This recipe includes one of my favorite go-to’s: Protein Pesto. You may recall my post with the Pesto Chicken Pizza recipe on 1/25 (not my recipe, BTW). I created my Protein Pesto for that one too instead of just loading up on fatty pesto and cheese. So as you can see, Protein Pesto is nice and versatile, and it only takes a couple of minutes to whip up too!
Since it’s just my husband and I, I only ever make enough for two people, and I always consider that I am going to be serving it with some other protein (e.g. grilled chicken).
Protein Pesto Ingredients
- 1/2 cup of non-fat cottage cheese
- 2 tbsp pre-made pesto (I use Buitoni, which is available in the refrigerated section of the grocery store with the mozzarella cheeses and fresh pastas)
- Optional: 2 tsbp fat free milk, if you want it to be more fluid and less creamy
Yeah. That’s it. Those are the only ingredients! If I have fresh Basil on hand, sometimes I will chop up a little to throw in and enhance the flavor, but since our rental house doesn’t have the same sun-exposure as our old place, Basil plants tend to die on me so I only occasionally buy the fresh stuff.
Protein Pesto Prep
To make the pesto, dump the ingredients in some kind of mixer: food processor, magic bullet, Ninja (that’s what I have), and blend. I alternate between blending and pulsing, and occasionally pop the lid off to scrape the sides.
Protein Pesto Pasta with Chicken
- Just boil some whole wheat pasta of your choice (I happen to love Penne personally),
- and cook some boneless skinless chicken breasts to your liking (try to cook them without oil as you’re getting enough fat in the pesto)
Serve whatever serving amount is right for you. For ME, to enjoy pasta for dinner I cut my lunch carbs in half. I usually only do 1 carb exchange in the evening and the particular whole wheat pasta I buy (Archer Farms Organic Whole Wheat Penne from Target) has a lot of carbs, so one exchange is literally 1/4 cup of cooked pasta! So I get 1/2 a cup of pasta, and since I am splitting the 1/2 cup of protein pesto with Z, which has 14 grams of protein on its own (that’s 7 grams each), I aim for about 20 grams of protein with my chicken breast which is about 3 oz.
If you’re running short on time, you can even make some pre-cooked chicken breasts like Tyson Grilled & Ready® Fully Cooked Frozen Chicken Breast Fillets, which I did last night because I was exhausted. They aren’t the BEST, but they are great when you are short on time or energy. 🙂
Finally, because I need to eat a balanced meal, I grill up some veggies. In this case, I had sweet mini peppers which I pan grilled with a little garlic powder, pepper, and tiny bit of Bragg’s Healthy Vinaigrette.
AND, because I cannot resist, I do top it off with some grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. This increases the fat count a bit, but it’s delicious and I worked my ass off at the gym last night so I earned it.
Here’s the final product:
Bon Appétit!
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