Chicken Carbonara Pasta

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Chicken Carbonara Pasta is an easy comfort food recipe the whole family will love! Feel free to use leftover grilled chicken.

It’s time for Freaky Friday again! In case you’ve missed my other Freaky Friday posts, a group of us each make a recipe from the blog assigned to us, and we keep it a secret until we actually go live. I always have fun with it because it gives me the chance to try new recipes that I might not otherwise think to try, and it’s also a fun way for me to get to know my online friends better. This time around I was really excited because the name I drew was my friend Brandi, from Aunt Bee’s recipes.

If you like comfort food and easy recipes, you are definitely going to want to check out Aunt Bee’s Recipes! I cook a lot of chicken and pasta (we’re runners here!), so that’s what I went looking for when I was choosing my recipe. I’m pretty familiar with Brandi’s blog because I have pinned MANY of her recipes. I let my husband pick the recipe because I was having such a hard time choosing. I think I had at least six tabs open at one point. He picked well, because the entire family gave it a thumbs up.

 

CHICKEN CARBONARA PASTA

I love it when I score a home run with dinner, and that is exactly what happened here. I don’t have any picky eaters fortunately, but everyone has their preferences as to what they like the best. And of course they usually aren’t the same dishes. With this Chicken Carbonara Pasta though, it was unanimous…everyone really liked this dish.

I usually can’t resist making a change or two to whatever recipe I’m making for our Freaky Friday blog swap. But in this case, I didn’t tinker with it too much. I added more peas in my version, and quite honestly, I think next time I make it, I’m going to up it another half a cup. I also used a different marinade for my chicken. But that was it for changes. It’s a simple recipe, but it really delivers on taste!

Plus we’re always on the go here, so I was also thrilled at how easy it was to make.

Definitely check out Brandi’s original Chicken Carbonara recipe as well!

You can use leftover grilled chicken, but in case you don’t have any, I shared a marinade I like to use. I don’t have it on my blog, so I just shared the recipe with you here. I marinate my chicken for about 8 hours, and then we grill it.

Get started on the Pasta Carbonara part of the recipe by boiling the water for the pasta while you’re cooking the bacon. Drain the bacon on paper towels and crumble. Set the bacon crumbles aside for now.

While the bacon is cooking, you can chop the onion and garlic.

Remove all but about 2 tablespoons of bacon grease, and sauté your onions until they turn translucent, about 3 or 4 minutes. Then add the garlic, and cook for another minute, stirring constantly to make sure the garlic doesn’t burn.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until al dente, according to package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, whisk together the eggs, Parmesan cheese, heavy cream, and salt and pepper until smooth.

Before you drain the pasta, reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Then drain your pasta and put it back in the hot pot. While the pasta is still  hot, add half the egg mixture, stirring the pasta while doing so. The sauce should give the pasta a good coating. After adding half of the sauce, add the frozen peas, bacon, and sauteed onion and garlic. Finish adding the sauce, stirring until it’s all combined. Then add the reserved 1/2 cup of the pasta water to help thin out the consistency of the sauce. Toss with grilled chicken and enjoy!

So easy!

 

Time to eat!

For the rest of the Freaky Friday recipes:

An Affair from the Heart – Easy Homemade Refried Beans

Take Two Tapas – Pineapple Hummus with Smoked Paprika

LeMoine Family Kitchen – Sausage Hash Brown Nests

Full Belly Sisters – Blueberry Dutchbaby

Who Needs a Cape? – French Onion Salisbury Steak

Plattertalk – Lemon Loaf Cake

Hostess at Heart – Teriyaki Chicken Bowl

Life Currents – Blue Cheese, Fig, and Caramelized Onion Palmiers

Lisa’s Dinnertime Dish – Baked Lemon Glazed Donuts

Bowl Me Over – Southwest Chicken Salad Bowl

Aunt Bee’s Recipes – Summer Corn Salsa

A Kitchen Hoors Adventures – Bourbon Banana Bread

Seduction in the Kitchen – Honey Roasted Strawberry Cheesecake Smoothie