Chicken zucchini skulls patties

It’s always tricky to find interesting ways to offer meat to your kids, sometimes you have to play it around…like in today’s recipe!

Tender and tasty chicken patties shaped like spooky skulls. Maybe because it’s Halloween time, maybe because he’s a boy, but my little Luca loved them!

To keep the chicken more moist and sneak in some vegetables I added one grated zucchini to the mix…huge improvement!

The chicken skulls are baked, not fried…even more healthy 😉

That’s all you need to prepare 20 small skulls:

 

And that’s how I did:

– grate the zucchini. Place the pulp in a colander, adjust with a pinch of salt and with a fork or a spoon press the zucchini in order to remove the extra water. Let the zucchini pulp drain for 5 minutes.

– Place the chicken breast already cut in big pieces in a food processor. Mix for one minute in order to ground it.

– In a big bowl add the ground chicken, the zucchini, the ricotta cheese, the parsley, a pinch of salt, the grated parmesan cheese and the eggs

– Mix everything with a spoon in order to obtain a very smooth paste. Add the breadcrumbs. I added only 1/2 cup as the zucchini were very well drained. You might have to add from 1/2 to 1 cup of breadcrumbs pending how watery your zucchini will be.  The final mix will be sticky but compact like in the picture.

– Prepare a baking sheet with some parchment paper on top and grease your hands with some oil of olive.

– Take one tablespoon of chicken mix and start shaping it with your hands in order to form a skull. Place it on the parchment paper and keep going with the other skulls. Gently press your finger in the top part of the skull to form the eye holes.

– final decoration. Using some baby carrots and few zucchini slices form the eyes and the mouth of the skulls.

– Drizzle the skulls with some breadcrumbs and oil of olive. Bake them in the oven at 400F/200C. for 20 minutes. Add 5 extra minutes in broil mode.

Let them cool down for 5 minutes and let your kids choose with skull to eat first!!

Enjoy!!