Chicken Pesto Penne With Bacon & Feta
Try this Chicken Pesto Penne With Bacon & Feta recipe, or contribute your own.
Try this Chicken Pesto Penne With Bacon & Feta recipe, or contribute your own.
- Carbohydrate 42.14535 g
- Cholesterol 81.9216666666667 mg
- Fat 9.96558333369517 g
- Fiber 0.330000007152557 g
- Protein 9.31808333333333 g
- Saturated Fat 4.9399683333833 g
- Serving Size 1 1 people (136g)
- Sodium 38.9035416666739 mg
- Sugar 41.8153499928474 g
- Trans Fat 0.993318750009798 g
- Calories 295 calories
Step-by-step
- Cook penne according to packet instructions. Drain and set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat.
- Add chicken & bacon and cook until chicken is browned.
- Add sun-dried tomato, basil pesto & baby spinach and cook a further 2 minutes or so until spinach is wilted. Stir to fully combine.
- Add thickened cream and cook a further 1-2 minutes to heat through.
- Add penne and toss to mix through and coat with the pesto sauce.
- Remove from heat, sprinkle with feta and serve.
Sun-dried tomatoes drive the flavor profile of this pasta dish, offering a concentrated hit of glutamates that cuts through the richness of the dairy. When buying these tomatoes, select oil-packed jars rather than dry-packed varieties because the oil retains more volatile aromatics and helps disperse the flavor evenly throughout the sauce. Chopping them into uniform pieces ensures they distribute properly rather than clumping in a single bite.
Timing dictates the success of this preparation, specifically coordinating the boiling of the penne with the browning of the chicken and bacon in a large skillet. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until it reaches an al dente texture, meaning it should offer slight resistance when bitten, which prevents it from turning mushy when tossed in the hot pan. Draining the pasta properly stops carryover cooking and keeps excess water from diluting the pesto cream sauce.
Heat control remains crucial once the chicken and bacon enter the medium-high frying pan, as the meat must brown without the garlic or herbs in the pesto burning later. Rendering the bacon fat slowly before adding the chicken creates an ideal frying medium that renders extra oil unnecessary. Introduce the spinach and pesto only after the proteins are fully cooked through, allowing the residual heat to wilt the greens within two minutes while preserving the vibrant green color of the basil.
Dairy components like thickened cream and crumbled feta react differently to heat and require careful staging. Stir the cream in during the final two minutes just to heat through, preventing separation or curdling that happens when high-fat dairy boils too long. For dietary adjustments, replace the dairy cream with unsweetened coconut milk at a one-to-one ratio and swap the feta for toasted pine nuts.
