Fettucine alfredo with chicken

As if that wasn't cliché enough.

I've always wanted to make some kind of pasta dish with alfredo sauce, because I've always heard that homemade alfredo sauce is easy to make, and much better than the jarred stuff.

Well, a lot of homemade things are better than their jarred equivalents, but that's not the point.

Wait, that is the point! Go make your own alfredo sauce after reading this, and you won't regret it (nor will you buy the jarred crap again).

Ingredients:
1 lb Fettucine noodles
~1 lb chicken after skinning/deboning (preferably white meat, but I don't see why dark meat like thighs wouldn't work)
~1.5 cups heavy cream
1 stick of butter (I never said it was healthy, did I?)
Parmesan cheese (don't use the Kraft sawdust--I mean parmesan "cheese")

That's it. I'm not kidding.

I bought split chicken breasts, which has bones, part of the ribcage, and skin attached, so I had a good amount of knifework to do. But hey, split chicken breasts are cheap--99 cents a pound when they're on sale, as opposed to something ridiculous like $4 a pound for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Here they are after skinning and deboning:


Season with salt and pepper, and sear the chicken.

Like that.

Cut the chicken into cubes after searing.

Assemble the ingredients for the alfredo sauce, and start boiling your pasta.

Drain pasta when it's done, and season it right after.

Now here's where things get a bit different from "traditional" fettucine alfredo. Apparently, the pasta is supposed to be hot enough so that you can just toss the pasta with cream, butter, and parmesan, and it'll all thicken up and come together without the need to make the sauce in a seperate pan. Judging by the temperature of the pasta, there was no way that was going to happen here, so I just made the sauce in a new pan.

Melt the butter into the heavy cream under low heat.

Add the pasta and toss. The sauce will look too thin here--don't worry.

Add your grated parmesan and toss until the parmesan melts and thickens the sauce. I don't have an exact quantity because I don't know how much I grated--just add parmesan in small increments until it looks thick enough to your liking.

Add the chicken, and crack some black pepper over the top (click for extra large).

And serve!