Goat Cheese Chicken Penne
Goat Cheese Chicken Penne is creamy, flavorful, and will leave you feeling completely satisfied!
I’m a big fan of all kinds of cheese but one that I’ve grown really fond of in the last year is goat cheese. As a kid, I had this idea in my mind that goat cheese was weird and disgusting because it came from a goat instead of a cow. Boy was I missing out! It has the most amazing texture that is crumbly yet creamy and has a delicious distinct flavor. If you want to simply take your salads up a notch, just add some goat cheese. Even with a vinaigrette dressing, it will become a yummy creamy mess. You can also add it to your pasta with some reserved cooking water and your noodles will instantly become robed in a creamy sauce.
I could eat a bowl of just noodles and goat cheese but to make it a balanced one-dish meal I mixed it with some sauteed mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh spinach, and chicken. The truth is, the spinach was a last-minute idea to use up the large Costco container of it that was wilting way faster than I could eat. I was a little ambitious in thinking I could eat a monster size salad every day for lunch for a week.
Speaking of Costco, I recommend buying your goat cheese there. It’s like $10 bucks for 20 ounces whereas at the store it’s $7 for just 5 ounces. You can even freeze it! This very dish was actually made with goat cheese I had previously frozen and it turned out great!
Do you like goat cheese? What do you eat it on or with?
Goat Cheese Chicken Penne
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons olive oil divided
- 1 pound chicken cut into 1 inch pieces
- 3 tablespoons flour
- ¼ teaspoon garlic salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 pound penne pasta
- 6 ounces 3/4 cup goat cheese, crumbled
- 8 ounce container mushrooms, sliced
- ½ cup sun dried tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic
- 6 ounces fresh baby spinach
- Fresh basil for garnish
- Parmesan cheese for garnish
Instructions
- Cook pasta according to package. Reserve 2 cups starchy pasta water before draining.
- Meanwhile, toss chicken pieces in flour, garlic salt, and pepper.
- Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and add chicken. Cook and stir 5-6 minutes until done. Remove from pan and cover.
- Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in the pan over medium heat and add the mushrooms, tomatoes, and garlic. Cook and stir for 4-5 minutes until mushrooms are tender. Add the chicken back as well as the spinach and cook 1-2 minutes until the spinach is almost wilted. Remove pan from heat.
- Once the pasta is cooked and drained, place it back in the pot along with the goat cheese and 1 cup reserved starchy pasta water. Toss until the cheese melts and forms a creamy sauce (add the remaining reserved water if you want the sauce to be thinner). Mix in the chicken and vegetables and serve topped with fresh basil and Parmesan cheese.
Nutrition
Very good base recipe, but I highly recommend adding more spices. I add paprika, garlic, and mushroom seasoning to the flour in addition to the salt and pepper, and salt and pepper to the mushrooms. I also highly recommend adding salt to the pasta water if you don’t normally do so to cut sodium. This recipe needs the salt in the water.
Thanks for this! I was trying to figure out what to do with the second half of my Costco goat cheese. We had rigatoni, chicken, and dried tomatoes. It was delicious, and my family enjoyed it very much, even though I used a few shortcuts.
Don’t you just love when everything falls into place like that!
You had me at goat cheese. Just stumbled this on Stumble Upon, thanks for sharing.