Spiral Noodles
Twisty pasta that holds sauce — chicken pesto pasta salad, creamy alfredo rotini, cheesy baked cavatappi, blackened shrimp cavatappi — for busy weeknights.
★ dinner
dinnerHealthy Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad
Quick & Easy Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad, (great for meal prep)
Celine KomiyamaIngredients
- Fusilli Pasta
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Olive Oil
- cherry tomatoes
- mozzarella balls
Instructions
- 1Cook pasta to package instructions
- 2Season chopped chicken with Olive Oil, Salt, & Pepper. Cook chicken on the stove for about 8-10 min, tossing occasionally.
- 3Cut tomatoes and mozzarella balls in half
- 4Once pasta is cooked, combine with chicken, tomato, mozzarella balls, and spinach
- 5Stir in pesto sauce + add any other toppings of your choice
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Open in Pepper →Those Little Twists Hold Everything
Spiral noodles do the work for you. All those ridges and curls grab onto sauce, cheese, and bits of chicken so every bite tastes the same as the first one, whether it's a hot bake or a cold salad.
Cooks on Pepper reach for this collection when they need one pot on the stove and dinner done, or when they're feeding a crowd out of a 9x13 and want leftovers that still taste good the next day.
Every recipe here uses fusilli, rotini, or cavatappi in a real dinner: Healthy Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad, Southwest Chipotle Pasta Salad, Creamy alfredo rotini, Rotini Chicken Alfredo Bake, Cheesy Baked Cavatappi Pasta, Baked fusilli pasta, Blackened Shrimp Cavatappi Pasta, and Sausage Cavatappi Bolognese with Roasted Zucchini & Parmesan.
Quick Tips
- 1
Salt the water hard
Use about 1 tablespoon of salt per 4 quarts of water. It's the only chance you get to season the noodle itself.
- 2
Pull it a minute early
For anything going in the oven, drain the pasta 1 to 2 minutes shy of the box time so it doesn't turn mushy under the sauce.
- 3
Save some pasta water
Scoop out 1 cup before draining. A few splashes loosens alfredo or pesto and helps it cling to the spirals.
- 4
Rinse only for salads
For cold pasta salads, rinse under cool water for 30 seconds to stop the cooking and keep the noodles from clumping.
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