This sweet and spicy ground chicken and broccoli is a great one-pan, 20-minute recipe for busy weeknights or easy meal prep. The broccoli is pan roasted to provide added texture once mixed with the honey sriracha and sesame ground chicken. Each serving is packed with 30 grams of protein and only 260 calories, leaving plenty of room for rice, noodles, or your go-to protein pairing.
Sweet and Spicy Ground Chicken and Broccoli Recipe Walkthrough
You’ll find a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a simple recipe, but I’ve included a visual recipe walkthrough with some notes for ingredient substitutions and bonus cooking tips in the walkthrough below. If you have a question I forgot to cover, feel free to leave a comment.
Pan Roasted Broccoli
It’s totally up to you, but I like to chop any large broccoli florets into smaller bite-size pieces. This creates more surface area for browning in the pan and makes for easier eating. I don’t know about you, but I hate trying to eat massive hunks of broccoli in dishes like this!
As a side note, the recipe calls for olive oil. If you’d like to use a little chili oil (for extra spice) or toasted sesame oil, both would work great for adding a little something extra to your ground chicken and broccoli.
What about other veggies?
You could use other cruciferous veggies like cauliflower or brussels sprouts, or the green bean and bell pepper combo from my honey sesame ground chicken stir fry would work well with this sauce.
Honey Sriracha Ground Chicken
The recipe calls for 97% lean ground chicken, but you’re welcome to use any ground meat like ground turkey or even beef. If you’re new to my recipes, I’m passionate about browning ground meats. The magic of the Maillard reaction takes patience.
You may have seen hacks like baking soda, but I don’t think you need it for recipes like this. Just give it time!
The Sweet and Spicy Sauce
You’ll need honey, sriracha, toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic powder and ground ginger, and sweet chili sauce. Here are a few sauce ingredient notes:
- Be sure to use toasted sesame oil and not regular sesame oil, as the flavor profiles are different.
- You’re welcome to use freshly minced or grated garlic and ginger.
- I like Trader Joe’s sweet chili sauce, but any will work fine. You can even make your own spicy sweet chili sauce.
You can get creative with the sauce for your ground chicken and broccoli. For more sauce options, check out my spicy coconut ground chicken (gochujang + coconut milk) and Firecracker ground chicken (spicy brown sugar sauce) recipes.
Adding and cooking the sauce is pretty straightforward, you’ll just want to be careful not to burn the sugars in the honey or sweet chili sauce. Keep it moving around the let the sesame oil help add an extra crispy, sticky layer to your ground chicken.
Once the sauce is good to go, add the broccoli back in and add some toasted sesame seeds. In the photo above, you’ll notice I added roasted black sesame seeds as well.
Serving Your Ground Chicken and Broccoli
Rice or cauliflower rice are the no-brainer options here. One of my favorite hacks is to combine the two for a higher volume option like in my teriyaki ground beef stir fry and orange chicken meal prep bowls. You could also do something like the quinoa from my spicy sesame ground beef and quinoa bowls or the Right Rice in my Greek ground chicken and rice skillet.
Aside from rice, you could mix things up with noodles. You could do a ground chicken and broccoli spin on dan dan noodles or something like these stir fry beef noodles.
And you could always eat it as-is with extra toasted sesame seeds and green onion. However you end up serving your honey sriracha ground chicken and broccoli, I’d love to hear about it. Be sure to come back and let me know in the comments or in a recipe review. I hope you enjoy!
Honey Sriracha Ground Chicken and Broccoli
Ingredients
- 1 Tbsp 16g Olive Oil, divided
- 12 oz Broccoli Florets, cut into bite-size pieces
- 1 lb Ground Chicken, 97/3
- 1/4 C 60g Sweet Chili Sauce
- 2 Tbsp 42g Honey
- 2-3 Tbsp 30-45g Sriracha, to spice preference
- 2 Tbsp 30g Soy Sauce
- 1 Tbsp 16g Toasted Sesame Oil
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Ground Ginger
- Sesame Seeds and Green Onion, for garnish
Instructions
- Heat 1/2 Tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the broccoli and leave untouched for 1-2 minutes to develop some browning on one side. Stir and continue cooking until the broccoli is a dark green, about 3-4 minutes longer. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
- Add the remaining olive oil to the skillet and brown both sides of the ground chicken before mincing and fully cooking.
- While the chicken cooks, mix the remaining sauce ingredients together. Add the sauce to the fully cooked chicken and cook until thick. Be careful not to burn.
- Once the sauce is thick, add the broccoli back to the skillet and stir everything together. Garnish with sesame seeds and green onion before serving.
Do you know the fiber count
Each serving has around 5 grams of fiber.
Hi Mason! Thank you for providing people these incredibly tasty, healthy recipes! I’ve made a couple and I’m in love! You’re now my go to for healthy recipes. For this recipe, I’ve never been a big broccoli fan, so what would be a good alternative? Peas?
Thanks, Brittany! You could do something like snow peas, chopped asparagus or green beans, or other cruciferous veggies like cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I guess you could even play around with some leafy greens like bok choy if you’re a fan.
This recipe was sooo quick and easy to make! Also, it turned out so delicious! THANKS FOR A GREAT RECIPE!
Thanks for trying it, Erin!
If I were to use frozen broccoli, do I need to steam it first before pan roasting?
I would microwave or steam it just enough to thaw the frozen broccoli, pat the broccoli dry, then pan roast it. You could also do something like oven roasted frozen broccoli.
This was AMAZING! We are always struggling to find healthier dinner options we both like and this was a winner, and how quickly it was thrown together was a huge bonus. The only thing I did different was served it with green beans for my husband because he refuses to try “the little trees”. Thanks for sharing and I’m looking forward to trying more recipes!
Totally understandable. I also have a little tree hater in my house. Glad you found a green bean workaround and both of you were able to enjoy this one!
I love this one! Definitely super easy. I always use frozen broccoli and throw it in the oven at 400 (like in the recipe linked), oddly enough I can’t find sesame oil and it is still amazing without it! My husband can’t always handle the spice so I do 1 tbps of sirchia. We eat it over cauliflower rice. It tastes even better the next day!
I love this one! Definitely super easy. I always use frozen broccoli and throw it in the oven at 400 (like in the recipe linked), oddly enough I can’t find sesame oil and it is still amazing without it! My husband can’t always handle the spice so I do 1 tbps of sirchia. We eat it over cauliflower rice. It tastes even better the next day!
This is such a good and EASY recipe! My husband and I love this! We didn’t have any broccoli and subbed in zucchini and it was delicious! Thanks for creating and sharing your awesome recipes.
This is delicious. Hands down. Hubs loves it, kids love it!!
The only reduction in star value for me is that for prepping the broccoli gets soggy when I don’t eat it right away. So I make the meat, broccoli and rice independently and that solves that!
I was looking for a quick, easy dinner recipe & came across this one. I made it, and absolutely loved it!! I loved how it all came together really fast and tasted great!