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.
Would it be ok to leave the honey out? My wife is not a fan of honey 🙂
You could swap it for something like brown sugar to add some sweetness and balance the other flavors.
I just made this for dinner and really enjoyed it. Found it from Pinterest. I also looked at your other recipes and got the tip to combine rice and cauli rice. So I paired it with that. So good. I’d previously never been able to stand cauli rice but I can definitely tolerate and enjoy it this way. Thanks for your awesome macro balanced meals! I’ll be back
Thanks, Sabirah!
Hey Mason! Just want to comment and say this recipe has become a regular in our meal planning and it’s super tasty!
If anyone is having a craving for healthier Asian food, this dish definitely is a winner! I used agave nectar in place of the honey and and liquid aminos in place of the soy sauce. Next time, I would like to use fresh garlic and ginger to compare (although using the powder is easier prep/cheaper). Thank you very much for sharing your recipe!
I made this and it’s amazing!! Question- is it on MFP or Macros First for tracking purposes?
Thank you! It should be. Search my name or “KH” plus the recipe name.
OMgosh SOOOOOOO GOOD! And so easy! We used G. Hughes sugar free Sweet Chili sauce which cut the sugar a bit. Just really yummy and easy. Thanks so much!
Is there something I can substitute for the toasted sesame oil? I can’t find it in my local grocery store
You can use any oil there, but it’s tough to replicate the flavor of toasted sesame oil. I would include some toasted sesame seeds if you have them.
Made this tonight and it was so good! This recipe is definitely a keeper!
This is my absolute favorite macro friendly recipe, I have made it probably 15 times since I found it. It is super easy to meal prep ahead of time for lunches during the week. I like to eat it with 1/4 of jasmine rice and I add a little less sriracha. I hope I never get tired of this because I eat it almost every day now
Thanks for the review, Katie!
I eat this almost every day, I’m obsessed. It is super quick to make and is great for meal prepping lunches or dinners for the week. I have probably made this 15 times since I found it and haven’t gotten tired of it. I like to eat it with 1/4 cup of jasmine rice and I personally only do 2 tablespoons of sriracha to make it a little less spicy. G Hughes Sugar Free Sweet Chili Sauce goes great in this. I highly recommend this recipe to everyone counting macros.