Air Fryer Italian Meatballs

You won’t believe that in just 30 minutes you can make delicious air fryer Italian meatballs that’ll become your new favorite homemade beef meatball recipe!

Seasoned with classic Italian flavors like parmesan, garlic, basil, and oregano, you’ll enjoy these air fryer beef meatballs straight from the air fryer or topped with your favorite marinara sauce.

Italian Meatballs in Air Fryer

We LOVE making meatballs in our home, if you ask my hubby what one of his favorite meals is, he’ll time and time again tell you homemade meatballs. We love to experiment with a variety and sometimes make them with pork, turkey, or even chicken.

While making them in the oven is great when you need to serve a large amount when you want to cook up a small 1 lb batch of air fryer Italian meatballs, the air fryer is definitely the way to go! Not only do they cook up faster than in the oven, they use much less energy too.

While many meatballs recipes mix beef and pork (and you can certainly do that!), our air fryer Italian meatballs recipe is made without pork and just uses ground beef. Instead of adding tons of extra seasoning, garlic, and parmesan which will have your family eating the meatballs at the counter as soon as the air fryer finishes cooking them.

Whether you serve the Italian meatballs in air fryer with a couple of air fryer sides or cover them in sauce and serve them with either noodles or zoodles, there is no wrong way to enjoy this easy air fryer meatballs recipe.

Serve the air fryer Italian meatballs with air fryer frozen broccoli and pasta with spaghetti sauce.

And for those times you aren’t able to cook, you should have a bag of precooked meatballs in the freezer and try our air fryer frozen meatballs to save you some time.

What Makes This Recipe So Good!

• The Italian meatballs are bursting with authentic Italian flavor thanks to the fresh garlic, parsley, oregano, basil, Worcestershire sauce, and parmesan cheese!
• With a cooking time of just 8 minutes, cooking the air fryer Italian meatballs might just might be the fastest cooking method out there!
• The air fryer beef meatballs are healthy and can easily be adapted to gluten-free, low-carb, and keto lifestyles (diet adaptions listed below).

Italian Meatballs Air Fryer Ingredient Notes

Don’t be deterred by the ingredients list, most of these are pantry staples you’ll most likely already have on hand.

• Panko breadcrumbs
• milk – any type of milk here, dairy milk, or plant-based such as almond, soy, or oat milk.
• 80/20 ground beef – the best balance of protein and fat, this type of ground beef has tons of flavor.
• garlic cloves, minced – minced jar garlic, or frozen garlic works too!
• finely minced onion
• egg
• grated parmesan cheese – the grated kind in a green plastic container is what we used, feel free to use fresh if you have it
• Worcestershire sauce
• seasonings – dried parsley, dried basil, dried oregano, fine sea salt, ground black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Sometimes to simply, we’ll substitute dried Italian seasoning for parsley, basil, and oregano.

Equipment

• An Air Fryer- We have a Cosori XL basket style air fryer, an Omni Plus oven style air fryer, and a small 3.2L Farberware basket style air fryer. The Cosori was used in this recipe. 
• Non-stick spatula
• Cookie scoop
• Digital thermometer

How to Air Fry Italian Meatballs

Air frying homemade meatballs is as simple as mixing the meatballs ingredients, shaping them into balls, and cooking them until they’re perfectly cooked in your air fryer.

Prep Ingredients

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, add the panko breadcrumbs and the milk. Combine them and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes.

Add 5 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl including the ground beef, egg, garlic, onion, parmesan cheese, dried herbs (parsley, basil, oregano), Worcestershire, sea salt, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Combine all of the ingredients together.

Shape the meatballs into 2 tablespoon-sized meatballs and add them to the air fryer, making sure tl leave a little room between them. A medium cookie scoop works well for this to get the meatballs a similar-sized shape.

In our Cosori air fryer, we were able to hold 20 meatballs, how many you can make at one time depends on the brand and capacity of the air fryer that you have.

How long to cook raw meatballs in air fryer?

Preheat the air fryer to 400 F for 5 minutes. Don’t skip this step as the recipe for air fryer Italian meatballs is written using a pre-heated air fryer, not a cold one.

The Italian meatballs in air fryer will cook for a total of 8-9 minutes, flipping them half-way through the cooking time is an optional step. Air fry the meatballs for a total of 8-9 minutes.

Check the beef meatballs after 8 minutes of cooking time with a digital thermometer to test for doneness and continue cooking them until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees F.

Variations

• Ground Beef – Ground turkey, pork, or chicken can be substituted for the ground beef, or why not try a blend of meats? Ground beef mixed with pork go great together!
• Egg – If you can’t have eggs, you can substitute them for buttermilk, ricotta cheese, or Greek yogurt.

Substitutions

• Gluten Free – Use gluten-free breadcrumbs to make your air fryer meatballs work for your health program.
• Keto – use keto friendly bread crumbs and a low carb milk like almond milk or whole milk
• Finely minced fresh herbs can be substituted for dried herbs, the ratio is 3:1 so 1 tablespoon fresh herbs to 1 teaspoon dried herbs.

Tips for Italian Meatball Recipe (Air Fryer)

• A higher fat meat with an 80/20 ratio was used in the recipe as the extra grease helps to keep the meatballs juicier, plus gives them lots of flavor.
• Using a cookie scoop will help to make your meatballs evenly sized, this is optional but helpful.
• Don’t skip preheating the air fryer, as the air fryer Italian meatballs recipe is written with a preheated unit. Skipping the preheat means the recipe will take longer to cook.
• The meatballs can be flipped halfway through the cooking time but you can skip that if you want them to be extra brown and crisp on one side.
• How long to cook chicken meatballs will be the same as beef or pork meatballs if you swap the ground meats.

Common Questions

How to Reheat Meatballs in Air Fryer

Whether you have leftover meatballs in the fridge or leftovers that were frozen. Here’s how to go about reheating meatballs in an air fryer:

1. Preheat your air fryer to 350°F for 5 minutes.
2. If your meatballs were in sauce, we recommend adding a layer of parchment paper on the bottom of the air fryer. Also, add a small amount of water or broth to the bottom of the basket. This will help to create steam and prevent the marinara sauce from burning.
3. Place the leftover meatballs in the air fryer basket in a single layer, leaving some space around each meatball to allow for even cooking.
4. Air fry the meatballs for 5-8 minutes, depending on their size and whether they were fresh or frozen. Flip the meatballs halfway through cooking and air fry until the internal temp reaches
5. 165°F with a meat thermometer.

More Air Fryer Main Dishes

• Air fryer breaded chicken patties
• Air fryer bone-in turkey breast
• Tyson frozen chicken wings in air fryer
• Air fryer frozen meatballs

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