Another one from Kroger’s extensive Simple Truth line of products that seeks to offer a ‘cleaner’ variety of products with less additives and junk. The meatballs come eight to a refrigerated pack and can’t be resealed once opened.
Cooking: The packaging (see below) steers you to the oven to cook these. Any time I see that I reach for the air fryer. I was very happy with the results from the fryer, a thin crisp exterior and juicy interior.
Taste and texture: Excellent. The meatballs had a little bit of a spicy kick, and a very string chicken flavor. This is one of the few times the ‘Simple Truth’ labelling made sense in the context of the final tasting to me. The texture is equally great, and again, from the air fryer these were very juicy.
Verdict: A very solid product and a fun change of pace from the more ubiquitous beef meatball. I think the chicken’s gentler flavor profile make them even more versatile than their beefier cousins; I’m already imagining skewering these and cooking them up like Japanese tsukune.
Simple Truth Italian Seasoned Chicken Meatballs packaging
Hi, I’m Stuart, nice to meet you! I’m the founder, writer and wrangler at Gastronomic SLC – Utah’s biggest and oldest online food magazine; I’m also a former restaurant critic of more than five years, working for the Salt Lake Tribune. I’ve worked extensively with multiple local publications from Visit Salt Lake to Salt Lake Magazine, not least helped to consult on national TV shows.
I’m a multiple-award winning journalist and have covered the Utah dining scene for the better part of fifteen years. I’m largely fueled by a critical obsession with rice, alliteration and the use of big words I don’t understand. I started Shop Smart to catalogue my adventures in the grocery store and kitchen. Follow along on Instagram too!
Hi, can you tell me what temp and time you did these in the air fryer? Thanks!
Of course, here’s the instructions on another website I write all about air frying
https://airfry.guide/how-to/how-to-cook-simple-truth-italian-seasoned-chicken-meatballs-in-an-air-fryer/
I bought these but haven’t tried them yet. When you said “strong chicken flavor,” that kind of sounded like a negative thing, even though your review was positive.
I thought it was a positive 🙂 In products like this the underlying protein can be obscured by overtly strong seasoning for example. I thought these were a solid buy.