Greek Yogurt Alfredo

Last week this Pin was being repinned like crazy by all of my friends:

 Greek Yogurt Alfredo 

Even though I am not the biggest Alfredo fan I went ahead and pinned if for three reasons:

1) Konrad loves Alfredo.  For the first five years we were dating he ordered grilled chicken Alfredo at every Italian restaurant we went to.  He has branched out and tried new things since then, but I know it is still one of his favorites.

2) Maddox loves broccoli.  It is one of the few vegetables I can get him to eat and I thought if I served him a dish with two things he loves (chicken and broccoli) I could get him to like something he loathes (pasta).

3) The recipe boasted a "quick, easy, and skinny weeknight meal".  After making it I will agree that it is fairly easy and skinny, but this is not really a quick meal.  You will notice that one of the ingredients is grilled chicken cubes and another is roasted broccoli.  So, unless you just have cubes of cooked meat and a pan of roasted broccoli lying around you are going to have to leave time to cook those too.

Let's get started!

First you will need to gather the following ingredients:

2 cups of grilled chicken breast cut into chunks

2 cups of roasted broccoli (I opted to steam mine)

8 ounces of pasta

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup of chicken broth

1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt

1/4 cup of skim milk

1/4 teaspoon of pepper

Pinch of Nutmeg

3/4 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Once you have your ingredients gathered it is time to start cooking.  The first thing you will do is get some water boiling and get your pasta cooking.  I knew I would be using several burners at once so I put the pasta on a back burner since it would cook fairly maintenance free.

I did not have any grilled chicken lying around so cooking the chicken was next on my to do list.  I cubed up some chicken breast like this. 

We have a charcoal grill and I didn't want to get it going for such a small amount of meat.  I decided to cook the chicken on the stove.  I had bought a full can of chicken broth for this meal, but the recipe only calls for one cup.  I separated one cup and used the rest of the broth to saute the chicken.  (The recipe doesn't specify any seasoning for the chicken, but I do suggest you add some salt or garlic salt.  My finished product needed a little boost.)

 Once the broth boils down the meat will start to brown.  Don't worry!

If you choose to roast your broccoli I would put it in the oven at this point.  I used my steamer basket to steam some frozen broccoli.  I told you Maddox loves broccoli... we have bags of this stuff in the freezer!  I usually prefer fresh vegetables, but I read somewhere that frozen vegetables usually have more nutrients because they are flash frozen right after the farm and that helps lock in the nutrients.  Broccoli is one of those vegetables that I prefer to buy frozen.

Now that you have your pasta boiling, your chicken simmering, and your broccoli cooking you are ready to start your sauce!

The first step is to simmer the minced garlic in the olive oil until it starts to brown.  This took about 2 minutes.

 Next you are going to whisk in the flour.  You will have to whisk quickly because it is going to get lumpy!

 Yours will probably look better than mine because you will not be stopping to take a picture!

Now you can whisk in the chicken broth, Greek yogurt, milk, pepper, and nutmeg.  It should start to smooth out as you add those things.  Now you can add the Parmesan cheese.  You will notice on the original recipe that it says STIR in the cheese.  I did not realize and continued to whisk in the cheese. Learn from my mistake, people!  Get out a spoon and stir unless you want the bottom of your whisk to turn into a big, rubber, cheese knob!  Keep stirring until it is all melted in.

By now your first three ingredients should be about finished.  You can see from this picture I opted to use mini penne instead of fettucine like the original recipe called for.  I rarely use long spaghetti or fettucine noodles and prefer the bite size.

Mix it all together and you are done! As I mentioned before I felt the finished product need a little kick.  Some combination of salt, pepper, garlic salt, or even cayenne pepper will probably help at the end.)

 

Would I recommend this recipe to a friend?  PROBABLY

If your family is like me and has never cared for Alfredo sauce then I would skip this one.  But, Konrad (who really likes Alfredo) approved of this recipe and said he would like it again sometime.

How did Maddox like it?  See for yourself...

He ate up the chicken an broccoli and seemed to enjoy the sauce.  He still hates pasta, but I guess that's okay since it was the least healthy part of the meal :)