Grilled Italian Chicken and Pasta

Summer is a time to relax and be carefree. One of the things that stresses me out the most on the daily, is what we’re going to feed the family for dinner. I have a husband who eats nonstop and girl dinner doesn’t cut it for him. I could survive on a handful of Cheese-Its and a Lacroix… for some reason that just doesn’t do it for him. A few nights a week I can let him fend for himself and I would have my “snack”. But now we have an almost one-year-old who eats three meals daily plus snacks so skipping dinner doesn’t work anymore.

I have made it my mission to find the easiest, fresh, and healthy meals for our family that require minimal effort. This meal checks all of those boxes. Delicious, easy, fresh, and quick! It also has a level of nostalgia in it, my mama used to make this a lot in the summer. We grew up on many chicken meals but I looked forward to this one.

For my chicken, I like to take chicken breasts from Costco, which we always have on hand in the freezer, and marinate them. You could make your Italian marinade but I find it equally as delicious to use Italian dressing. I use ¼ cup of dressing per chick breast, so usually, we make four breasts which would be 1 cup of dressing. I like to throw my chicken in a gallon-size freezer bag and add my dressing to it in the morning before I head to work so it has a good 9-10 hours soaking up all the flavor. I suggest at least 2 hours of marinating time. Once we’re ready to eat, all I have to do is have hubby put it on the grill! 

I usually do a box of tri-colored rotini noodles. Those are my favorites with this meal, but you can use any pasta you have on hand and it will be just as good! If I don’t have the tri-colored pasta I like to switch it out for chickpea rotini or pene, also a great option if you want to keep it extra healthy! I always start boiling my water for the pasta to get that going when we are putting this together just because it takes the longest in comparison to everything else. 

For my toppings, this is a veggie-heavy topping meal, anything goes! You could use black olives, peppers, cucumbers, red onion, tomatoes, and avocado… my fave for this meal is red, yellow, orange, and green peppers, cucumber, and tomato. I like to chop my veggies in the morning when I marinate my chicken because I seem to have more time and energy in the morning and the evening after a long day I don’t wanna be chopping veggies. Is it super hard? No. But if I can save a step in the evening by doing it in the morning, I will! In addition to the veggies, I like adding a drizzle of Italian dressing to the pasta and fresh grated parm as well. I have also done shredded mozzarella which is yummy also. 

The fun thing with this meal is you have an outline, chicken, pasta, veggies, dressing, and cheese; but you get to be so creative with how you execute it. You can switch up your marinade, choose different veggies, use any type of pasta, or add your favorite cheese on top. It’s all up to you. If you make any changes, let me know in the comments how it turns out! I would love to hear how it goes.