A healthy veggie-packed garlic parmesan pasta with chicken and roasted bell peppers. Flavorful and easy to make for dinner! I can hardly believe it’s already February. But it’s also exciting because then I’ll no longer have to deal with blizzards that do this to my car. I’m not kidding I literally had to shovel snow with my scraper because hey, who keeps a shovel in their car? Not me. I figured before the snow melts, I’d bring you some warm comforting dishes that make your heart feel full (but not your bellies).
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In an effort to stop going out to eat so much with Tony, I whipped up this easy and delicious pasta with all the ingredients in the I could find in the fridge. We’ve been doing date nights in more often lately and it’s been incredibly fun to come up with meals that are both healthy, creative, delicious and satisfying.
Do you ever do date nights in? Grab a bottle of wine and let’s get cooking!
It’s fairly easy to throw this meal together, especially when you take the liberty of cleaning out all the veggies from the fridge. Know that you can really put vegetable into this pasta and it would be exceptionally tasty. I think broccoli, corn and perhaps a little asparagus would be delicious. But hey, totally up to your imagination on what you can add!
Another great thing about this pasta is that you can make it gluten free by using gluten free pasta. They sell a couple great ones at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. I like a quinoa brown rice pasta, but any kind of GF pasta should be fine.
To make it vegetarian: Leave out the chicken and use vegetarian broth. Still lovely!
Best yet? This is a meal all on its own. Plenty of veggies and protein. Although I will admit that we love serving it with garlic bread; I can’t get over how delicious Tony’s recipe is. Maybe I’ll get him to share it someday.
Hope you love this meal! If you make it or any other recipe, be sure to tag #ambitiosukitchen on Instagram so I can see your creations. xo!
More healthy weeknight dinner recipes to try:
Roasted Veggie Mediterranean Pasta with Goat Cheese
Mama’s Puerto Rican Chicken & Rice (Arroz con Pollo)
Stovetop Southwest Tuna Mac and Cheese
30-minute Spicy Thai Peanut Chicken & Sweet Potato Noodle Stir Fry
Thai Peanut Chicken, Edamame & Quinoa Stir-Fry
Ambitious Kitchen
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125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Garlic Parmesan Pasta with Chicken & Roasted Bell Peppers
Ingredients
- 8 ounces uncooked rotini (whole grain preferred or gluten free if desired)
- 2 large carrots, peeled sliced
- 1 zucchini, chopped
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 orange bell pepper
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 4 tablespoons chicken broth, plus more if necessary
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- salt and pepper
- 1 pound chicken breasts, organic if available
Instructions
- Preheat broiler to high. Cut bell peppers in half and place on foil-lined baking sheet, skin sides up. Broil for 8-10 minutes or until blackened.
- Once blackened, remove from oven and transfer to a plastic ziploc bag. This will help the skin sweat so that you are able to peel it off easily. Keep in bag 10 minutes, then peel and slice into strips; set aside.
- In a medium bowl, mix together two tablespoons of olive oil, chicken broth, garlic, basil, parmesan cheese, basil and oregano; set aside. Next, generously season chicken with salt and pepper and set aside.
- While peppers are cooking and/or sweating, you can cook the pasta according to package directions.
- In a large skillet, drizzle a teaspoon of olive oil and add in carrots and zucchini. Saute while pasta cooks. If carrots and zucchini absorb all oil add in a few tablespoons of chicken broth.
- Next, drain pasta, transfer back to skillet and turn heat to low; stir in the Parmesan cheese mixture.
- Add in sliced roasted bell peppers. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep pasta over low heat while you cook the chicken.
- Heat a separate skillet over medium-high heat and drizzle two teaspoons of olive oil in. Add in chicken and cook for 6-8 minutes on each side or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear.
- Slice chicken and then add to pasta. Sprinkle with a bit more parmesan cheese. Serves 6, about 1 1/2 cups each.
This has become a weekly recipe in our household. It is great for leftovers. I find if you add a little broth and parmesan when re-heating it tastes just as good as the day you made it.
Delicious recipe! Next time, I might try this with sliced pre-cooked chicken sausage – nothing like peppers and sausage 🙂 Overall very yummy!
Perfect! Try this recipe with sausage, too 🙂
This tasted great but I can’t help thinking it was overly complicated for what in the end is a relatively simple primavera-like pasta. Lots of moving parts, oven and 3 burners going and I dirtied almost all my pots/skillets/cutting boards. For this reason I probably wouldn’t make again.
I do like the flavor that the roasted red peppers bring, but absolutely feel free to condense to fewer skillets if you’d like. Glad you liked the taste!
Even the kiddos loved it! Easy and delicious!!!!
Amazing! So happy to hear that 🙂
pasta is the best!!!
Super beginner question- what would you do for meal prep? Would you make the chicken and then freeze it?
For meal prep I would make the full recipe and then divide it into meal prep container to keep in the fridge 🙂 I wouldn’t recommend freezing the pasta because it will get pretty mushy when you reheat it.
Hi Monique, thought I ought to leave a message – since finding this recipe a couple of months ago, my boyfriend and I have this for dinner at least once a week and it is our absolute favourite! So easy to throw together and a great way to use up vegetables left in the fridge.
Hi Charlotte! Amazing – so happy to hear that. Love this for a quick, easy dinner!
I don’t usually comment on anything but this recipe is SO DELICIOUS. Seriously amazing. I had to substitute kite hill almond milk cream “cheese” for the Parmesan since we’re lactose intolerant, but it turned out amazing. Thank you!
So glad you liked this one! Perfect weeknight dinner 🙂
Made this tonight, and it’s very tasty!! The chicken breasts I had were huge, so I doubled the pasta and added a zucchini. I eyeballed an increase to the dressing but should’ve double that too probably but it was still very good. Now I have tons of leftovers! Thanks!
Delicious! I’m so glad you enjoyed!
Absolutely the best pasta dish I’ve ever made!!! I swapped the chicken breast for turkey breast just because it’s what I had on hand. Beautiful meal!!! Thank you!!
This was absolutely delicious!
I do a low carb diet and ommitted the pasta & added sautéed mushrooms at the end!
Just made this recipe tonight and let me tell you — man is it good! I’d never heard of letting peppers “sweat” before, but they were delicious! My husband commented, “I love these sweaty peppers!” Haha. Thanks for posting this great recipe.
This looks fantastic! I love how bright and cheery this is!
This looks delicious. And your car looks a lot like my car. We are getting killed here this winter!
Ooh Monique! I’ve GOT to try this sometime soon! This looks so fresh and delicious! And anything garlic + parmesan is wonderful!
Looks delicious! Just wondering, if this is supposed to be for 5 people, why is the nutritional value for 1/6th of the recipe?
It is updated — can you try refreshing? I meant to write serves 6.
Looks so delicious and great photos too!
The photos on this post are exceptionally gorgeous Monique!!!!! Plus it sounds delicious too! We love doing date nights in 🙂 we will definitely try this next!
For someone who doesn’t eat chicken, this recipe has my mouth watering.