Traeger Smoked BBQ Chicken Meatballs

Looking for something to cook on your Traeger Grill to satisfy the lighter cravings in your house? These low fat smoked chicken meatballs with a spicy BBQ glaze are the perfect fix. Each meatball has 10 grams of protein with only 4 grams of carbs and 75 calories. Even better, you can have them prepped and on the grill in about 15 minutes!

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Making Smoked Meatballs in the Traeger Grill

We’re new to the Traeger Grill and the world of smoked meats. So our starting point for recipe testing was seeing which existing recipes from our other blog, Kinda Healthy Recipes, we could successfully smoke. In this case, we used our baked bbq chicken meatballs recipe.

If you’re new to the Traeger or cooking on a pellet smoker, this should be an easy introduction! You’ll find a visual recipe walkthrough below with a few ingredient notes and bonus tips, in case you need them. Below that, there’s a printable recipe card for you to take with you as we divide and conquer smoked meatballs.

Mix breadcrumbs, shredded parmesan, cumin, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and parsley together before adding ground chicken, BBQ sauce, and eggs.

While the recipe calls for 97% lean ground chicken, we’ve made these meatballs with 92% lean ground chicken and even ground turkey without any issues. I’m sure you could even use ground beef if you wanted to.

Mix everything together and form 24 meatballs. Preheat smoker with a grill pan, mesh grill plate, or wire rack.

The Traeger grill grates are a little too wide for meatballs this size. I use a 15″ x 12″cast iron grill topper, but a wire rack or anything with smaller holes than the grill grates will work. Whatever you use, be sure to have it in the Traeger while it preheats. This will prevent sticking and create more browning on the bottoms of the meatballs.

Smoke the meatballs at 300ºF for 30 minutes.

We tested variable temperatures like in the Traeger Italian Meatballs recipe but found it didn’t make much difference in the finished product. So we kept the temperature the same throughout the entire cook to eliminate an extra step. All you’ll need to do is brush on BBQ sauce halfway through an hour at 300ºF.

Brush the meatballs with BBQ sauce and smoke an additional 30 minutes at 300ºF.

We used the same roasted garlic and sriracha BBQ sauce from Trader Joe’s for these meatballs. If you’re using another sauce, you’ll want to aim for something that’s on the thicker side. Or if you have a runnier BBQ sauce like a vinegar-based sauce, you may want to brush the meatballs a few time during the back half of the cook.

Additional Sauce Ideas

• Traeger Texas Spicy Blazin’ BBQ Sauce from our spicy BBQ shotgun shells
• Gochujang Lime Sauce from our Spicy Pork Stir Fry
• Firecracker Sauce from our Ground Beef and Green Bean Stir Fry
• Japanese BBQ Sauce from our BBQ Chicken Fried Rice and BBQ Fried Cauliflower Rice

Every grill is different (we use a Traeger Pro Series 575) so you may need to slightly adjust the cook times for different models. You’re looking for an internal temperature of at least 165ºF. As for the pellets, we used the same Traeger signature blend we used for our smoked buffalo chicken stuffed peppers. The signature blend is a combo of hickory, maple, and cherry wood.

Top your meatballs with some fresh parsley and dig in! Here are some Traeger side dish ideas for serving with your smoked meatballs:

Smoked at the same temperature:

• smoked garlic and bacon potato salad
• smoked cauliflower

More ideas on the smoker:

• Traeger funeral potatoes (I’m betting you could smoke alongside the meatballs and crank the temperature up at the end.)
• sweet and spicy BBQ baked beans
• smoked deviled eggs
• Traeger roasted broccoli
• Traeger mac and cheese

Or if you’d rather assign side dish duty to your sous chef, here are some indoor side dish ideas:

• Greek yogurt mashed potatoes
• air fryer twice baked potatoes
• sautéed green beans
• healthy mac and cheese with veggies

That should be plenty to get you going. If you have a recipe question we missed, drop a comment at the bottom of the post. We hope you enjoy your Traeger smoked chicken meatballs!