Creamy Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake

If you’ve been reading this blog awhile, unlike many of you who create dishes, you know I'm pretty well just a recipe follower with the occasional light recipe adaptation until this meal.  Dennis recently posted the recipe for Creamy Chicken Alfredo Lasagna on his “Ask Chef Dennis” blog and the ingredients appealed to me.  We had ricotta, spinach, and chicken that all needed to be used but I didn’t have enough noodles to make lasagna and wasn’t willing to make a store trip so I used on hand ingredients and heavily adapted his recipe.  As it turned out, we had 24 oz of ricotta, only half a bag of spinach (I thought we had 1½), and no mushrooms so the recipe below was born.  You can get the original recipe and pics by clicking on the above link.

Creamy Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake 

Ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts

S&P

Italian Seasoning

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup sweet onion chopped

6 ounces button mushrooms cleaned and sliced – optional

2 teaspoon garlic finely minced

5 ounces fresh baby spinach (10 would have been better)

2 cups heavy cream

1 cups grated Romano cheese or Parmesan

24 ounces ricotta cheese part skim or whole milk

¼ teaspoons black pepper

1½ teaspoons table salt

3 cups chopped baked chicken

12 oz bowtie pasta

Shredded mozzarella cheese (half a small bag of shredded)

Sliced American cheese (only white cheese we had on hand)

Instructions:

Cut the breasts into four cutlets then jaccard.

Season with S&P and a little Italian Seasoning and bake at 300F to an internal temp of 150F then let it cool slowly. (three minutes at 150F will kill the bacteria as will the later baking)

Cook the pasta to very al dente and drain.

Add the heavy cream, ricotta cheese, grated Romano cheese, salt, and black pepper to a large bowl and stir until well combined. Set aside until needed.

Place a large skillet over medium heat with the butter and olive oil.

When the pan is hot, add the onions and mushrooms to the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes.

Add the garlic and spinach to the pan and cook until liquid evaporates.

Add the cheese mixture to the pan. Stir to combine and cook until the mixture is warm. Then remove from the heat.

Add the pasta to a large bowl then add the chicken and sauce, mix well

Add the mixture to a prepared dish and top with cheese slices - they melted a little on the warm mixture.

Cover with foil and place on the center rack of the 350F preheated oven, and bake until bubbly (I pulled at 170F internal temp).

We served it with a Cindy salad and this is mine.

The Verdict:

While I’m sure making the lasagna or using all of Dennis’ ingredients would have been great, we all thought this was delicious and I’m well pleased with being able to semi-make up the recipe.  I made it in the morning so the pasta had plenty of time to absorb the sauce and get to the perfect level of done.  I would make it again and it could be made as a stove-top dish but I wanted it to cook while we played cards.  It is obviously very similar to our pasta dish for Easter dinner so I'm pretty well fixed for alfredo pasta dishes for awhile.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/10/25 meal date