When I want to make a meal at college, one of the post important things for me is that the recipe not contain very many ingredients and only those ingredients whose leftovers I will use in another recipe. My mom is awesome and sent me to back to school with some frozen meals and some frozen chicken that she had previously cooked and shredded into bite-size pieces. So when I realized that I had chicken and some spaghetti, I wanted to make chicken tetrazzini. And as any good college student who doesn't remember something does, I googled it! I compared 5-10 recipes and reduced them to as few ingredients and trouble as possible. Also, I have yet to perfect the proportions of each ingredient. That means that this isn't the most wonderful dish and certainly isn't your grandmother's well-known recipe, but it does still make a decent meal. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Ingredients
- 1-2 cups chicken, cooked and cut into bite-size pieces
- 1 normal sized can of cream of chicken soup (or other "cream of" soup)
- 0.75 lbs of spaghetti
- cheese
- seasoning - I used garlic, basil, salt, and pepper
Tools
- 1 spoon
- 1 pot
- 1 additional pot or 1 deep/large enough frying pan (My dorm was always short on pots, so I went with the frying pan)
- oven-safe dish(es)
- potholder (I always manage to forget this until I need to remove something from the oven and realize I have nothing with which to do so.)
Instructions
1. Start the water boiling for the pasta in the pot.
2. Empty the soup into the frying pan and add a soup container's worth of water. Add seasonings and chicken. Bring to a boil.
3. When the water is boiling, add the spaghetti. Cook until tender, then drain.
4. Add the pasta to your oven-safe dish(es), leaving enough room at the top for the soup mixture.
5. Top the pasta with the soup mixture and then with cheese.
6. Bake at 350ºF until the cheese has melted and turned a light golden brown.
7. Remove from oven and let cool sufficiently before eating or storing.
Disclaimer: This makes a decent meal, but is far from perfect. Below are some of my experiences.
1. I have yet to have too much of the soup mixture. Due to various problems (distractions, a rusting pot, etc.) I have always had the mixture boil for long enough to boil a lot of the water off. The results in not enough mixture to cover the pasta completely.
2. I clearly have some explaining to do about the strange amount of pasta one needs. The first time that I made this, I made approximately 1 lb of pasta, but then ate some of it with red sauce with a friend as my chicken tetrazzini dishes finished cooking. The next time I made the dish, I started with less than a full pound of pasta and just made all of it. So my advice is to prepare a pound of pasta and then reserve some for eating immediately and use the rest for your dish.
3. Wait, Catherine, how much of the spices am I supposed to add?! Um...for this recipe I prioritized not getting any unnecessary dishes dirty, so I did not measure out my spices. I would say 0.25-0.5 tsp of both garlic and basil, 0.125 tsp pepper, and a dash of salt if you really think it needs some. Just taste the sauce and make sure it is flavorful enough. If it's not, add more of one or more of the spices. And if you don't have these, don't sweat it. I used these particular spices because I thought they would be good and because garlic and basil are two of my four spices in my dorm.
4. And the chicken and cheese? Honestly I made this recipe for convenience. I had about 2 cups of the aforementioned frozen, cooked chicken and some cheese on hand. Slices of cheese and shredded cheese will work equally well here. I chose to use cheddar or colby-jack.
5. I made my chicken tetrazzini in small glass bowls that each held 2 cups. These were good individual serving sizes for me and made it very easy to keep the other servings in the fridge or freezer until I was ready to eat them.
