Ketogenic diets can get boring pretty quickly if you don’t change it up in the kitchen and make something new once in a while. I had a craving for some meatballs and hadn’t made any since the Bacon and Cheddar BBQ meatballs, so I decided to put together some new recipes to help all of you with some new ideas in the kitchen!
I made a trio of meatballs that turned out absolutely superb. These Chorizo, Ground Beef, and Cheddar meatballs. Italian Sausage, Ground Beef, and Pepperjack Cheese meatballs. Bacon, Ground Beef, and Mozzarella meatballs. The three together were fantastic, had a very appealing presentation, and were extremely filling.
You only need 4-6 meatballs to serve as a meal, especially with the sauce and a side of vegetables. They’re relatively easy to make, and they taste phenomenal. If you’re ever in a bind for a meal that needs to feed a lot of people, this can be a go-to. It takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes for the total time, most of that being the cooking time.
If you want these to be even better, you can make a homemade sauce for each. Tomato sauce, pesto sauce, and Alfredo sauce. They’re pretty simple to make, and you can make them while the meatballs are cooking. I got lazy and only made the Alfredo sauce myself – but if you have a lot of guests over and want to serve something homemade and elegant, I say you should go the whole nine yards!
Yields 24 medium meatballs with sauce
The Preparation
- 1/3 cup pork rinds, crushed
- 16 ounces chorizo sausage
- 24 ounces ground beef
- 1 cup cheddar cheese
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 large egg
- 1 cup low-carb tomato sauce, such as Rao's
The Execution
1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
2. Add your pork rinds (about 1/3 of a bag) to the food processor.
3. Pulse the pork rinds until they are crushed completely. We will be using these to bind the meatballs together.
4. Break apart your chorizo sausage, making sure every piece is small. Sausage normally has some fat connecting together inside, so you want to tear through that so the mixture will be even.
5. Place your chorizo sausage in a large mixing bowl.
6. Add your ground beef to the mixture. Don’t touch it just yet.
7. Add your crushed pork rinds on top of the ground beef.
8. Add your cheddar cheese to the ground beef.
9. Measure out your cumin, chili powder, salt and eggs. Add them to the ground beef mixture – this is where the fun begins.
10. Mix everything together well using your hands. This is going to get messy, but don’t worry about it!
11. Roll your meatballs out and rest them in a foiled baking tray.
12. Make sure your meatballs are spread out evenly to allow proper cooking. Some grease and cheese will seep out of the meatballs so you don’t want them to get stuck together.
13. Cook them in the oven for 30-35 minutes. It may need longer if you made larger meatballs.
14. Let them cool for 5 minutes or so, and remove them from the grease filled tray.
15. Serve with tomato sauce on each!
This makes a total of 10 servings of Chorizo & Cheddar Cheese Meatballs. Each serving comes out to be 456 calories, 36.5g fats, 2.5g net carbs, and 27.6g protein.
| NUTRITION | CALORIES | FAT | CARBS | FIBER | NET CARBS | PROTEIN |
| 1/3 cup pork rinds | 60 | 3.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5.7 |
| 16 ounce chorizo sausage | 2064 | 173.6 | 8.4 | 0 | 8.4 | 109.3 |
| 24 ounce ground beef | 1728 | 136.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 116.8 |
| 1 cup cheddar cheese | 495 | 40.8 | 3.8 | 0 | 3.8 | 28 |
| 1 teaspoon cumin | 8 | 0.5 | 0.9 | 0.2 | 0.7 | 0.4 |
| 1 teaspoon chili powder | 8 | 0.4 | 1.3 | 0.9 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
| 1 teaspoon kosher salt | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 large egg | 157 | 10.5 | 0.8 | 0 | 0.8 | 13.8 |
| 1 cup low-carb tomato sauce | 59 | 0.5 | 14.2 | 3.7 | 10.5 | 3.2 |
| Totals | 4579 | 366 | 29.5 | 4.8 | 24.7 | 277.6 |
| Per Serving (/10) | 458 | 36.6 | 2.9 | 0.5 | 2.5 | 27.8 |
Chorizo & Cheddar Cheese Meatballs
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup pork rinds crushed
- 16 ounce chorizo sausage
- 24 ounce ground beef
- 1 cup cheddar cheese
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 large egg
- 1 cup low-carb tomato sauce such as Rao's
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Add the pork rinds to a food processor and pulse until completely crushed.
- Break the chorizo sausage into small, even-sized pieces and place them in a large mixing bowl.
- Add in the ground beef, crushed pork rinds, and cheddar cheese.
- Measure out the cumin, chili powder, salt, and eggs. Add them to the ground beef mixture — this is where the fun begins.
- Knead everything together well by hand. It's a bit messy, but well worth it!
- Roll the mixture into meatballs and place them on a foil-lined baking tray. Spread the meatballs out evenly to ensure proper cooking and keep them from sticking together.
- Bake for 30–35 minutes, depending on the size of the meatballs.
- Let cool for about 5 minutes before removing from the tray. Serve with tomato sauce dolloped over each meatball.
This recipe is SO DELICIOUS! I doubled it and got 60 big ole meatballs. I actually added in the tomato to the recipe instead of using as a topping and they turned out beautiful. The only thing about this site is I wish the recipes were easy to print but I am sure that is why you are selling a book 🙂
Erin,
This is one of my favorite meatball recipes 🙂 Actually, I’m in the process of turning all the recipes “printable” (if you check out the oldest recipe on here you will see – I am working from oldest to newest). I only sell the cookbook to help me pay for all the ingredients I use, since I am doing brand new recipes every day 😉
I dont think we have pork rinds in UK (checked Tesco website). is there anything else i can use instead of that?
Hey Rammi. You should be able to get away with no using pork rinds in the meatballs – but if you want to get them, they’re called Pork Cracklings in the UK. Tesco or ASDA should carry them 🙂
This recipe is wonderful! We will be making them again! I first read it in the free keto book you have, but searched on the site so I can share the link with others 😉
Glad you liked them Margaret! I’m super thankful that you took the time to find the recipe to share it with people – it really helps the site out 🙂
Just made these and they are delicious! I love how you show each step in the process. The photography is beautiful!
Thanks so much Elizabeth! Though these are old pictures (not my new camera), it means a lot 🙂
Question on the Chorizo Sausage…
The store sells them in various sizes so when you say 1.5 approx how many oz is that?
Thank you!!
Generally, they’re around 3 oz. each
Hello, how many meatballs are you counting for the nutrition info (looking for the carbs) like 18.2 is net for all of them? How many is that? 🙂
24 meatballs.
Love these! I served mine with Rao’s sauce. So good!!
hi, how much chorizo sausage is there in this recipe? oh and what’s a good sub for the pork rinds?
Hello – it’s 1 1/2 lbs of Chorizo. You might be able to use a little bit more almond flour or a little bit of flaxseed meal to help bind. Though you could probably leave out the pork rinds and still get a tasty meatball out of the recipe.
IS IT 1 1/2 LBS OF CHORIZO?
Sorry for the slow reply! No – it’s 1 1/2 links of chorizo. This was around 10-11 oz of chorizo for us. You can use the chorizo you get and compare to the macros of ours to find how much to use.
Hello, what’s the % of fat in the ground beef? I was thinking of buying 80/20 or 85/15
I typically use 80/20 in my recipes.
I hesitate to make some recipes, because I have been disappointed, I followed this recipe and LOVED it, the tomato sauce was perfect with the meatballs and I used grounded cauliflower as my potatoes. I am on a limited budget so I try only to buy items that can be used by me. Most, people will buy something they do not normally buy but I have to be careful to stay in my money budget. i used a sausage I normally buy for my spouse it was delicious.
Glad you could find a recipe you can rely on! Good luck on your keto journey, Cecelia.
If you need help with anything, please let us know 🙂