I have a great recipe for you: Chicken Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach in a Creamy Cauliflower Alfredo Sauce. It's a healthier version of a regular fettuccine alfredo: instead of the usual alfredo cream sauce this pasta is coated with creamy, silky, healthy, low-calorie, and low-fat cauliflower sauce - all made with healthy and natural ingredients!
I made this dish for dinner one night, and my husband could not even tell that there was cauliflower in the sauce. He thought the dish was very flavorful - that's why you couldn't even tell there is cauliflower - all you can taste is lot of great flavors, such as sun-dried tomatoes and basil, wonderfully blended together in some sort of delicious creamy sauce.
But we know it's not just "some sort of delicious creamy sauce" - it's healthy, low fat, low calorie, gluten free, made-completely-from-scratch creamy cauliflower alfredo sauce!
What's even better, you can make this creamy cauliflower alfredo sauce a day or two in advance, because it refrigerates really well and reheats beautifully too.
Enjoy!
Chicken Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach in a Creamy Cauliflower Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil , reserved from the jar of sun-dried tomatoes
- 3 garlic cloves , minced
- 4 oz sun-dried tomatoes in oil from the jar
- 1 lb chicken breast , thinly sliced
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1.5 teaspoon paprika divided
- 3-4 cups spinach fresh
- 1 cup cauliflower alfredo sauce
- 1 cup reserved cooked pasta water
- 1 tablespoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 8 oz fettuccine pasta (for gluten free, use gluten free brown rice pasta)
Instructions
- Drain sun-dried tomatoes from oil and chop them into smaller bits.
- In a large pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil (reserved from the sun-dried tomatoes jar) on medium-high heat and saute garlic, chopped sun-dried tomatoes (drained from oil), and thinly sliced chicken breast (lightly covered in about ½ teaspoon of paprika, for color) for 2-3 minutes until chicken is cooked through, turning it over a couple of times. Sprinkle the salt over the chicken and more paprika while cooking.
- Remove from heat. Immediately add fresh spinach, cover the skillet with the lid, and let everything rest off heat, until spinach wilts.
- Cook pasta according to package instructions. Reserve some cooked pasta water - at least 1 cup (even though you will likely not use it all). Drain and rinse the pasta with cold water (to stop cooking).
- Add 1 cup cauliflower sauce and ¼ cup reserved cooked pasta water to the chicken and sun-dried tomatoes. Add 1 tablespoon basil, 1 teaspoon paprika, and ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper. Mix with the sauce and add more salt and crushed red pepper if needed.
- Add cooked pasta to the skillet with the creamy sauce, and stir to combine.
- At this point, you might have to add more reserved cooked pasta water because the creamy sauce will be too thick (do not add all water at once - you might need just a small mount).
- Again, taste and season the pasta with more basil and salt, if needed. Add more paprika if you want your sauce to have a nice red-ish color.
- Make sure to salt the dish just enough to bring out of the flavors of basil and sun-dried tomatoes.
Nutrition Disclaimer:
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed. It should not be used as a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
It looks like some chopped green onion in this dish?
Wendy, yes, I topped this pasta with chopped green onion - so delicious! 🙂
I made this last Friday for family, my cousin's husband recently had surgery to repair an aneurysm so he is looking for alternative ways to prepare meals and I felt this would fill that requirement. O M G. They called this "five star". It looked exactly like your photo in this link and everyone enjoyed it very much. We paired it up with a Caesar salad and some artisan bread. Just delicious! Thanks, I have never used cauliflower for anything and am personally not that fond of it myself but when I tasted that Cauliflower Sauce I know I will be able to use it for many flavorful meals to come.
Made this for dinner tonight, I was very skeptical of how the sauce would taste, I should not have been. This was one of the best meals I have made in a long time and that sauce was to die for. Thanks for a wonderful recipe.
Do you have nutritional information?
I put this recipe into MyFitnessPal for 6 servings and got these results:
Nutrition Facts
Servings 6.0
Amount Per Serving
calories 388
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 9 g 13 %
Saturated Fat 2 g 11 %
Monounsaturated Fat 4 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 1 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 50 mg 17 %
Sodium 651 mg 27 %
Potassium 715 mg 20 %
Total Carbohydrate 47 g 16 %
Dietary Fiber 8 g 30 %
Sugars 11 g
Protein 32 g 64 %
Vitamin A 56 %
Vitamin C 131 %
Calcium 15 %
Iron 29 %
This looks so delicious!
Of wow, that would keep me happy all week --- what a perfect mid winter comfort dish!
I love Fettuccine Alfredo, but if I eat too much, there's too much of me. 🙁 So I love the idea of subbing cauliflower sauce. Very creative -- thanks.