Make Chicken Alfredo Faster And Cheaper With One Canned Substitution

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Chicken Alfredo is a relatively easy meal to cook, especially if you use store-bought sauce to pull the poultry and pasta together. But some nights you might need an even quicker way to turn out this dish. Then there's the fact that groceries, especially meats, are pricey these days. Luckily, there's an easy one-ingredient solution to make chicken Alfredo quicker to cook and cheaper. It's all about using canned chicken rather than fresh poultry.

Canned chicken is already cooked, so it will save you a lot of time compared to seasoning, cooking, and cutting fresh chicken to incorporate into the pasta. When you use other pre-made ingredients, like your favorite jarred Alfredo sauce, the pasta is the only component that needs to be cooked, which doesn't take too long. This also provides more time to pull together the rest of the meal, perhaps a fresh salad or breadsticks to dunk into the sauce at the bottom of the bowl. Then there's the price factor. A two-pack of Swanson's 12.5-ounce cans of chicken breast costs less than $7 on Amazon.

To pull this meal hack off, start with around 24 ounces of canned chicken for every eight servings of Alfredo. The first step is to drain the water from the canned chicken so you don't have watery pasta. To keep the meal really easy, simply stir the chicken into the cooked pasta along with the Alfredo sauce. Canned chicken is usually unseasoned, however, so sprinkle on salt, especially if you buy a low-sodium option. To amp up the flavor of the poultry, toss it in some garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper for heat, paprika, or Italian seasoning for a herby touch. Then quickly cook the seasoned chicken to get a little color and texture, but don't overdo it or the meat might dry out.

Try the tinned poultry to make our chicken fettuccine Alfredo recipe even easier than it already is. You can also upgrade the Alfredo sauce with a splash of chicken broth for deeper flavors in the dish. But why stop there? Add some fresh herbs from your fridge to get more flavor to the store-bought sauce and canned chicken. Stir in some freshly-grated Parmesan or cracked black pepper into the pot before serving. Or simply add some frozen mixed vegetables, sliced bell peppers, or sautéed mushrooms for more flavor and sustenance in the dish.