Chicken Pesto Pasta
Pan-fried chicken breast tossed through pasta with basil pesto, cherry tomatoes, spinach and parmesan — a fast, high-protein weeknight bowl.
Per serving, as written.
A fast, crowd-pleasing pasta that stays genuinely high-protein thanks to a generous amount of chicken breast — the pesto and parmesan bring the flavour without needing a heavy cream sauce.
Pasta is a hard dish to lighten, because the pasta is where most of the calories are. The trick here is not to take it away but to stretch it: swap some of it for spiralized courgette and the bowl stays the same size while the calories and carbs come down. You still get pasta, just less of it per forkful. After that, the pesto oil and the parmesan are the next things worth easing off.
Ingredients
For the pasta
- 320 g penne pasta
For the sauce
- 600 g chicken breast, cut into strips
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 4 tbsp basil pesto
- 200 g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 150 g spinach
- 40 g parmesan, grated
- salt and pepper
Method
- Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until al dente, then drain, reserving a splash of the cooking water.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large pan and cook the chicken strips over medium-high heat until golden and cooked through. Season.
- Add the cherry tomatoes to the pan and cook for a minute until they begin to soften.
- Return the drained pasta to the pan with the spinach, pesto and a splash of the reserved water, and toss until the spinach has wilted down into the sauce — it will look like far too much before it collapses.
- Stir through the parmesan, check the seasoning and serve.
Free to start · no credit card required.