Mustard sauce Chicken Pasta Bake
A good casserole is everybody's favourite; It's a definite comfort food, and we can use a huge variety of ingredients to make one allowing us to use our creativity.
In this recipe, we are cooking a chicken pasta bake with a mustard flavoured sauce that will make you crave for more. It takes a bit of time to prepare (like all good casseroles) but the result will be rewarding!
The pasta used as the base for this dish, is rigatoni. Rigatoni is great for casseroles due to its shape that is helping the sauce to stay on the pasta. We will combine it with tasty chicken thighs and cream cheese and enhance the taste and flavour by adding bacon, Edam cheese and mustard.
It's a perfect dish for a family meal, or when having people over for lunch or dinner.
- 600-700gr/21oz-25oz/1.3-1.5lb (2 large) chicken thighs
- 250gr/8.8oz rigatoni pasta (use ziti/penne if you can't find rigatoni)
- 100gr/3.5oz (5 tablespoons) butter or margerine
- 90gr/3.2oz (1 small) onion, finely chopped
- 80gr/2.8oz (5 slices) bacon, cut in thin strips (julienne)
- 30-35gr/1-1.2oz (1/3 bunch) parsley, finely chopped
- 250ml (1 cup) milk
- 200gr/7oz cream cheese
- 250gr/8.8oz Edam cheese, grated
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 3-4 tablespoons yellow mustard
Preparation: Boil the chicken thighs in a small pot with lightly salted water, for approximately 40 minutes, until it softens. Remove the chicken, and leave it on a plate to cool down. Then, remove the chicken meat from the thighs and shred it with your hands, into small pieces/slices. Put it in a bowl and leave it aside.
Boil the rigatoni in a small pot with salted water, and remove it 2-3 minutes shorter than the boiling instructions on the package. Drain the pasta and keep it aside.
Add the butter in a large frying pan and put it on medium to high heat. Once it melts, add the onion and the bacon. Saute until the onion becomes translucent. Then add the chicken and continue to saute for 2-3 minutes more. Add the cream cheese and stir for 1 minute until it melts into the mixture.
Remove from heat, add the parsley, stir and put the mixture along with the boiled rigatoni in a medium sized pyrex / ceramic baking pan. Add half of the edam cheese and stir carefully.
Whisk the egg in a bowl, adding slowly the milk. Then, add the mustard, while continuing whisking. Pour the milk-egg-mustard mixture into the pyrex, stir and add the rest of the edam cheese on top.
Bake in preheated oven, in 200 degrees Celsius (390 Fahrenheit), in the middle rack, for about 30 minutes.Serve with green salad and some toasted bread or garlic bread. Kali oreksi!
1. Instead of thighs, you can also use chicken breast, or even turkey fillets.
2. The broth from the boild chicken can be frozen in order to be used in future recipes. You can also use it in the same day, by adding a few vegetables in order to make an easy, tasty chicken soup.
3. Instead of rigatoni, you can also use other similar types of pasta, like ziti,penne or conchiglie, having a slightly different result.
4. You can also use leftover chicken (roasted/boiled). In case of roasted, reduce the cooking time (when you add it in the pan).
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