Cooking with Kat: Chicken Spaghetti of Pioneer Woman Fame

It's about time I cooked on this blog! For Christmas I got the Pioneer Woman cookbook and I have already made two recipes from it. So far, they are great!

We had some dear friends of ours over for dinner, and I told Mark he could pick what we were having. I guess it might have been nice if I let my guests pick... oops. Maybe next time. (-: I gave Mark a few choices based on the meals I had planned for and had ingredients, and he picked chicken spaghetti.

I also know I shouldn't have tried a new recipe with guests, but I figured they would still be my friends if it didn't out well, and there's always Papa John's, right?

So, I got most of the ingredients all rounded up at my local Whole Foods. I have been trying to switch things over to organic when I can, and so for this recipe, several items were organic. So, here's the recipe:

• 2 cups Cooked Chicken
• 1 lb (3 cups) Dry Spaghetti, Broken Into Two Inch Pieces
• 2 cans Cream Of Mushroom Soup
• 2 cups Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• ¼ cups Finely Diced Green Pepper
• ¼ cups Finely Diced Onion
• 1 jar (4 Ounce) Diced Pimentos, Drained
• 2 cups Reserved Chicken Broth From Pot
• 1 teaspoon Lawry's Seasoned Salt
• ⅛ teaspoons (to 1/4 Teaspoon) Cayenne Pepper
• Salt And Pepper, to taste
• 1 cup Additional Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

And the photo:

 So, to fill you in on the organic ingredients, I got organic cream of mushroom soup, veggies, 1/2 of the pasta was organic and the cheese is from cows that were not given antibiotics/hormones I think. I will say the soup was very different than regular Campbell's. It was more "soupy". You know how Campbells is kind of thick the gel like? This was darker in color and more liquidy. I thought that was interesting. 

So, to start of this recipe, I took a big fat short cut. Instead of cooking my own chicken, I bought a rotisserie chicken, because that's how I roll. And also because they taste SOOO good. AND bonus, I found them at Whole Foods, so next time I will get one from there. Here's my bird:

 While I snuck pieces of the chicken, I started boiling the water, and broke the pasta up into 2 inch pieces and tossed them into the pot. Then things got a little difficult.

I have a Pampered Chef cheese grater. Well, either I'm a terrible cheese grater, or I need to grow some muscles or something, because grating that cheese was wearing me out!

Yeah. That's what I looked like. Clearly not happy. So, I said FORGET IT! And I got out my handy food procesor with my cheese grater thing and all I had to do was throw the cheese in a press a button, and voila! OMG, if you don't have one of these, you've GOT to get one.

 See? Look how happy I am. And look at the beautifully grated cheese. Victory is mine.

I chopped up the veggies, and then I realized something. When I went grocery shopping I bought a lot of  ingredients for a lot of things. One of them was for olive cheese bread, and I mistook the Chicken-spaghetti pimientos for the olive cheese bread, and left it in Ft. Worth over New Year's. Oops. So, no pimientos in this spaghetti!

 Ha - look at that cheese. I think I must have the grater set too fine, so it made it more difficult. Anyway, so, once the pasta was done, I combined all the ingredients except 1/2 cup cheese.

Yay for the little kick that the cayenne pepper adds. (-: You can add the seasonings, and then taste, and add more if you need to.

So, then I poured it into a casserole dish, put the remaining cheese on top, and popped it into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until bubbly.

Looks pretty yummy huh? So, while that was cooking, I ran around like a crazy person picking up the apartment. (-:

And then the guests arrived and we started serving it:

We had some organic spring mix with parmesan with it and some sweet tea, because there's no other way to drink it, in my book. (-:

So, how was it? It was pretty darn good! Mark said it was good enough to do again. So I think we will. Maybe I'll add the pimientos next time, maybe not. I had several taste testers, so here's what they had to say:

They look pretty genuinely happy, but who can ever tell? (-:

Until next time, Bon Appetit! 

~Kathryn