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.
Delicious and easy for weeknight dinner!
Added 4 tbls of sriracha sauce!
Will be making again!
Chefs kiss, such a good recipe and was super easy to make
I made a few tweaks to reduce the sugar and get it a little closer to tasting like takeout.
Made the sweet chili sauce from scratch I reduced the quantity of sweetener used (a little under 3/8 cup and swapped in honey and palm sugar to deepen the flavour, used 1-1/2 tbsp gochugaru flakes & 1/2 tbsp cayenne flakes. Added in 1/2 tbsp dried, minced onion. Plenty sweet and spicy that I skipped the extra honey and sriracha in the recipe.
Cooked the chicken first (set aside once browned) and then the broccoli on its own.
Subbed in fresh garlic and ginger (and upped the quantity in fresh equivalent) and sautéed with the cooked broccoli until fragrant.
Deglazed the pan with 1 tbsp xiaoshing vinegar before adding the meat back in along with the soy sauce, sesame oil and sweet chili sauce.
Served over cauli rice. 😋
This recipe is so versatile! I added peppers, mushrooms and onions, each sautéed separately, on fairly high heat. I also increased the sauce amount and threw in some rice wine vinegar to amp up the acid factor. This is such an easy, tasty and quick dinner and is now in the permanent rotation file. I’ve made it a few times and even fancied it up with scallions and thai basil. Many thanks for developing and sharing!
This was Delicious and super easy !! I double the recipe for my large family and everyone absolutely loved it ! Thank you for sharing
Just made this for dinner tonight and it was DELICIOUS!! I didn’t have fresh broccoli so subbed with frozen. My husband went for seconds, even my picky toddler was chowing down. Will definitely make this again! Thank you.
Wow this was absolutely fantastic!! So easy and a flavor explosion. Loved doing brocoli this way for a change. I have three sons that love working out and lifting, so glad I stumbled on your page.
I absolutely love this recipe. I am going to make it again and try new things. I used rice and Broccoli. I love it. It reminds me of my Mom’s cooking. I moved from Mississippi to Lopez Island Washington. I miss her food. Now, this recipe reminds me of it. Thank you.
This was really good. Made minor tweaks..used fresh garlic instead of powder, cooked the whites of the green onions with the chicken and threw in extra Sriracha. Served over garlic soy cauliflower rice. Delish!
Delicious! Easy! Love it! This sauce would be great with lots of other veggies such as carrots, red or yellow bell peppers. I used a bit less sriracha because I am sensitive to spice. Thank you!