Chicken Spaghetti

I tried another of Pioneer Woman’s recipes last night.  Many of the recipes in her book are actually for appetizers, desserts, or side dishes, and I think I’m about to run out of the entrees.  (Well, except for the big stuff like brisket and pot roast, both of which kind of scare me.)  Last night I made chicken spaghetti.  At first glance, it appeared to be very similar to a chicken tetrazzini dish my mom makes that I really like — and it did turn out pretty similar.  This recipe had a few more vegetables and thus a little more color than my mom’s.  I’ll have to make my mom’s sometime soon to compare.

I did a few things differently that the recipe said.  First of all, I didn’t use a fryer chicken.  I just used some chicken tenderloins that I cut up into pieces and cooked in a skillet.  This probably made the chicken more dry than it would have been if I’d boiled a fryer chicken like the original recipe says, but I didn’t mind.  It tasted fine, and this was quicker. And less messy.

I also used a red onion.  Because I didn’t have a white onion.  It’s more potent, but hey, I like onions!  Also:  looks at my awesome dicing skills!  Jose and I share the cooking duties, but he likes to be the one standing over the stove and he dislikes chopping.  I, on the other hand, kind of like chopping!  So I have had lots of practice with my “knife skills” lately.  Look at me using cooking terminology I learned from the Food Network…haha!

While I was chopping, Jose finished the chicken and cooked a bunch of spaghetti.  You’re supposed to cook the spaghetti in the water/broth leftover from cooking the chicken, but like I said, I didn’t cook the chicken that way.  So I just added a little bit of store-bought chicken broth to the water and cooked it in that.  Then you mix everything together — veggies, spaghetti, cheese, and a bunch of cream of mushroom soup.  (The red stuff is pimiento pepper.)  After that you add chicken and some of the leftover water/broth.  Again, I just used store-bought chicken broth.  I may have actually used a bit too much.  It was a little more soupy than it probably should have been.

Add black pepper, seasoned salt, and cayenne pepper till it tastes good, then pour the whole sloppy mess into a baking dish. And it really does look like a sloppy mess. Like I said, I should have probably used a little less broth.  But it was a tasty sloppy mess.

After 35 minutes in the oven, it was bubbly and done!  I mis-read the recipe and added the cheese on top after it was done, instead of before I put it in the oven.  Oh well!  Cheese is cheese, and it was hot enough coming out that it mostly melted.

It was quite tasty, and the cayenne pepper added some kick.  This is one of those dishes that just feels like comfort food to me.  Jose loved it too, so it was a win all around!  It does make a LOT of chicken spaghetti.  Most of Pioneer Woman’s recipes make a huge amount of food — great for her family of 6, but way too much for our little family of 2.  But on the plus side, I’ve got lunch for another 1-2 days.