Roasted Garlic Chicken and Broccoli Pasta is a quick and easy family favorite a delicious weeknight dinner. Tender chicken and broccoli is mixed with corkscrew pasta in a cheesy sauce with Parmesan and roasted garlic to make a weeknight winner.
When we moved in to our new house nearly 2 years ago, we knew we had found something special in the overgrown mini-farm that we had purchased. At that time we had so many other things going on, that we truly didn’t have a chance to thoroughly inspect everything that had come with the house.
So, for the past several months, every trip around our new property is like a treasure hunt. In the 4 acres and 6 outbuildings that we inherited, we have come upon feeders, boards, buckets, fence posts, newspapers, wire tomato cages, and unidentifiable parts to unknown machines. It’s really something.
The most amazing thing is that for all of the little impromptu projects we have come up with, the house seems to provide for our last-minute whim. We have found more than enough bricks to make a fire pit, a stash of lattice and chicken wire to fix-up the chicken coop, and an old tire for a swing. I think our favorite part, though, might be all of the nails. In every shed and outbuilding (and there are several) the walls are lined with nails, horseshoes and makeshift shelves to hold and hang anything your heart could desire. They are all so perfectly positioned that you can stumble into any building and blindly scrape your tools against the wall only to find a nail there to hold your shovel.
In the same spirit as our generous new home, we try to keep our pantry just as well stocked as the other storage places on our land. We keep an array of pastas and grains, meats and cheeses, and a rotating selection of veggies available to be able to throw together several dinners without a trip to the store. Our pantry provides as well as our home.
This Roasted Garlic Chicken and Broccoli Pasta is a great impromptu meal. Feel free to change around the veggies or the cheeses or the pasta to fit what’s on your shelves.
Ingredients
- 8 oz . large elbow pasta
- 3 cups fresh broccoli chopped into small florets
- 3 slices bacon finely chopped
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast sliced into 1 ½ inch pieces
- ¼ cup chopped roasted garlic see note
- 2 Tablespoons butter divided
- 1 ½ Tablespoons flour
- 1 cup milk
- ½ cup evaporated milk
- 3 Tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta according to the package instructions, adding the broccoli about halfway through. When finished, drain the pasta and broccoli, reserving ½ cup of the cooking liquid, and set aside. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, brown the bacon until crisp, then remove to paper towels to drain, reserving the fat in the pan. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan and cook the chicken until no longer pink in the middle, 7-8 minutes. Remove from the pan. Add the remaining butter to the pan along with the flour and garlic. Cook the flour for 30 seconds before whisking in the milks. Cook the sauce until it becomes thickened, then lower the heat and stir in the parmesan, salt and pepper. Return the pasta, chicken and bacon to the pan and stir everything to coat adding reserved liquid if the sauce needs thinning out. Serve immediately.
[…] of spring veggies (it’s not often that we actually get a spring in the South). Peas and greens and broccoli are common at the table these days. The peas and the greens are my favorite, I think. Tender and […]