Chicken broccoli pasta Alfredo

This classic Italian American pasta meal of chicken broccoli alfredo can be yours in about 20 minutes if if you can juggle four time-sensitive elements at once. How you do that is what we'll focus on today. This is going to be a oneshot video mostly because I wouldn't have time to move the camera. I've got a little pasta pot already heating up here. Just throw in a big pinch of salt. Less urgently, I need to get a shallow pot of water going for my steamer basket. Less water takes way less time to get hot. No, I don't normally cut on my burner. I'm just keeping everything in the shot for you. Trim off those broccoli fuettes and cut them in half if they're big. Grab a lot of garlic for the sauce. Trim off the root ends. Smash to release the paper and peel. And I will have more time to chop those later. Got to get the chicken going. This is absolutely a time to take your incredibly thick modern agriculture franken chicken breast and make two pieces that are half as thick. This is easier than it looks. Just use a sharp knife and go slow so they don't accidentally slice up into your stabilizing hand. There. These will cook in far less than half the time, and I think they taste better. Just pepper is fine for seasoning cuz it's going to have sauce on it later. And be careful with salt on pieces of meat that are this thin. It always takes a little less than is my instinct to use. Okay, with that done and my water is about boiling, it's time to heat up the sauté pan on my hottest burner. Just got to wait a sec until that's real hot. Oh, I can check and see how much cash back I've earned from Upside, sponsor of this video. It's a free app that earns you a lot of cash back on daily expenses like groceries and gas. For two people who work at home, it's amazing how much money we spend on gas, mostly from hauling the kids around everywhere. You open up the app and it'll show you what offers are available near you. Dang, 30 cents cash back per gallon at this place on the way home. You accept the offer on the app, you pay with your card like normal, and then a few days later, you get your cash back right on the same card. This works for grocery stores and restaurants, too. Chipotle, Papa John's, Dairy Queen, all of my on the road staples, man. Especially with my sign up bonus, I earned a lot. Download the free Upside app. Use code Reggusia and get an extra $10 cash back on your first restaurant or grocery purchase. Link in the description. Thank you, Upside. All right, so we'll heat that pan to the point where the oil is about to smoke. And in go the pieces, seasoned side down. I can season the top sides. Now, time to drop in like a quarter of a box of pasta for two, whatever shake you want. And then I'll ask my phone to set a timer for however long the package says to cook it. Those numbers rarely steer you wrong. You got to stir early on or else the noodles tend to stick to each other. Now, time for the broccoli to go in the steamer. Cover and forget it. Pasta is starting to boil over. Get the lid off. I put it there just so it' come back to a boil faster. Chicken should be well browned on side A by now and they should just peel right off. These pieces are thin enough that you can be aggressive with the heat. You don't have to worry about slowly cooking the inside for a long time. Grab a fork to start testing the broccoli. Just check to see if it's fork tender. Now I've got a second to chop my garlic. I didn't show that on camera. Sorry. Let's check the chicken breast. I've done this enough to where I can tell by poking. Still squishy on the inside, not cooked. Go with a thermometer if you want, but it can be real hard to get an accurate reading on something this thin. Now that both sides are seared and released, I can flip these every 20 seconds or so. Frequent flipping does result in faster heat transfer over time, and I want to finish these up before the pan scorches. All right, this thinner piece is not squishy in the middle anymore, so I will take it out to a piece of foil where it can rest and stay hot. I'll kill the heat because this pan is about to burn and get stinky. I'll just finish this one up in the residual heat. When in doubt, cut it open and see if it's still pink in the center. Ideally, I want to pull this when it's just a little underdone because it'll slow cook a bit more inside this foil, especially if you wrap it up tight. All right. To keep my white sauce white, I need to rinse out this pan. Maybe give it a cursory scrub. Clean enough. A big knob of butter goes in and melts. You'll want more moderate heat at this stage. Test my broccoli. Almost done. Stir the noodles that they don't stick. Finish up melting the butter. I'll take this moment to pull the steamer basket straight out of the pot. I don't worry about keeping it hot because I'm going to pour hot sauce over it in just a sec. In goes all that chopped garlic. And I just want to take the edge off of this and soften it a bit. So, I want the flavor to stay strong. Just a few seconds is enough. Now, in goes, honestly, a pint of cream for two portions. You need a lot of sauce to cover all the elements of the dish. My phone tells me it's time to drain the pasta. I usually just do that with a pot lid to minimize dishes. Those can hold for a sec. I want to bring this cream up to a boil and cook it down until it's basically saucy on its own. Careful, the bubbles will stack up on you. You got to stir and or turn down the heat to keep it from boiling over. Get some pepper in there while I've got a moment. When it's almost but not quite looking thick enough to be a sauce, I will kill the heat. Wait until the bubbling almost stops and then grab my pecorino or parmesan cheese. I need to grate in the whole rest of that at least. The cheese is both the flavoring and the thickener of Alfredo sauce. You just have to melt it in slowly. Do not let it boil or else it'll split and go gritty and greasy. I'm just melting it in with the leftover heat. That looks a little bit thin, but it'll thicken up as it cools to eating temperature. So, we're done. And it won't need salt. Very salty cheese. Okay. pasta and broccoli on the plate with Alfredo sauce. I generally like to put sauce over the undressed pasta, American style. If you toss the noodles in the sauce, they tend to go gluey real fast. This chicken breast half is perfectly rested and still quite hot. So, on it goes. After that much cooling, this sauce is already too thick. I'll loosen it up with a little bit of milk or something. I like to do sauce directly on the broccoli and stuff and then just let some excess run under the chicken on the plate. You can mop up that sauce as you eat. There you go. One of my wife's favorites that she asks me to make when she wants a relatively balanced comfort food.