Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake
Creamy alfredo sauce with chicken and penne pasta.
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Table of Contents
About Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake
I don’t know what it is, but I absolutely love pasta bakes. Maybe it’s because they’re so easy to cook. Or maybe it’s because they make awesome leftovers (because seriously, they do). But whatever the reason, I always get excited when I find a recipe I haven’t tried yet. Bonus points if there’s a lot of cheese involved.
This recipe has been sitting on my to-cook list for a while, but only because I can be very picky when it come to Alfredo sauce. In my world, Alfredo is no laughing matter. Alfredo is the be all, end all sauce for pasta (and bread and veggies and just about anything else). Sometimes I’ll even avoid an Alfredo dish if the sauce seems dubious, because heaven forbid I taint my pallet with sub par sauce. And apparently, I’m so good at avoiding suspicious Alfredo that an old friend of mine was adamant that I couldn’t like Alfredo because (he claims) I always turn it down. That’s just how picky I am.
So you can imagine my hesitation going into this recipe. Will it be awesomely good or an awesome failure? Can I have a delicious pasta bake with savory (and good quality) Alfredo sauce at the same time and live to tell the tale?
As it turns out, YES, it’s totally possible!
The recipe itself is very simple, but the sauce turned out to be delicious and the mozzarella really accents the taste. I also used Italian flavored bread crumbs which really kicked up the classic pasta flavor.
And the best part? I got to use more of the canned chicken I have in my cabinets! As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always looking for new ways to cook with it and the canned chicken worked perfectly with this dish.
Oddly enough, the original recipe for this pasta bake only provided the ingredients, leaving the actual instructions a mystery, so I had to work out that part on my own. Thankfully all the practice I’ve had over the past few months paid off and made this an easy task.
This dish will tide an old friend of mine and I over until the weekend, at which point we’ll have family arriving to spend the week of Christmas with us. I’m pretty excited about it – I’ll get to try out my cooking on more people! More “test subjects” are always welcome! And who knows, maybe I’ll get to try out some foods I normally wouldn’t get to cook if it were just an old friend of mine and I. It sound be fun!
More great chicken recipes
Creamy Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake
Ingredients
- 8 ounce penne pasta
- 4 tablespoon salted butter
- 2 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 cup milk
- 3 cup chicken, shredded or chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme, ground
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano, dried
- 1 cup mozzarella, grated
Instructions
- Cook the noodles per package instructions, reducing cook time by 2 minutes so noodles are slightly undercooked. Drain and pour the pasta into a 9x13 baking dish
, spreading out into an even layer. Set dish aside. - Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a large saucepan
, melt butter over medium heat. - Pour cream and milk into the saucepan and bring to a boil.
- Add Parmesan cheese to milk, whisking constantly until melted.
- Add chicken broth and seasonings,
w hisking until combined. Continue to cook for 5 minutes. Sauce will be very thin. - Toss chicken in the sauce until completely covered, then pour over the pasta in the baking dish.
- Cover noodles & chicken in mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top.
- Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and the tops of the bread crumbs have browned. For an extra crispy top, set oven to broil and cook for another 1-2 minutes.
Nutrition
I do my best to provide nutrition information, but please keep in mind that I'm not a certified nutritionist. Any nutritional information discussed or disclosed in this post should only be seen as my best amateur estimates of the correct values.
