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This Healthy Tuscan Chicken Pasta Recipe has all the flavors of the restaurant version, but without all the calories, sodium, and fat. I love making this recipe in one pot using my Instant Pot.
This is one of my favorite pasta recipes, and it’s great for meal prep because it keeps well in the fridge all week long.
If this chicken recipe sounds good to you, I also recommend trying our Easy Burrito Bowl Recipe, this Simple White Chicken Chili Recipe, or this Chipotle Chicken Copycat Recipe.
Why I Love This Healthier Tuscan Chicken Pasta
I love how easy this recipe is to make in just one pot. The protein boost from the cottage cheese and Greek yogurt is an added bonus!
Enjoy!
– Becca
Ingredients in Tuscan Chicken Pasta
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
- Chicken Broth: You can make homemade broth or grab some from the store. If buying, make sure to get low sodium.
- Cottage cheese: Cottage cheese is high in many nutrients, including protein, B vitamins, and minerals. Be sure to use low fat, as nonfat will be too runny to set up properly.
- Greek yogurt: Greek yogurt packs twice as much protein and about half the amount of carbs and sugar as regular yogurt. Plain, low-fat Greek yogurt is best for this recipe.
How to make Instant Pot Tuscan Chicken Pasta
Step 1: Set your Instant Pot to sauté and lightly spray the pot with olive oil spray. Once your pot is hot add the garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and Italian seasonings. Cook for about 30 seconds until fragrant.
Step 2: Add the cubed chicken to the pot, and cook 2-3 minutes, stirring often. This will prevent your chicken from clumping together while it’s under pressure. Once the chicken is browned on all sides, add the chicken broth.
Step 3: Add the pasta to the pot and stir well, ensuring that all noodles are below the liquid.
Step 4: Close and lock the lid and turn the pressure valve to sealing. Select Pressure Cook (high) and set the time for 3 minutes.
While the chicken is cooking, blend the cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and parmesan cheese together until smooth, then set aside.
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Step 5: When the cook time is complete, quick release the pressure and remove the lid.
Stir the contents of the pot. Drain any excess liquid from the pot, keeping aside 1/4 cup.
Add the 1/4 cup liquid to the cottage cheese and Greek yogurt mixture and stir well.
Step 6: While the noodles are still hot, stir in spinach and basil.
Once the leaves have wilted, stir in your blended cottage cheese mixture. Then add your cheese.
Serve immediately. Garnish with additional parmesan and fresh basil.
Recipe Tips
- If you don’t have or can’t find sun-dried tomatoes, you can substitute fresh, halved grape tomatoes. For the Instant pot, reduce your cooking liquid by ½ cup when using fresh tomatoes.
- While this recipe tastes best when followed exactly, you can add double the Greek yogurt or cottage cheese if you don’t have one of them on hand.
- Cut your chicken into equal-sized pieces to make sure they are cooked evenly.
- If using gluten free pasta, reduce Instant Pot cook time to 2 minutes.
Tuscan Chicken Pasta FAQs
I like using penne pasta because it soaks up all the creamy goodness in its little holes. I usually go with whole wheat noodles for the extra nutrition. For gluten-free pasta, shorten the cooking time—use about half the time listed on the package, then subtract another 2 minutes.
Traditional creamy Tuscan chicken pasta isn’t the healthiest dish. In this recipe, we focused on healthier ingredients – I swapped the heavy cream for a lighter, high-protein mix of Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. There’s also the added nutrient-packed spinach, whole grain pasta, and lean chicken breast to make this a healthy dinner recipe.
Tuscan sauce usually refers to a rich sauce containing ingredients like parmesan, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach. We’ve kept those essential flavors but, instead of the added cream and butter, we’ve lightened up the dish with healthier ingredients like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt.
I like to pair this pasta dish with vegetables like this Air Fry Frozen Broccoli, this Eggplant Air Fryer Recipe, or these Carrot French Fries.
Healthy Eating Plans
21 Day Fix Containers
For the entire recipe: 2 ½ Green Containers, 10 Red Containers, 12 Yellow Containers, and 2 Blue Containers. I give you the count for the entire recipe so its easier to calculate 21 Day Fix containers if you change something.
For each 1 ½ cup serving: 1/3 Green Container, 1 2/3 Red Containers, 2 Yellow Containers, and 1/3 Blue Containers.
2B Mindset
I would eat this as a healthy lunch with extra vegetables.
If you tried this Healthy Tuscan Chicken Pasta Recipe or any other recipe on my site please leave a rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
Healthy Instant Pot Tuscan Chicken Pasta Recipe
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Equipment
- Instant Pot 6 qt
- Sealing Rings
- Vitamix Blender
Ingredients
- 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes sun dried with no oil or grape tomatoes, halved
- 3 tbsp Italian seasoning
- 2 tbsp garlic minced
- 2 lbs chicken breast (about 2 large breasts, diced into 1-inch cubes)
- 3 cups chicken broth 1 cup only for Crockpot method.
- 3 cups whole wheat pasta I used one 12 oz. box
- ¾ cup cottage cheese 2%
- ¾ cup Greek yogurt 2%
- 2 cups spinach baby
- 2 tbsp basil fresh, or 1 tsp dried basil
- ⅔ cup parmesan cheese
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
Instant Pot:
- Set your Instant Pot to Sauté and lightly spray the pot with cooking spray. Once your pot is hot, add the sun-dried tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and garlic. Cook for about 30 seconds until fragrant. 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes 3 tbsp Italian seasoning 2 tbsp garlic
- Add your cubed chicken to the pot and cook 2-3 minutes, stirring often. Once your chicken is browned on all sides, add your chicken broth. 2 lbs chicken breast 3 cups chicken broth
- Add your pasta to the pot and stir well, ensuring that all noodles are below the liquid. 3 cups whole wheat pasta
- Close and lock the lid and turn the pressure valve to sealing. Cook on high pressure for 3 minutes.
- While your chicken is cooking, blend the cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and grated parmesan together until smooth (in a blender or food processor), then set aside. ¾ cup cottage cheese ¾ cup Greek yogurt ⅔ cup parmesan cheese
- When the cook time is complete, quick release the pressure and remove the lid. Stir. Drain any excess liquid from the pot, keeping aside 1/4 cup. Add the 1/4 cup liquid to the cottage cheese mixture and stir well.
- While your noodles are still hot, stir in spinach and basil. Once the leaves have wilted, stir in your blended cottage cheese mixture. Serve immediately. Garnish with additional parmesan and fresh basil. 2 cups spinach 2 tbsp basil
Crock Pot:
- Lightly spray a large skillet with cooking oil, then add tomatoes, garlic, Italian herbs, and pepper. Sauté over high heat for 30 seconds or so until it becomes fragrant.
- Add your cubed chicken to the pan and brown for 1-2 minutes until the chicken no longer sticks together.
- Transfer chicken and sun dried tomatoes (all of the contents of the pan) to your crockpot and top with chicken broth. Cook on high heat for 2-3 hours, or low heat for 4-5 hours.
- About 20 minutes before you’d like to eat, boil the pasta in a separate pot according to package directions. Once cooked, drain and add to the Crockpot.
- Drain any excess liquid (set aside 1/4 cup) and add spinach and basil. Stir until spinach is wilted.
- Blend cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and parmesan cheese in a blender until smooth, and add the mixture to the Crockpot.
- Stir the cottage cheese mixture and 1/4 cup pasta water into the contents of the slow cooker.
- Stir one last time and serve immediately with extra parmesan cheese and fresh basil, as desired.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Make This Recipe?
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My whole family loved this dish! You can’t even tell that the “creamy sauce” is FF cottage Cheese and FF greek Yogurt (I made the WW version). It tastes so decadent! Since it is a zero point food (for me anyways), I plan on adding like 2 cups of sun dried tomatoes instead of 1/2 next time. MAKE THIS! YOU WON’T REGRET IT!
What oven temperature do you heat after storing in refrigerator ?
After refrigerating this, I heat it up in the microwave :)
I was recently diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes and have been trying to find healthy versions of the foods I like.
I cooked this in my instant pot and it came out great! Couple suggestion: add closer to 4 cups chicken broth so noodles are covered, add an extra 1/2 TB Italian seasoning, add double garlic. These additions really helped balance the Greek yogurt taste. Will definitely make this again!
I made the stovetop version and it came out a HUGE mess. Mushy with absolutely 0 flavor. I don’t know what I did wrong. I feel bad having to throw away so much in ingredients. Cooking everything in one spot on the stovetop did not work. I’m sure it came out better in the instant pot.
I’m sorry this didn’t work for you–we make it often on the stove and love it :-/
I followed this recipe exactly as written and it did not taste good at all. I used my Instant Pot. I’m not even a picky eater but the Greek yogurt taste was so strong. The chicken turned out good and the pasta itself was a good texture, but it just tasted like Greek yogurt covered pasta. My husband wouldn’t even eat it. The Greek yogurt/cottage cheese combo is just NOT it.
I’m sorry you didn’t love this!
Absolutely delicious! The entire family loved it. Even my teenage son who is so picky!
Thank you!!
Love this recipe!!
So good! So glad I found this lighter version of the famous InstantPot Tuscan chicken, I think this will go into the meal rotation. I didn’t have any cottage cheese so I used some ricotta I had on hand.
I wanted to like this recipe, but it turned out pretty gross tasting. The yogurt/cottage cheese combo is not the right flavor profile for this dish unfortunately. Adding pesto sauce to the leftovers makes them a little more bearable (I hate wasting food so am still eating them).
I’m sorry you didn’t love this recipe!
This recipe is so confusing. First off, I add the pasta that was recommended and not what was actually used. The chicken broth asked in recipe did not reach above the pasta as it needed to. One because I used more than what the one who wrote this actually used and two, bc the recipe only asked for 3cups. so what did I do? Add more broth, which in turn made my pasta turn into mush. Also no salt and pepper? Geez.
Hi Alli, I’m sorry you found this confusing. You didn’t mention which cooking method you used, so it’s difficult to help. Did you use the same pasta that I did? Whole wheat and the same shape? That could cause a discrepancy in how much broth was needed, of course, depending on the cooking method.
I don’t use salt in my recipes unless it’s needed for the actual cooking process. This allows the person who is eating the food to salt according to taste and health concerns. You can see that in my recipe tips towards the bottom of the post and in the printable recipe area.
I am in NEED of HELP!!
I have recently started BeachBody and the 21 Day fix. I make a lot of recipes, like these, and have no idea how to figure the container portions when I do. I also eat frozen meals at work sometimes. Do you measure by % or grams of protein, carbs, fat etc? I really need some guidance!!
For instance this morning I stopped at Sonic and got a sausage egg and cheese toaster no bread. I then entered that in MyFitnessPal to get the nutritional facts. It shows protein at 15g or 15% of my daily goal (This may not be the same as BeachBody, as I can’t figure out how to be sure my fats, carbs, and protein % match my Calorie goal or portions)
ANY and ALL help is welcomed!!
Hi Brandi,
Anything from Sonic isn’t going to be approved-there is no way to track that. The Fix is all about ingredients, the nutrition info comes second. Ordering something without bread isn’t always helpful-for the Fix, you want the carbs and they should be whole grain.
This might help get you on the right track: https://mycrazygoodlife.com/what-is-the-21-day-fix/
You’ll need a food list, follow that for the guidelines of what you should and shouldn’t be eating. This link can help you find more info: https://mycrazygoodlife.com/tag/21-day-fix-tips/
Also, there are some YouTube videos that will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az1lnUQ0QNc&list=PLprwSHTg6Ys_ywJNV5BnhmCHD_0XQDUzR