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Paleo Meal Prep Gyoza Meatballs with juicy chicken loads of fresh vegetables. These meatballs are freezer friendly and perfect for healthy low carb and high protein meal prep on the go!
Paleo Meal Prep Gyoza Meatballs
Meatballs are probably one of my favorite foods to prepare for meal prep. They freeze well and easy to make a large batch for later use. In today’s recipe, I share a low carb meal prep recipe that’s also high in protein. You can easily pair the meatballs with various side dishes to create variety.
What is gyoza?
A Japanese potsticker dish usually consists of ground pork with shredded cabbage and shiitake, wrapped in thin wonton wrappers.
What’s the difference between Japanese gyoza and Chinese jiaozi (potstickers)?
Japanese gyoza is closely related to Chinese jiaozi. Jiaozi, Mandarin 餃子, is a type of dumplings that are one of the major foods in China and Taiwan eaten all year-round and especially during the Chinese New Year.
Both Japanese gyoza and Chinese jiaozi share similar ingredients – small amount of ground meat with load of finely minced vegetables, wrapped in thin dumpling wrappers.
Since there are so many jiaozi varieties, you’ll find that some jiaozi use thicker dumpling skins and others with thinner dumpling wrappers.
In general, Japanese gyoza dumplings are smaller and with thinner dumpling wrappers than Chinese jiaozi. The fillings inside are almost identical and they come with various variety, too.
To keep our Paleo jiaozi or gyoza low carb, we are making the meat filling only.
More Chinese Dumpling recipes
Tips for easy meal prep
- Keep the menu selections simple. New recipes takes longer time to learn and to figure out the process. Keep a few familiar go-tos and add 1 new dish to the menu, if you want a change.
- Select recipes that freeze well and/or easy to create variety. Some recipes are great to be cooked in advance (for example: Vietnamese beef stew) and others are more suitable for partially prepared and they require a quick assemble on serving days (for example: Keto sushi rolls). They both have pros and cons. I like to have both types of meals in my weekly meal plan so I can keep my prep time more balanced.
- Items take longer time to cook and cool, do that first. Make the slow cooker dish or the oven dish first so when you are done meal prepping these dishes are ready for you.
- Batch chop and prep. Chop garlic, ginger, shallots, onions, scallions…etc in batch quality and divide them for each recipe to save time.
- Multi-tasking. I like to include 1 slow cooker or 1 instant pot recipe and an oven dish in my meal planning. Let these cookwares do the work so I only need to chop and make healthy salad dressings!
So my friends, I hope you find this Paleo Meal Prep Gyoza Meatballs recipe helpful. If you give these meatballs a try, leave a comment and rate the recipe below. Use my hashtag #IHeartUmami if sharing on Instagram. I’d love to see your creations!
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Paleo Meal Prep Gyoza Meatballs (Keto, Whole30)
Video
Ingredients
Gyoza meatballs (makes about 18 meatballs at 1.5 oz. each)
- ½ lb. shrimp peeled and deveined (see notes if can’t have shellfish)
- 1.2 oz. dried shiitake (rehydrated) or 4 oz. fresh shiitake
- 3-4 bulbs scallions finely chopped
- 2.5 oz. shallots finely chopped
- ½ cup bamboo shoots minced
- ½ lb. ground chicken turkey, or pork
- 1 egg white lightly whisked or 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp coarse sea salt
- 2 tbsp coconut aminos
- 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
- ¼ tsp white pepper
- 1 tbsp arrowroot starch
Other optional toppings:
- 1 lb. cauliflower fried rice cooked
- Blanched or steamed snow peas sugar snap peas, and/or shredded carrots
Meal Prep Dressing:
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F.
- In a bowl combine shrimp with ½ tsp salt and 1 ¼ cup water. Stir well and set it aside for 5-10 minutes. This will remove the slimy texture and keep it crunchy. Dump the water and rinse the shrimp a few times then finely mince them.
- In the meantime, finely chop shiitake, scallions, shallots, and bamboo shoots, if using.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients from shrimp to arrowroot starch. Stir the mixture in 1 direction for about 2 minutes until the mixture becomes a bit sticky.
- Line a large sheet pan with parchment. Lightly grease your palm with olive oil. This will help the meat less sticky to your hands. Form about 18 meatballs that weight around 1.5 oz. per meatball.
- To bake from fresh, Bake at 400F for 20 minutes total. Flip the meatballs after 15 minutes.
- To assemble: Divide cauliflower rice, blanched snow peas, carrots into 4 equal size meal prep containers with 4-5 cooked meatballs to each container. Pack dressing on the side. Drizzle before serving.
Notes
- Use 1 lb. ground meat if allergic to shellfish.
- You can freeze the raw meatballs up to 2 months. From raw & frozen, bake at 400F for 25-30 minutes total. Flip the meatballs after 20 minutes.
- Assembled meal prep boxes storage: Store the boxes in the fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for 2 months. To reheat from frozen, saute the rice and vegetables over stovetop. Bake the frozen but cooked meatballs at 400F for 20 minutes. Flip after 15 minutes.
- The nutritional label is for one serving with 4-5 meatballs and without dressing and side toppings.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Want more healthy meal prep recipes?
- Paleo Asian Taco Meat Sauce Meal Prep Bowls
- Whole30 Korean Beef Bowls
- Paleo Green Buddha Bowls
- Whole30 Meal Prep Recipes
These are amazing!! This will be a regular in my home. I ran out of bamboo shoots so I used the water chestnuts that I had and it was amazing. They are so moist and not dry. Thank you for an amazing recipe.
I paired it with your creamy ginger mustard dressing. I had to tweak it a but because I ran out of olive oil (what an abomination)and used soy sauce also. Let me say it was still very good. I only had half the oil olive but to counter act the soy I increased everything else by 1/2. Thanks again!
Thanks, Dee!
Can you use tapioca flour instead of the arrowroot starch? I can’t wait to make this recipe!
Yes. Absolutely!
Made these tonight for the week’s meal prep, and they came out so well! I would cook it at 25 minutes instead of 20 if you wanted a more golden brown on the meatballs. The sauce is OUTSTANDING. Put it over the meatballs and whatever sides you have. It is that good!
Thanks for sharing!
These are SO good, Chihyu!
I made them with ground pork.
If I was making them for a pescatarian, would I just double the amount of shrimp?
Hi Janice! Thank you! I would substitute ground pork for white fish fillets such as cod. Process the cod in a food processor until they are very finely minced – similar to how we make salmon cakes. This way the meatballs will get a good consistency and flavor between the fish paste and the shrimp :))
I have been saving freezer friendly recipes lately because they help throughout the week a lot! These meatballs look amazing – can’t wait to try them!
What a tasty simple way to have the flavor of gyoza without all the work. 🙂
Easy meal prep that is not only delicious but healthy?? Yes please!!
I love, love, love the flavors in gyoza, so these meatballs are a dream cone true for this Paleo-eating gal! Great recipe. Thanks for posting!
These meatballs sound so good! Thanks for all of the meal prep tips, too!