High-protein chicken pasta: recipe with 60 g per serving

Pasta rarely deserves the blame it gets. The real issue is that a standard plate lands somewhere near 700 calories with barely 15 g of protein, which is a poor trade after a hard session. This version keeps the pasta where it is and adds 300 g of chicken plus a tomato-yoghurt sauce, which takes each serving to around 60 g of protein — one pan, one pot, under half an hour.

Prep time and servings

Prep: 10 minutes. Cooking: 18 minutes. Total: 28 minutes. Servings: 2.

Cooking for four? Double everything, but brown the chicken in two batches. A crowded pan drops in temperature, the chicken releases water and you end up steaming it rather than colouring it.

Ingredients

• 160 g dried pasta (penne or fusilli)
• 300 g skinless, boneless chicken breast
• 15 ml olive oil
• 200 g passata
• 150 g Greek yoghurt, 2% fat
• 30 g Parmesan, finely grated
• 100 g fresh spinach or red pepper
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp dried oregano (about 2 g)
• salt, black pepper, a pinch of chilli flakes if you want them
• about 100 ml of the pasta cooking water

Weigh the chicken raw. Once cooked, 300 g of breast comes down to roughly 220–230 g on the plate. That is just water leaving — the protein stays.

Method

1. Bring a pot of water to the boil and salt it, roughly a teaspoon per litre. While it heats, cut the chicken into 2 cm pieces.
2. Season the chicken with salt, pepper and half the oregano. Leave it for five minutes at room temperature while you prep everything else.
3. Get a wide pan properly hot, add the olive oil and lay the chicken out in a single layer. Leave it alone for the first two minutes so it takes on colour. Cook for 6–7 minutes in total, then lift it onto a plate.
4. Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook it one minute short of the packet time.
5. Turn the pan down, add the finely chopped garlic and fry for 30 seconds. Pour in the passata with the remaining oregano and the chilli, then let it bubble gently for 4–5 minutes.
6. Add the spinach, or the pepper cut into strips, and stir until it wilts down — about two minutes.
7. Take the pan off the heat before you stir in the yoghurt. This is where the recipe usually goes wrong: over direct heat the yoghurt splits and the sauce turns grainy.
8. Return the pan to the lowest heat, add the drained pasta, the chicken and 50–100 ml of the cooking water. Toss for a minute or two until the sauce clings, then stir through the Parmesan and check the salt.

Nutrition per serving

These figures are an estimate per serving, worked out from the quantities above and divided by two. Expect 5–10% variation depending on the brand of pasta and the fat content of your yoghurt.

• Calories: about 680 kcal
• Protein: about 60 g
• Carbohydrates: about 70 g
• Fat: about 17 g

For an 80 kg lifter working to a rough daily target of 1.6–2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight, one plate covers somewhere between a third and half of the day. The carbohydrates are there on purpose: 70 g is a sensible amount around training.

Variations and swaps

To cut calories, drop the pasta to 120 g and add another 100 g of vegetables. That brings a serving to roughly 590 kcal while protein stays above 55 g.

To push protein higher without adding fat, use lentil or chickpea pasta. It carries 20–25 g of protein per 100 g dry, which takes a serving past 70 g, but the texture is softer and it overcooks quickly — take two minutes off the packet time.

Dairy-free version: leave out the yoghurt and Parmesan, add two extra tablespoons of passata and a splash more cooking water. If you miss the creaminess, 40 g of blended lactose-free soft cheese does the job.

Chicken thigh works instead of breast. It stays juicier, but budget for around 4 g more fat per serving. The same trade-off decides the numbers on a homemade lean beef burger, where the cut of meat matters more than anything else you add. If you want a similar protein-to-carb split without pasta, a chicken and vegetable rice bowl does it, and on days when you cannot face cooking meat, protein pizza on a Greek yoghurt base hits a comparable number with less washing up.

When to see a doctor

If pasta and dairy meals reliably leave you bloated, cramping or running to the toilet, do not diagnose yourself and start cutting whole food groups. See your GP first — coeliac testing only works while you are still eating gluten, so removing it beforehand can produce a falsely normal result.

In short

300 g of chicken, 160 g of pasta, yoghurt instead of cream and a sauce loosened with cooking water. Two servings, roughly 680 kcal and 60 g of protein each, on the table in 28 minutes. If this becomes a weekly regular, weigh the dry pasta rather than eyeballing it — that is where an extra 100–150 calories quietly appears.