This is a super delicious, super easy pasta salad that comes together quickly and is highly customizable. It’s just chicken, pasta, olives, and pesto. You can make your own chicken and make your own pesto and add bell peppers or red onion and slice your own olives….or you could buy a jar of pesto, shred a rotisserie chicken, and mix it with pasta and pre-cut olives. You could omit the olives altogether. You can sub in your favorite gluten-free pasta. You can skip the chicken altogether and add beans instead.
See? Customizable.
Chicken Pesto Pasta
Ingredients-
- cooked, shredded or cubed chicken
- pesto
- 1 can of black olives, sliced
- 1 lb of pasta, cooked according to package directions
- Fresh parmesan cheese
Directions-
- Combine chicken, pasta, and olives in a bowl.
- Add pesto and mix.
- Sprinkle liberally with parmesan cheese.
Notes-
- While pesto is traditionally made with pine nuts, you can use other nuts to make it instead. There are even nut-free versions like this one, which uses garbanzo beans.
- This is a great way to use up leftover chicken!