as great a job at browning, so you may want to use your oven’s broiler for the final 4-6 minutes.

Similar to the air fryer method, smaller meatballs like my BBQ baked chicken meatballs and sheet pan Greek chicken meatballs have similar cook times in case you’re playing around with size.

You can also bake these alongside some garlic parmesan roasted zucchini by slicing two zucchini squash into half moons, tossing them in a bit of olive oil, a few tablespoons of grated parmesan, and black pepper. The zucchini may need a few extra minutes in the oven (25-30).

For Pan Fried Meatballs

Using my spaghetti and chicken meatballs recipe as a guide, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the meatballs and brown the meatballs on all sides.

At this point, I like to add a jar of marinara (like the Rao’s in my easy turkey lasagna), reduce to a low heat, and simmer for about 10 minutes to finish cooking the meatballs to an internal temperature of 165ºF.

If you’d like to cook your turkey meatballs without sauce similar to the baked or air fried versions, you can place the pan in a 350ºF oven after browning all sides to take them all the way to 165ºF internally.

How to Use These Italian Turkey Meatballs

You can make everything from meatballs subs and spaghetti to casseroles and pasta bakes with your cooked meatballs. Let’s take a look at a couple of my go-to options.

Turkey Meatball Subs

Use a bread knife to hollow out sub rolls and place provolone or mozzarella in the bottom, followed by marinara and more cheese. You can air fry or bake to toast the bread and melt the cheese. And finally, garnish with basil chiffonade and freshly grated parmesan.

Note from the future (November 2025): I have a new recipe for crispy chicken parmesan subs and garnished them with basil pesto and fermented Calbrian chili peppers (Italian Bomba sauce from Trader Joe’s). Highly recommend!

Spaghetti and Turkey Meatballs

If you plan to pan fry your meatballs, your marinara will already be taken care of. But it’s also possible to heat marinara in a pan on its own to toss your air fried or baked turkey meatballs in after cooking.

You don’t want to continue cooking the meatballs, however, so be sure to heat the sauce on its own before adding the meatballs.

For spaghetti and meatballs, I like to cook the pasta in salted water and add to the sauce and meatballs with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water to bring it all together. Garnish with basil and fresh parmesan and you’re good to go.

And like I mentioned above, you can always use them in recipes like this meatball casserole or meatball parmesan bake. Other pasta and sauce combinations might also be worth exploring. Gnocchi and creamy vodka sauce, cottage cheese pesto fusilli, spinach lasagna, the world is your oyster.

It might be a good idea to double the recipe and freeze them for later if you plan to use them in other recipes like bakes and casseroles.

All righty then, you should be ready to tackle these Italian ground turkey meatballs and all the potential use case scenarios. If you have a question about the recipe, drop it in the comments at the bottom of the post. And recipe reviews on the stars in the recipe card below are always appreciated!