BBQ Chicken Pasta

A few weeks ago, my sister and her family took a mini vacation to their family cabin for a few days. While they were gone, Daniel, Juliet and I house sat, and took care of their extremely low maintenance dog. On one of the first days, before Daniel and I had grocery shopping, I needed to make lunch. The ingredients available to me were pretty sparse, since they had taken most of their food with them to the cabin. While looking through what was accessible, I came up with an idea: BBQ Chicken Pasta. It was just crazy enough to work, that, or be extremely disgusting. Lucky for me, it was a success. I'm pretty sure this will become a staple meal our house.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup BBQ sauce, separated (I very biased-ly think you should use this one).
1 large chicken breast
2 TBS flour
2 cups (skim) milk
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp pepper
Approximately 13 oz (uncooked weight) pasta of your choice. I use whole wheat penne.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place your chicken breast in a small pan and pour 1/4 cup of the BBQ sauce over it.

Cook the chicken for 35 minutes. While the chicken is cooking, you can make your pasta and your sauce. Just make the pasta according to the box directions. I recommend Al-Dente, but you can cook to your desired softness. In order to make your sauce, place the remaining BBQ sauce and the flour in a medium sauce pan.

Whisk the BBQ sauce and flour together, while cooking on medium heat, until it gets slightly bubbly.

One it gets to this stage, whisk in the milk.

Continue to stir and cook until the mixture darkens in color and starts to thicken.

Add the remaining ingredients to the sauce and boil until you reach your desired sauce consistency.

Remove the sauce from heat and set aside. Cut your cooked (and slightly cooled) chicken into bite sized pieces and get ready to assemble.

 You can either serve individually, or family style. Family style is easier, but individually is a bit more visually appealing. Either way, the order should be pasta first, followed by sauce, and then topped with chicken. You may also add Parmesan cheese to the top if you wish.

Individual

Family Style

I realize this isn't the prettiest looking pasta ever, but the taste is seriously awesome. It isn't super great looking because everything is pretty much the same color. If you want some color contrast, you can use white pasta, and toss the chicken in BBQ sauce after you have cooked it instead of before. It will look a lot better, but won't have as much flavor. I'm letting you decide which one is more important to you. I'm pretty vain, but I chose the flavor.