Sometimes your pasta needs a good kick to change it up from being boring pasta. This Spicy Italian Chicken Pasta recipe is a delicious way to do that with lots of peppers and red pepper flakes. This Italian chicken dish uses tomatoes and peppers to add lots of flavor. You can also substitue the chicken breasts for chicken sausage!
I’m a fan of flavor, which is a reason I’m notorious for going out to eat for dinner. We get in this rut of eating the same easy meals and it drives me crazy. Plus there are some nights that I just want to be lazy. After working from home, taking care of my kids and doing schoolwork I really just want to take an extra nap. It doesn’t help that I have one child that is a night owl and the other one is an early riser. I feel like I blink when I go to bed at night. Especially after we got our new bed, it’s like waking the dead. A comfy bed makes for a non-morning person. Yes, I’m well rested, but I just want to stay in bed for the rest of my life.
Maybe that’s the Winter weather talking though. I get the Winter blues each year because of the constant cloud cover blocking the sun. My husband suffers from the same thing, probably more than I do. We bought a light and ion therapy lamp to counteract some of the effects. It helps to some degree, but my husband started working out like crazy and it was a complete turnaround. I wish I could get motivated like him. It’s really hard though when you have extra pounds.
Eating out is killing my good eating. So meals like this are a great way for me to eat well at home. Not to mention it’s a filling meal. I can use some gluten free pasta with it also. We have been easing our kids into enjoying spicy food this past year. My husband and I like our mouths on fire. It’s interesting to see which foods bother the girls and which ones they don’t even notice. They surprise us every time. The oldest is the hardest though. We didn’t introduce spicy foods to her at a young age so she notices it right away. The youngest doesn’t even seem to be fazed by it though.
I think our taste buds have to be trained to like spicy foods and flavors. Just like our tastes change over time. When I was younger I didn’t care for onions, in anything. Hated them in all forms, but now I like them if they are diced and sauteed in something. Same with tomatoes. Especially after we started growing our own. There is a major difference between store bought ones and homegrown. Store bought and bland and boring but if you grow them at home you get a blast of flavor. We eat them like apples!
We’ve already started preparing our garden for Spring. We started growing our herbs in an AeroGarden and we even placed our seed starters next to the light and they have all popped up already. Nothing beats freshly grown ingredients in your food. Home meals are no longer boring but full of flavor.
Enjoy!
Spicy Italian Chicken Pasta
Ingredients
- 1 box rotini pasta or another pasta shape!
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast cut into bite-size cubes
- 1 orange pepper cut into chunks
- 1 yellow pepper cut into chunks
- 1/2 red pepper cut into chunks
- 1/2 medium onion cut into chunks
- 1 cup mushrooms chopped roughly
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/2 TBS Italian seasoning
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp cracked black pepper
- 1 TBS olive oil
- 2 Cup marinara sauce I like fire roasted marinara
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Instructions
- In a large stockpot, fill halfway with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add pasta to boiling water and cook according to package directions. Set aside.
- In a large skillet heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes; saute 1 minute.
- Add chicken, peppers, onions, mushrooms, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning; saute 5-7 minutes or until chicken is just cooked through.
- Add marinara sauce, stirring to evenly distribute. Cover skillet and bring to a simmer.
- Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Plate the pasta and spoon chicken mixture over the top.
- Sprinkle liberally with chopped fresh parsley.
Oh my goodness, that looks amazing!
Yum love chicken and pasta. Thanks for sharing.
Simon