This Easy Chicken Pasta Dish Is Our Favorite Weeknight Dinner

When it comes to easy weeknight dinners, there is one pasta dish we find ourselves recommending to our Food Fanatic foodies over and over again. 

Our chicken asparagus pasta recipe is tossed with a creamy lemon garlic parmesan sauce that tastes like it took forever but is actually a cinch to make.

This easy pasta recipe comes together in 30 minuts or less making it perfect for dinner any night of the week while also being special enough for a dinner party.

Why We Love This Creamy Chicken Pasta

When it comes to quick and easy pasta dishes, this creamy chicken pasta goes beyond a jar of marinara sauce purchased in a scramble at the grocery store.

Much like our beloved creamy chicken linguine and lemon chicken linguine recipes, we love this pasta dish for the ease, the versatility and the flavor. 

This one pot pasta recipe makes what we would consider a nearly perfect weeknight dinner - it's hearty, delicious and comes together in just a half hour.

Any dish you can make in one pot that the kids will love, but that's also impressive enough to win over your mother in-law? That's one to bookmark!

In a nutshell, if you are constantly on the look out for delicious, reliable dinner ideas that always come through in a pinch, you need to make this chicken pasta.

Chicken Asparagus Pasta Ingredients

To make this simply yet satisfying pasta recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

• Chicken - Our creamy chicken asparagus pasta recipe calls for boneless skinless chicken breast, but in a real time crunch you could make things even quicker by using rotisserie chicken if you choose
• Oil - You'll need olive oil or another cooking oil of your choosing for first cooking the chicken breast in this recipe
• Pasta - Our recipe calls for rotini, but any other short pasta shape would work well such as penne or rigatoni
• Chicken broth - Using chicken broth or chicken stock adds lots of flavor to the creamy sauce
• Milk - Our recipe uses milk to lend the creaminess to the cream sauce of this pasta recipe
• Garlic - To make things as simple as possible, we even use garlic powder in this recipe. No mincing required!
• Asparagus - Fresh asparagus is sliced and tossed with the pasta and creamy sauce to make this dish truly special
• Parmesan cheese - To round out the cream sauce you'll need grated parmesan cheese
• Lemon zest - Lending a brightness to this dish that keeps it from being too heavy, everything is finsihed off with fresh lemon zest
• Seasoning - As we always suggest, season everything with salt and pepper to taste for a dish perfectly suited to your palate

How To Make Our Chicken Asparagus Pasta Recipe

One of the hallmarks of this incredible pasta recipe is how simple it is to make. You can make it in just one skillet, saving prep and clean up time.

1. You'll begin by seasoning and cooking the chicken breast in a large skillet, which will take roughly 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Remove the chicken from the skillet and set it aside while you make the rest of the dish.
3. Then, add the pasta, broth, milk and garlic powder to the skillet. Bring it to a boil then reduce and simmer.
4. Add the sliced asparagus and continue cooking until the pasta and asparagus are nicely al dente and the sauce has thickened.
5. Whisk in the parmesan cheese and lemon zest to finish the sauce.
6. Slice the chicken and serve it over the pasta.

Tips for Making Our Chicken Asparagus Pasta Recipe

To make this dinner truly foolproof, consider these tips and tricks! With these pointers in mind you'll be serving up a truly delicious dinner in no time at all.

• Double check to be sure your chicken is thoroughly cooked, but still juicy when you remove it from the skillet. Having to go back and finish cooking it when everything else is ready to go is a total bummer. (Speaking from experience!)
• If the cream sauce isn't quite thick enough, gently bring the skillet to a low boil and let it boil for another 30 seconds to a minute. Because your pasta can play a factor in how the sauce thickens, you may still want the sauce to be a bit thicker. In that case, simply let the sauce for up to five minutes. It should thicken nicely.
• If you prefer your asparagus to be softer than al dente, consider boiling or steaming it separately and then add it in the end. As written, the recipe results in asparagus that is cooked through but still has some bite, so you may choose to play around with how it is cooked.

Get our chicken asparagus pasta recipe!