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.
Seriously, if you love Asian food but can’t stand the bloating, the weight gain from all the sodium, and the guilt you get from it, you will LOVE this. I’d say it’s an alternative, but it’s so something you will actually PREFER than ordering out. Plus- you won’t have to pay extra for extra broccoli, and you can make it as flavorful as you want.
This recipe is so delicious! I’ve made it a few times since I found the recipe. The first time I made it, I used turkey. The second time I ground my own chicken breast. Great either way. I add more sriracha for more heat. Great meal to use for meal prep! Highly recommend I it.
My newest favorite 😻 this is so quick and easy to make for meal prep. I didn’t have ginger powder but had the kind in the tube (worked perfectly) & the Panda Express sweet chili sauce worked perfectly since I don’t have Trader Joe’s! Put this on top of jasmine rice and 🤌🏻🙌🏻
Fixed this last night for dinner and it was a hit
When seeing this recipe, it looked good, but all the ingredients kinda steered me away. Then, as I was deciding what to meal prep, I had a couple pounds of ground chicken in my fridge and a bunch of raw broccoli. So I went to the store and bought the remaining ingredients. Much to my surprise, following the instructions to a T, the final result was just as pictured and tasted great. I served my with jasmine rice and topped with green onions and black sesame seeds. With doubling the recipes, I had enough to make 8 meals total. When reheating meat of any kind, I always heat for about a minute on 100% power and then about 30 seconds on 50% power and lay a damp paper towel over the Tupperware. Chicken can get dried out easily when reheating, but this reheat method works every time. Thanks Mason and Vanessa! This is a new staple for hubby and I.
This has become a weekly staple! So good.
For crispy broccoli, add to air fryer for about 10 min on the lowest heat setting. So great!
I really enjoyed this recipe, it was easy to make and great with rice! As someone who finds many pepperoni pizzas to be too spicy, I used about 1/3 of the sriracha this recipe calls for and it was perfect. It gave it a great bite that wasn’t too much for me.
I love prepping ground meat like this for quick meals. The flavor profile sounds great. I cannot wait to make this dish. I would pair it with zucchini if you have someone not fond of broccoli.
This is by far one of my favorite recipes. I enjoy anything that is sweet and spicy, but Mason takes it up a notch with this recipe. It has the perfect amount of spice and is complimented nicely by the sweetness of the honey and the umami from the soy sauce. I also made this with brussels sprouts and that also came out incredible!