Family Dinner Win: Creamy Chicken & Bacon Pasta

Craving an easy-to-make comfort food that a whole family will love?  Then, make this chicken and bacon pasta! Cream sauce absorbs the wonderful flavors from the ingredients in the recipe, and with every single bite, you get all the goodness and all the flavors!  This is one of the best chicken pasta recipes you’ll ever try! Serve it with my apple spinach salad, easy garlic bread, or homemade garlic butter dinner rolls. Also, don’t miss my other family-favorites like chicken feta pasta, creamy chicken orzo with tomatoes and spinach, chicken burrata pasta, and sun-dried tomato chicken pasta.

Ingredient Notes

• Use thinly-sliced skinless, boneless chicken breasts or chicken tenderloin meat.  Either cut of meat will work.
• Use shredded Parmesan cheese. Do not use grated Parmesan cheese, use the shredded kind. What I usually do is buy a block of Parmesan cheese and shred it myself.  Freshly shredding the cheese results in the best sauce texture. You can, however, use store-bought pre-shredded Parmesan cheese.  Just do not use the grated kind.
• You can use cooked spinach, frozen spinach, or fresh spinach. All will work.
• Make this chicken pasta gluten-free. All you need to do is use gluten-free brown-rice penne pasta instead of regular penne. You can also use gluten-free quinoa pasta, chickpea or lentil pasta.

How to Make Chicken Bacon Pasta (Step-by-Step Photos)

• Cook pasta: Bring a large pan of water to boil. Cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain.
• Cook the chicken: Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add chicken and cook on one side for 4 minutes over medium-high, sprinkling paprika and Italian seasoning on top. Flip and cook for 3 minutes on medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low-medium, flip again, cover, and cook until the chicken is no longer pink in the center. Remove from the pan and keep warm.

• Make the creamy sauce + add veggies: In the same pan, add heavy cream and bring to a boil. Stir in Parmesan, reduce to low-medium, and simmer until the cheese melts and the sauce is creamy, about 1-3 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes, spinach, garlic, and crushed red pepper; cook on medium just until the spinach wilts. Add sliced chicken and half the cooked bacon, then mix everything together.

• Add cooked pasta to the sauce: Top with the remaining bacon and thinly sliced chicken, then sprinkle with Parmesan before serving.

What is Half-and-Half and Its Substitutions

• You can use either heavy cream or half-and-half in this recipe.
• Half-and-half is the US milk product that combines ½ whole milk + ½ heavy cream or whipping cream to form a lighter cream (unlike heavy cream).
• Substitute ½ cup of milk + ½ cup of heavy cream for 1 cup of half-and-half.
• If you live in the UK, half and half would be the equivalent of single cream. Alternatively, you can mix half double cream and half regular milk (if you live in the UK).

What to Serve with Chicken Bacon Pasta

I love serving Chicken Bacon Pasta with crusty garlic bread, homemade garlic butter dinner rolls, crusty rye bread, or bread machine loaves to soak up all that delicious Parmesan sauce. Since the pasta is already hearty, I usually pair it with a simple salad like one of these:

Other Chicken & Bacon Pasta Recipes