Main Meals

Chicken thigh pasta

6
Easy
10 minutes
30 minutes

“If you’re looking for a recipe to use up those green beans in the fridge, this pesto is your answer. Make this fast midweek supper between getting home from work and before loadshedding hits. Use any pasta,

Wine/Spirit Pairing
Woolworths Boplaas Touriga Nacional

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Ingredients

Method
  • 2 T Woolworths chicken rub
  • 4 T extra virgin olive oil
  • 100 g Woolworths sundried tomato quarters
  • 10 g fresh basil, plus extra for serving
  • 12 skinless, deboned free-range chicken thighs
  • 250 g rigatoni
  • For the pesto:

  • 300 g green beans, trimmed, chopped and blanched
  • 20 g Italian parsley
  • 4 T extra virgin olive oil
  • 50 g Woolworths hard cheese, plus extra for serving
  • 80 g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
  • sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method

Ingredients

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the chicken rub, olive oil, sundried tomatoes and basil in a blender. Blend until smooth. Rub the chicken thighs with the mixture and place on a baking sheet. Roast for 20–25 minutes, turning once and basting with the pan juices.

2.  Cook the rigatoni in boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and set aside.

3. To make the pesto, blend all the ingredients.

4. Stir the pesto through the pasta. Turn out onto a platter and top with the chicken thighs. Scatter with basil and hard cheese to serve.

Cook's note: The green beans are a master stroke here, but if you have a jar of Woolies’ basil pesto it will work just as well.

Photograph: Toby Murphy
Production: Khanya Mzongwana
Food assistant: Estee Skein

Find more chicken recipes here.

Khanya Mzongwana

Recipe by: Khanya Mzongwana

If you're anything like our deputy food editor Khanya Mzongwana, you're obsessed with uniqueness and food with feeling. Cook her family-tested favourites, midweek winners and her mouth-wateringly fresh takes on plant-based eating.

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Comments

  • default
    Ciara
    23 August 2023

    This recipe wasn’t great. The pesto with green beans was terrible. Even though I cooked the chicken for 30 minutes; it was still undercooked.

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