If You Have Chicken And Alfredo Sauce, Make A Filling Pasta Bake In Under An Hour

Putting a healthy homemade dinner on the table every night is the sort of Sisyphean task that can drive even dedicated cooks up a wall. But amidst the struggle to find sufficiently simple and delicious recipes to please the whole family, gems occasionally appear. This one-pan chicken Alfredo bake is just such a dish, a creamy, cheesy crowd-pleaser that makes it from fridge to table in less than an hour.

This recipe is a scratch-made casserole featuring tender penne pasta, cubed or shredded chicken, and a few handfuls of baby spinach tucked under browned cheese and swimming in a rich, creamy sauce. Like any recipe with a homemade sauce, it has quite a few steps. However, it requires just 15 minutes of prep and 34 of cooking — 20-24 of which are its baking time — making it well-suited to busy nights. Moreover, there are plenty of tricks to save time.

The simplest way to shave minutes off the weeknight dinner schedule is to prep a meal ahead of time, and this casserole is a perfect fit for that style of cooking. Everything can be assembled ahead, and all it needs is a trip from fridge to oven before dinner is served. Another useful time-saving trick is to outsource some of the cooking. This pasta bake is a delicious way to use up leftover rotisserie chicken, and you can trim a further few minutes off the bill by switching up the sauce for a good jar of store-bought Alfredo sauce as well.

If you're already weighing time-saving changes to the recipe, you might as well consider how you can put your own spin on it. A premade sauce is easy, and adding fresh herbs to a jarred Alfredo can vastly improve the flavor. Or you can simply swap in an easy Alfredo sauce recipe.

Another quick and easy improvement to this dish could be to up the nutritional content with a few more servings of vegetables. The original recipe has three cups of baby spinach, but Alfredo sauce can upgrade all sorts of vegetables. If spinach isn't a favorite, or you just happen to have something else on hand, it might be worth adding. Mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower would all work beautifully. However, you'll want to look out for veggies with too much water for casseroles, as they can throw off the texture. Anything pre-cooked shouldn't be a problem, though.

Aside from the noodles — which could be swapped for a similarly bake-ready shape such as ziti — the only piece left is the protein. Fortunately, this pasta bake is quite versatile. Alfredo works just as well with ground beef as it does chicken, making it an excellent alternative. The same goes for crumbled Italian sausage and shrimp — really there isn't much that doesn't go well with pasta and creamy, cheesy sauce. Whether you choose to make this one-pan chicken Alfredo bake by the book or by the seat of your pants, it'll turn out delicious.