I’ve been craving wicked amounts of comfort food lately, like this Chicken Tetrazzini. Despite this urge for comfort food, I’ve managed to find ways to get that comforting sort of food without necessarily breaking the diet bank to do it. It’s comforting to step on the scale in the morning and see it a good pound down from the previous day, and I attribute that to two things:
- Eating cleaner and healthier (and tracking things I eat religiously), and
- Hopping back into exercise
So lately, we’ve had stuff like chicken tetrazzini to make me feel like I’m getting that comfort food that I want, and I have cookbooks that help me make these recipes healthier.
The chicken tetrazzini recipe I grew up with uses not only full-fat condensed soups, it also uses a large amount of butter, sour cream, and cream cheese. All of those are a recipe for diet disaster. But this recipe is super easy, and it has the same taste as that tetrazzini that my family makes without all of the fat and calories that come with it. It’s just as filling, too.
It’s modified from a recipe I found in a cookbook. It’s listed in the book as “turkey tetrazzini casserole,” and while it looks good on its own, I modified it a bit:
- More pasta
- Chicken instead of turkey
- Unsweetened flax milk instead of 1%
- Parmesan cheese instead of Romano
- No butter
Want to know how to make this recipe? Of course, you do.
Easy and Healthy Chicken Tetrazzini
Ingredients
1 pound spaghetti
1 tablespoon Canola oil
1 pound ground chicken (minced chicken) - chicken breasts
1 pinch salt - to taste
1 pinch ground black pepper - to taste- 2 cans condensed cream of mushroom soup - reduced-fat
1 cup milk - I used unsweetened flax milk
⅓ cup Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon cumin- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ cup breadcrumbs - dried
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 9×13 baking dish with nonstick spray.
- Cook spaghetti according to package directions, then drain and set aside.
- While spaghetti is cooking, add oil to a medium-sized skillet. Turn the burner to medium-high heat and heat oil until it starts to shimmer, then add chicken to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Cook chicken, stirring periodically, until chicken is no longer pink.
- In a large bowl, add the soup, milk, cheese, spices, cooked chicken, and spaghetti. Stir thoroughly to combine. Pour the mixture into your prepared baking dish, then top with the bread crumbs.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the top is golden. Serve hot. Enjoy!
