Tasty Tuesdays: Pesto Chicken Pasta Salad

Lately I've been trying to cook a little more in an attempt to not only save money but to eat a little bit healthier. As someone who is just starting off in the cooking department, many of the recipes I find online are extremely overwhelming. They have way too many ingredients or the directions are really convoluted and I have trouble understanding what it is they want me to do. Also, on most days I'm cooking these meals, I've just come home from work and there isn't much time to cook a crazy fancy meal. In these Tasty Tuesday posts, I hope to showcase some of the recipes I've found online and show you what the finished product looks like. I know when I go online and look for recipes, I take a look at the pictures and my finished product usually does not look like that lol. Also, you never know if these recipes you find online will taste good either. Hopefully this will be a great resource for those of you just starting out with cooking. Now lets get started!

If any of you are like me, you pretty much love Costco. Whenever we go there, we usually stock up on the necessities such as boneless chicken thighs and ground beef, etc. We keep all the meats in the freezer until we need to use them. I just found the "Defrost" button on the microwave so I've been using that for the quick "Shit! I forgot to put the meat in the fridge to defrost" moments. The nice part about the Costco prepackaged chicken thighs is that they are already separated into approximately 1 pound pouches. For my microwave, you put in the meat, push the "Defrost" button and enter in the number of pounds you're defrosting. Defrosting a 1 pound pouch takes about 10 minutes.

So I went to Costco and bought all this chicken. What to cook with it all?! When I got home from work (around 4:45pm), I started looking online for chicken thigh recipes. I came across this one from Real Simple (love them!), Pesto Chicken Pasta Salad.

check out the full page here and for more recipes check out realsimple.com

I noticed that I didn't have the olives or bocconcini but I felt like the core of the pasta salad would still be there minus those ingredients. I happened to have bought a container of pesto from Costco so this recipe was perfect.

1. First off, I start off by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. 
2. Then I boil a pot of water. 
3. While the water was coming to a boil, I stuck the package of chicken into the microwave to defrost. 
4. While both of those things were happening, I mixed the salt, pepper, and olive oil. 
5. Once the water comes to a full boil, I put in the pasta. 
6. While the pasta is going, I start rubbing the chicken with the mixed salt, pepper, and olive oil. 
7. Once all the chicken has been thoroughly rubbed, I throw the chicken into the oven and set the kitchen timer for 20 minutes (I like my chicken really juicy so I don't want it to be too cooked).
8. Cut/shred the chicken.
9. Mix the chicken, pasta and the pesto sauce. And tada! You're done!

thoroughly rubbed chicken

the finished product

For veggies, I had a bag of frozen brussel sprouts so after I removed the chicken from the baking tray, I threw the brussel sprouts on the same tray, sprinkled some salt and pepper over them and threw them back into the oven for a few minutes (look at the bag for estimated cook time).

I love this recipe because everything can be done in about 30 minutes time. The thing that takes the longest is baking the chicken and what I usually do is go watch a YouTube video to "wind down" from the day while sipping on some vino.

Hope you guys enjoyed this very simple recipe! 

Please leave any recipe suggestions below and I will attempt to cook them!

Thanks for reading!