Cowboy Butter Pasta: Diet-Friendly

At about 350 calories a serving, this recipe is easy to make into larger meal-prep batches for lunches for the week. Enjoy!

Cowboy Butter Pasta: Diet-Friendly

Ingredients: (makes 3 servings)

• 6 boneless skinless chicken tenderloins
• 1.5 cups COOKED pasta (Barilla protein pasta)
• 1 TBS butter
• ½ tsp cowboy butter seasoning
• ½ tsp paprika
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 1 cup milk
• 2 TBS parmesan
• 3 TBS light cream cheese, room temperature and cut into pieces
• ¼ cup shredded cheese of choice

Directions:

• Prepare chicken: Season with seasoning salt, pepper, garlic, paprika. Then air fry 400 degrees for 10 min., flipping the pieces halfway through. Let them rest a couple minutes before slicing or chopping into small pieces.
• In a skillet on medium heat, melt butter then add garlic and seasonings and stir until fragrant. Add milk and whisk until combined. Simmer for a couple of minutes to heat and thicken. Remove from heat before adding cheeses and cream cheese. Whisk until smooth.
• Do not let your cheeses boil, or they can split and become grainy.
• It is important that your cream cheese is room temperature and cut into pieces so it will melt faster in the sauce once removed from the heat.

Assemble bowl/tupperware in this order:

• 1/2 cup cooked pasta
• veggies of choice, to taste (see below)
• divide sauce evenly amongst 3 bowls
• 2 chicken tenderloins, sliced
• optional drizzle hot honey

*If eating leftover, store in air tight containers and microwave to reheat before eating.*

Prepare green veggie of choice, if using (I used air-fried zucchini in the picture).

Directions:

Thinly slice one zucchini (makes approximately 3 servings, depending on size). Toss with your desired amounts of garlic salt, pepper, powdered Parmesan cheese, and bread crumbs. Air-fry for about 12 minutes or until crispy at 400 degrees, tossing the pieces halfway through cooking.

Marsha's Notes:

When making this, I took boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cut them into tender-sized portions because it was cheaper and I didn't have to remove the tendon bit at the end of each chicken tender. 

Doubling this recipe, I was able to use 1/2 a box of protein pasta. If making a single recipe, you would need to measure out 1/4 of the box.

Since cream cheese blocks are measured in ounces instead of tablespoons, the 3 Tbl of light cream cheese called for in this recipe is 1 1/2 ounces. Since I was doubling it, that meant that I needed 3 ounces of cream cheese (or 6 Tbl). You can use the ounce-ruler printed on most cream cheese packaging to figure out how much of the block to cut off, or you can figure that 4 oz is half a block and go from there.

Because there is not a lot of heavy cream or cheese in this recipe, the sauce is rather thin in consistency, but that is probably to be expected. Each serving seemed to get about 1/2 cup of sauce, but that could vary depending on how long you simmer and reduce your sauce.