Garlic Pesto Chicken with Tomato Cream Sauce

I have to admit that this meal started out with a level of frustration I have never faced before, caused by people who LIE on pinterest, and potentially a little fault of my own for only looking at the picture and ingredient list before deciding to make this meal. So, let me start at the beginning, a few days ago I was looking for some crockpot friendly meals to make for dinner some over the coming weeks and I stumbled upon this recipe for “crockpot garlic pesto chicken with a tomato cream sauce”, so I was like AWESOME! I can just cook the chicken part all day in the crock pot, come home, boil up some noodles, and then I’ll have a very delicious dinner, so I took to the store with my ingredient list, bought everything I needed. David and I had decided we would make it Sunday night since we probably wouldn’t want to cook after being busy and out and about all weekend so we thought it would be a quick fix. We pulled everything out and got ready to throw it in the crock pot so I grabbed my laptop and was literally distraught when NO WHERE in the instructions could I find a piece of the meal to make in the crockpot. I think this meal could be easily converted to a crockpot meal, but I wasn’t willing to experiment with it, so David and I just decided we’d follow  the instructions and convert it to a one pot wonder later. merh. But the meal ended up being a pretty simple one to cook, so we weren’t too mad about it, and it was delicious and made a huge amount, so I had lots of left overs to eat this week, yay! Heres the how-to on this dish, I’ll let ya know when I make it crockpot friendly, but I think you could just do all the liquid stuff with the chicken in the crockpot  and then cook up some pasta and serve it on top, just worried about the half and half in the crockpot.

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 bottle of lawrys Herb and Garlic Marinade
• 2 large spoonfuls of Pesto
• 2 boneless chicken breasts.
• 8 ounces of your choice of pasta (I used penne)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 spoonfuls of pesto
• 1/2 cup of chicken broth
• 8 ounces of tomato sauce
• 1 cup of half and half

Instructions

Make sure to marinade the chicken before hand, using the lawry’s marinade and pesto. The recipe called for about 12 hours (aka over night) but we only did ours for about 4 hours, and it was still quite tasty!

Once your ready to cook, you want to dump all the chicken AND the marinade into a sautee pan and let it cook down until all the liquid cooks off and make sure the chicken is fully cooked through. Then, in a separate pot, bring water to a boil and cook your pasta!

In a separate sauce pan, add the olive oil, pesto, and garlic and bring to a simmer.

Then, add your tomato sauce to this sauce pan, and stir frequently

Next you want to add the half and half and  and chicken broth, then if your sauce seems watery add some flour to thicken it up!

Strain your pasta noodles and then add them to the sauce in the pan, and place your cooked chicken on top, for a pretty presentation! Then, stir it all up and serve it warm for a delicious meal! (like I said, I think this can easily be converted to a crockpot meal, so Im working on making that happen for you guys! Happy cooking, and enjoy!