sunday suppers- sonora chicken pasta

Creamy, cheesy pasta topped with sliced, grilled chicken, bbq black beans, and diced tomatoes make up this decadent and delicious sunday suppers- sonora chicken pasta.

This recipe is adapted from Ruby Tuesday’s. It is a specialty that my Dad would make for a family dinner because it serves a lot!

One year for Christmas we decided to go away for the holiday and stay at a resort. The resort was only about an hour away. It was my mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, niece, me, and my boyfriend. I was in charge of breakfast on one of the days and my Dad was in charge of supper one night. So he made this sonora chicken pasta. I’ll never forget because he forgot to bring the Velveeta cheese. It was Christmas morning when he remembered and Mikey and I weren’t coming up until late Christmas morning while everyone else went up on Christmas Eve. So my Dad was kind of in a panic because it was Christmas morning, everything was closed, and he didn’t have pretty much one of the main ingredients for this dish. Luckily, we called Mike’s aunt who lives near us, and she actually had some Velveeta cheese we could have. She saved our Christmas!

Ingredients

1 6-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast grilled and cut into 1/4 inch slices

16 ounces (1 lb) penne pasta, cooked

6 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup onion, finely chopped

1 small garlic clove, minced

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1 cup hot water

salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 to 1 tsp hot sauce

1tsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

3/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese

3/4 cup Velveeta cheese, cubed

1 cup prepared salsa

1/2 cup sour cream

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 small clove garlic, minced

1/4 cup onion, finely chopped

1 tsp oil

1/2 cup prepared BBQ sauce

1/4 cup diced tomatoes, for garnish

1 Tablespoon green onions, sliced

Recipe for sonora chicken pasta

This recipe is made in 3 different steps.

Firstly, you grill a boneless, skinless chicken breast and cut it into 1/4 inch slices. You can do this a head of time, if needed.

Secondly, is the black beans. The original recipe calls for using dry black beans and letting them simmer with salt, garlic, and onion for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. I skip this part and just use canned black beans. Again, you can do this ahead of time, if needed.

Lastly, is the Sonora cheese sauce. It’s a lot of ingredients but it comes together pretty quickly.

Then all you do is place pasta in a mixing bowl. Add cheese sauce and toss to coat evenly. Pour into a heated bowl. Place chicken on top of pasta, then ladle black beans on top. Sprinkle with diced tomatoes and chopped green onions.

I like to serve this family style and add all of the cheese sauce to the pasta and top with all of the black beans and chicken and garnish with tomatoes and green onions in one very large serving bowl.

(This recipe is adapted from The Tribune Review which was adapted from Ruby Tuesdays. I linked to the Tribune Review but was unable to find the recipe in their archives. I found another recipe online from The Recipe Link that you can find here.)

Enjoy!