One-Pan Ground Chicken and Brussels Sprouts

With only a handful of ingredients and a 15-minute cook time, this ground chicken and brussels sprouts combo is a great weeknight dinner or meal prep fix. The simple honey balsamic sauce is the perfect match for this pair, making it an absolute joy to eat your veggies. Let’s get cooking!

Honey Balsamic Ground Chicken and Brussels Sprouts Ingredients

If you’re a fan of short ingredient lists, you’re in for a treat! Here’s everything you’ll need:

• ground chicken
• shaved brussels sprouts
• olive oil
• honey, balsamic vinegar, whole grain mustard, salt, and pepper (for the sauce)

What are shaved brussels sprouts?

Shaved brussels sprouts are thinly sliced whole brussels sprouts. You can make shaved brussels sprouts by thinly slicing with a knife, using a mandolin or box grater, or a food processor with a slicing blade.

If your favorite parts about brussels sprouts are the crispy bits, shaved brussels sprouts are the way to go. That said, you’re more than welcome to use halved brussels sprouts if you like a slightly crispy exterior with soft centers.

Ground Chicken

The recipe calls for 97% lean ground chicken, but you can use ground turkey or even ground beef. This dish is actually inspired by my original sweet chili ground beef and brussels sprouts recipe. If you’d like to use ground chicken but can’t find it in your local grocery store, it’s super easy to make ground chicken at home.

You’ll want to brown the ground chicken on one side to develop flavors via the Maillard reaction. For optimal browning, make sure the pan is hot, pat the chicken dry with a paper towel, and leave it untouched for 2-3 minutes once it hits the pan. You’re after a golden brown crust before flipping, breaking apart, and fully cooking.

Honey Balsamic Sauce

This sauce is sweet and tangy, perfectly balancing the bitterness of the brussels sprouts. If you’re looking to reduce the carbs (from the honey and balsamic vinegar), you can try reducing both and adding a bit of broth to bulk up the sauce. Or you can experiment with other sticky sweeteners like sugar free pancake syrups in place of some of the honey.

More Sauce Ideas

My tangy Tex Mex ground beef and brussels sprouts use a honey lime vinaigrette and spicy Greek yogurt crema that would work great here.

Pulling from my post with 5 sauce ideas for air fryer brussels sprouts, you could make a 1:1 mixture of honey, soy sauce, and chili garlic sauce (with maybe a dash of toasted sesame oil).

To stick to the balsamic flavor profile, you could make the balsamic bbq reduction from my roasted brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes by adding sugar free ketchup and yellow mustard to balsamic vinegar and honey. This would bulk up the sauce, reducing the amount needed and carbs in the final dish.

Or for a quick and easy fix, you could use sugar free BBQ sauce on its own (like the G Hughes I used for my cast iron bacon and brussels sprouts recipe.

Other Flavors That Go with Brussels Sprouts

• sweetness: honey, molasses, brown sugar, dried cranberries, apple
• acidity: vinegars like balsamic and cider, lemon juice, mustard
• umami: soy sauce, fish sauce, miso paste, Worcestershire sauce
• saltiness and mouthfeel: bacon, pecans, seeds

Serving Your Ground Chicken and Brussels Sprouts

The recipe calls for serving over rice or for lower carb diets, cauliflower rice. I like using a 60:40 blend of rice to cauliflower rice. You get the texture of real rice without all the carbs.

With 4 servings, about 2 cups of cooked rice should do the trick unless you want a lot of rice per serving.

If you have a picky eater in the house like I do, you can keep the ground chicken and brussels sprouts divided in the pan like you see in the photo above.

More Ground Chicken and Veggie Combos

If you’re a fan of one-pan like this, check out these recipes next:

• chili garlic ground chicken and broccoli
• creamy lemon ricotta ground chicken soup
• ground chicken broccoli rice casserole
• creamy Thai curry ground chicken and rice
• honey sriracha ground chicken and broccoli
• one pan Greek ground chicken and rice
• honey harissa ground chicken rice bowls

And that’s everything you need to know. Have a question? Leave it in the comments below. Otherwise, enjoy your honey balsamic chicken and brussels sprouts!