Chicken Carbonara Casserole

It’s Thursday night and we have made some really good meals this week. Energy and motivation are slightly down for me, but not for Greg. He was the creator of this dish, which utilized some of the leftovers we had in the fridge. He ended up making what he dubbed, “chicken carbonara casserole”. Once you read the recipe you will see that it is a perfect title- except if you are expecting to see fettuccine noodles or some other pasta derivative. We aim to eat low-carb for most of the week, but this could have easily and quite tastily been served over said carbs. Honestly though, I didn’t even miss them. This was that good.

He started out the casserole by chopping up the leftover broccoli we had from the broccoli cheese soup, blanching it, and placing it on the bottom of the casserole dish.

Then added some chopped mushrooms, which he sauteed first with some oil, salt, and pepper.

Then he re-heated a leftover bacon and onion mixture and placed it in the casserole.

bacon makes everything better

He then chopped up some leftover chicken from last night and added that.

Now on to the good stuff: the carbonara sauce. For this he made a basic roux with some roasted garlic, added half and half and skim milk, “Italian” mix cheese and some grated Parmesan, and generous amounts of ground black pepper.

He then poured the gooey cheese sauce over the casserole and added another layer of the Parmesan.

Lastly, he baked it for about ten minutes, and broiled it for an additional 5 to get the top nice and brown.

After a garnish of fresh chopped tomato and basil, dinner was served!

After dinner we continued to work on the honeymoon planning. I think we have narrowed it down to the Domican Republic, but we still have some details to figure out, like which resort to go to. It’s hard to tell from the websites what they are really like, but at some point we are just going to have to pick one and trust our instincts. My only criteria is that I would like the resort to have a swim-up bar (priorities people!).  Oh, and also that it’s clean, has decent food, and has some sort of nightlife 🙂 Hopefully, we will find just what we are looking for very soon and then we can really start to get excited for it! Below is the recipe for tonight’s dinner. I have to admit we did not measure out everything so these are my best guesses.  We used the half and half and milk mixture to cut some fat but you can use 3 cups of any dairy that you like.  There should at least be some fat in the dairy though as skim only may be too thin.

Recipe for Chicken Carbonara Casserole

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