Chicken & Spinach Penne
Forty-five grams of protein from a plate of pasta. That is what four ounces of chicken breast will do when you sear the strips in paprika and olive oil, pull them out, and wilt seven ounces of spinach with bell pepper in the drippings left behind. Toss with whole wheat penne and the whole thing closes out in fifteen minutes.
Sixty-three grams of carbs, eleven grams of fiber, and six ingredients total. Nothing exotic, nothing fussy, and the pan drippings do all the flavor work a sauce would.
Ingredients
- penne, whole wheat 3 ounces
- bell pepper 1
- chicken breast 4 ounces
- paprika (ground spice) 1 teaspoon
- olive oil 1 tablespoon
- spinach 7 ounces
Method
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Cook the penne in a pot with plenty of boiling water and some salt according to the instructions on the package.
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Cut the bell pepper into pieces.
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Slice the chicken into small strips and season them with paprika powder, salt and freshly ground pepper.
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Heat the oil in a skillet and cook the chicken for 8-10 minutes until nicely browned and cooked through. Set the strips aside.
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Add the spinach and bell pepper to the pan drippings and let the spinach wilt while stirring. Add some pepper and salt to taste.
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Drain the penne and mix it with the spinach mixture and the chicken strips.
Before you drain the penne, scoop out half a cup of the cloudy cooking liquid. When you add it to the skillet with the wilted spinach and bell pepper, the dissolved starch grabs onto the olive oil and chicken drippings and emulsifies them into a silky coating that clings to every tube of pasta.
Behind this recipe
Is 63 grams of carbs in one dinner too much for fat loss?
A meta-analysis pooling 5,192 participants across multiple controlled trials found no fat-loss advantage to low-carb diets when protein and calories are matched. The total matters, not how much lands in a single meal. If your daily target is 150 to 200 grams of carbs, this dinner uses roughly a third of that budget and leaves plenty of room for the rest of the day.
Read the full evidence reviewCan my body use all 45 grams of protein at once?
Yes. The 30-gram ceiling originated in dose-response trials that only measured for three hours, then assumed anything unprocessed was wasted. Isotope-tracer work that followed subjects for twelve hours told a different story: the body kept absorbing and using protein the entire time. Forty-five grams from a single chicken breast falls well within what that extended research showed the body handles.
Read the full evidence reviewDoes eating pasta at dinner affect fat loss?
Four separate analyses of meal timing and body composition found zero meaningful difference between eating carbs early in the day versus at dinner, as long as total daily intake stays the same. The timing of this plate does not change the outcome.
Read the full evidence review
