This 20-minute firecracker ground chicken is the perfect low carb, high protein meal prep recipe. Each serving has 22 grams of protein, 0 grams of carbs, and just 185 calories. It’s super easy to make and goes perfectly with rice or cauliflower rice. Or you can get creative and use it to make things like lettuce wraps or a veggie stir fry with noodles.
How to Make Firecracker Chicken with Ground Chicken
I doubt you’ll need much help with this recipe, but I’ve included a recipe walkthrough and ingredient notes in the post below nonetheless. Feel free to hit the jump to recipe button at the top of the post and hop back here if you have recipe or ingredient questions.
Brown one pound of ground chicken in 1/2 tablespoon of chili oil or your choice of oil.
The recipe calls for 92% lean ground chicken, but you could use leaner. You could also swap the ground chicken for ground turkey or your choice of ground meat.
Like I mention in my ground chicken breakfast sausage recipe, using a little bit of oil is not entirely necessary, but it adds a ton of flavor and helps the chicken brown nicely. That browning adds a ton of flavor you might miss out on otherwise. I would definitely use a leaner cut of ground chicken before omitting the oil if you wanted to save a few calories!
Make the firecracker sauce while the ground chicken cooks.
Everything you’ll need for the firecracker sauce:
- buffalo sauce
- cider or rice vinegar
- zero-calorie Swerve brown sugar (or dark brown sugar)
- garlic powder
- ground ginger
- red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper
Simply mix everything together and you’ll be ready to crack on.
If you’re unfamiliar with Swerve sweeteners, they’re zero-calorie, erythritol-based sugar substitutes that taste and cook like real sugar. I’ve used their brown sugar substitute to make everything from Nashville Hot ground chicken burgers to air fryer apple fritters.
You’ll find notes for nutrition facts with real brown sugar in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. I’ll also mention that my chili crisp ground chicken and spicy coconut ground chicken recipes both use honey and gochujang as a sticky sweetener substitute. That might be an option.
Update: If you like this sauce, you can use it to make my firecracker chicken meatballs recipe!
Mince the ground chicken and finish cooking before adding the sauce. Cook until the sauce thickens, about 2-3 minutes.
You’re looking for a thick, syrupy, slightly sticky sauce. As long as you keep everything moving around, you shouldn’t be at risk of burning anything. Give it time!
Serving Your Firecracker Ground Chicken
The classic rice and protein bowls are my go-to with this recipe. If you wanted to keep things lower carb, using cauliflower rice is the obvious choice. One “hack” you could pull from my ground beef and rice skillet is mixing half cauliflower rice and half regular rice to mask the veggie-ness.
You could also swap the rice for quinoa like in my spicy sesame ground beef and quinoa bowls. And if you wanted to add some veggies, you could pan roast some broccoli or something similar before cooking the chicken like in my sweet and spicy ground chicken and broccoli recipe.
To make things a bit more interesting, you could plug this firecracker ground chicken into something like these chicken lettuce wraps or my low carb noodle stir fry.
That should cover it. If you have a question about this recipe or its ingredients I forgot to cover, leave a comment below. Otherwise, enjoy your firecracker ground chicken! And if you enjoy it, recipe reviews are always appreciated.
Firecracker Ground Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 lb Ground Chicken, 92/8
- 1/2 Tbsp 8g Chili Oil
- 1/2 C 96g Swerve Brown Sugar
- 1/4 C 60g Buffalo Sauce
- 2 Tbsp 30g Cider or Rice Vinegar
- 1 tsp Ground Ginger
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
- 1/2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
Instructions
- Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with the chili oil. Brown both sides of the chicken, about 3-4 minutes per side, before mincing and fully cooking.
- While the chicken cooks, whisk the remaining ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
- Once the chicken is fully cooked, add the sauce to the pan and cook until thick and syrupy.
- Serve with scallions and toasted sesame seeds over rice or cauliflower rice.
Notes
Nutrition Info Notes
- Each serving has 4 WW SmartPoints (blue).
- The nutrition facts do not include any nutrition info from the Swerve Brown Sugar. Erythritol has 0.2 calories per gram so the entire recipe has around 20 calories if you'd like to include it.
- With real brown sugar, each serving has 24g of carbs and 275 calories.
- Using 97/3 ground chicken adds 4g of protein and saves 5.5g of fat and 50 calories per serving.
If make in big batch can freeze? Or if just make big batch of sauce how long can keep sauce for in fridge?
Good idea. I think the sauce should have a lengthy shelf life in the refrigerator, and I’d probably rather have the sauce in bulk and cook the ground chicken from fresh. But this recipe does reheat really well so freezing/thawing wouldn’t be a wrong move either.
Can you provide the macros if using 99/1 Ground Turkey?
One pound of 92/8 ground chicken has roughly 680 calories, 88g protein, and 36g fat. One pound of 99/1 ground turkey has 480 calories, 112g protein, and 4g fat. With 4 servings, each serving loses 50 calories and 8 grams of fat and gains 6 grams of protein.
So so good! I’m always looking for quick and easy weeknight dinners to throw together and this was perfect. I did use ground turkey instead of chicken just because that was what we had and it was so good!
I cooked this for the first time and loved it. The recipe is super easy and quick for a Monday night dinner. The flavors from this recipe are spot on! Sweet and spicy!!!
Made this the other night, so good. Can easily throw together a salad and add this in there! Next week I’m using this recipe and doing lettuce wraps, but with no rice.
As much as I dislike ground chicken, you have converted me to at least one recipe!! Good stuff here…
Omg this recipe is SAVING my competition reverse diet!! I doubled the recipe to prep for the week but I only had 110g swerve brown sugar left so I used Walden farm pancake syrup for the remainder- it worked well! Sticky sauce bursting with flavor!
I absolutely love this recipe! It has become a go-to for quick meal-preps for the week. As a vegetarian I just substitute the ground chicken for well-drained tofu, but still crumble and brown it in the chili oil. It is just as delicious. The brown swerve gives a caramelized texture and spicy sweetness that is addictive!
Love this one for an easy weeknight dinner. I’ve used sesame oil instead of chili oil and thought it worked just fine! Have also used extra lean ground turkey instead of chicken and that was great as well!
This is so delicious! I’ve used the firecracker sauce on chicken breasts and ground turkey too! I usually add a little extra buffalo sauce or red pepper flakes for a little extra heat.