Quick Tasty Food: Salsa Chicken Pasta

Who doesn't love salsa? Who doesn't love chicken? ... Ok, not everyone likes them. Obviously those people won't like this recipe. I, on the other, loved this random creation. I had the brilliant idea to marinate chicken in salsa. I grabbed a Hot Salsa from Whole Foods that was on sale and then grabbed a pound of chicken. Cut the chicken up into pieces (I went for half inch cubes). Cover the chicken in the salsa and marinate. How long? Depends. I sort of forgot about it so it marinated for almost 2 days and turned out great. In other words, marinate for however long you think is adequate, with at least a suggestion of an hour.

I then dumped the chicken and salsa in a skillet set to medium heat. I also decided to make some pasta so I had a small pot going of that. After a few minutes, turn the chicken pieces to make sure both sides cook. Once the pasta was done, I added it to the chicken salsa.

I also decided it needed more veggies than what was in the salsa. I wanted to go with a can of corn but all I had was cream corn which likely would not have been very great addition. Thus, I went with French style green beans. Dump the whole can (drained, of course) in with the chicken salsa pasta.

After that I realized that I likely made the wrong choice with the hot salsa as there was a definite spicy smell coming from the skillet. I added maybe a half cup of Mexican cheese, yet you can obviously go with whatever cheese you want. I just had some Mexican on hand because I had planned to make some Taco Cupcakes.

And it does make a lot. I ate this for 1 dinner and 2 lunches, feeling satisfied each meal.

You can also make several variations of those. You can make it "traditional" by using pasta sauce instead of salsa. Add more veggies or don't add veggies at all. Cutting carbs, don't add the pasta. Yada yada yada, on it goes.

You can also take just the salsa chicken and make it into loaded nachos by cutting the chicken up into smaller pieces and serving it over nachos with whatever other regular nacho additions you want. This is actually a great idea I may have to make at some point. Hmmm....