Creamy Garlic Tuscan Chicken

I always find weeknight dinners a struggle. We normally don’t get home from work until 6:00 at the earliest, and by that time I’m getting pretty hangry. I need to know what I’m going to make well ahead of time, otherwise when we get off the bus and wander into the supermarket, there’s a good chance I’m going to snap into a hangry rage.

I always hear people say you shouldn’t shop when you’re hungry, because you end up craving everything you see. I’m kind of the opposite. When I shop hungry, nothing looks appealing, which in turn makes me super grumpy. The longer it takes for me to pick something, the hungrier I get. It’s a vicious cycle. Really I need to shop when I’m feeling just slightly peckish. That’s my sweet spot for inspiration!

With all that in mind, I’ve decided that I need to get much better with meal planning. I want to create a stock pile of quick and easy recipes that we can choose from on weeknights so we don’t have to think too much about what to make. Hopefully this will greatly decrease the chances of me having a minor meltdown in the produce department.

This recipe is definitely going to be the first to join the rotation list. I ended up making it twice this week because I enjoyed it so much! I came across the recipe for this dish on The Recipe Critic, and ended up tweaking it a bit. I added a load of mushrooms to the recipe, and greatly increased the amount of spinach. I also upped the spices, mostly by accident on the first go, but then intentionally the second time around.

With the addition of the mushrooms, this recipe takes about 40 minutes to put together, but it only uses one frying pan, so you save time on dishes afterwards!

The sauce is creamy, and garlicky, and delicious! The sun-dried tomatoes add a great kick of flavour. Since Collin can’t eat onions without suffering, I have to omit them from everything I make, and I always miss them greatly because they add such an amazing base flavour. This recipe doesn’t have any onions, but it still tastes delicious and leaves me wanting for nothing.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the sliced chicken breast and season very lightly with just a little salt, and a generous sprinkling of fresh ground black pepper. Cook for 3-5 minutes on each side, or until cooked through.

Transfer the cooked chicken to a large plate and set aside.

Add the sliced mushrooms to the skillet that you just removed the chicken from. Cook until the mushrooms are browned and any excess moisture has evaporated. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to the same plate as the chicken.

Add the chicken stock, cream, parmesan cheese, garlic powder and Italian seasoning to the skillet. You can buy ready mixed Italian spice blends, but I usually just mix up my own. I’ve included the blend that I used in the recipe notes at the bottom of this post.

Cook the mixture over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until the sauce starts to thicken up. It won’t get super thick, but it will get thicker. Think of it as the difference between whisking a pan of water versus whisking a pan of cream.

Once the sauce starts to thicken, stir in the sun-dried tomatoes and spinach.

Let the spinach cook down until it just starts to get wilty. It may seem like a lot at first, but spinach cooks down to practically nothing, so it’ll continue to shrink down as it cooks.

Add the cooked chicken and mushrooms back into the pan and let it simmer together for 2-3 minutes more.

This saucy mixture is delicious served as is, or on top of a bed of rice or pasta!