Spaghetti with Chicken and Spicy Tomato Sauce

This Spaghetti with Chicken and Spicy Tomato Sauce is brought to you in collaboration with Barilla® to help you celebrate your mom for Mother's Day! As always, opinions in this post are my own.

This Mother's Day, Barilla® is helping us to celebrate our mothers by bringing you easy, homemade meals that are quick to prepare and are also made from scratch! I think that nearly everyone has memories of their moms or parents making spaghetti growing up and each family has its unique recipes and traditions.

So, an interesting tidbit about me is that there is a large gap while growing up where I didn't eat spaghetti. Not because my parents didn't make it, but because I was too picky and refused to eat the spaghetti sauce. My parents would reserve some plain noodles for me and I would eat them with a little butter and garlic (a combination my mom probably regretted introducing me to as it may have been one of the reasons why I refused to eat spaghetti sauce). It wasn't until I was older that I came to appreciate the spaghetti that my mom made. And now that I'm an adult, I absolutely love spaghetti and we even eat spaghetti a couple times a month in our house!

My favorite picture of my brother and me with our mom

Now that my brother and I are older and both living on our own, we gather at my parents' house every Sunday for family dinner. He brings his girlfriend, I bring my boyfriend, and we all bring our fur-babies! Spaghetti has become something I request for my mom to make as well as requesting other ingredients be added to the sauce which I used to also refuse to eat (specifically mushrooms and sausage).

This pasta that I'm sharing with you today is also not your traditional spaghetti as it's made with chicken thigh meat and jalapenos! You can control the heat of this recipe, but adding more jalapenos or using less. New Mexicans love our spicy food, so we'd probably add more jalapeno or even substitute green chile for the jalapeno! Barilla® also now offers gluten-free pasta, which I've used in this recipe. Both the original and gluten-free Barilla® pasta can now be found at Walmart. Even though this spaghetti doesn't use jarred sauce and makes a sauce from scratch, it is an easy recipe that is great for busy moms to make on a weeknight!

Spaghetti with Chicken and Spicy Tomato Sauce
Recipe slightly adapted from Barilla®

1 box spaghetti (gluten-free Barilla® spaghetti works here, which is about 12 oz.)
4 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil, divided
4 boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (about a pound)
1 Tbs. fresh oregano, chopped
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
1/2 c. dry white wine
2 lbs. plum tomatoes, crushed (or diced) (you can use canned crushed tomatoes here) (see note)
1 c. water
salt, to taste
1/2 c. cotija cheese, crumbled (feta cheese can be substituted here)
parsley, for garnish (optional)

Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, brown the chicken with 2 tablespoons of the extra-virgin olive oil in a large skillet. Stir in the oregano and the jalapeno. After about a minute, add the wine to the skillet and reduce the liquid to about half. Add the tomatoes and the water, season with salt and bring to a boil. (see note)

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions, then drain and toss the spaghetti into the sauce. Make sure the spaghetti is well coated, then stir in the leftover 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the crumbled cotija cheese.

Makes about 6 servings.


(Note: If you're using fresh tomatoes, instead of using a traditional method of grating them and discarding the skin, I like to keep the skins and use an unconventional method. I dice the tomatoes, add them to the pot with the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil, while using the back of a spoon to crush the tomatoes against the side. Using fresh tomatoes have more liquid, so you may want to reduce the water and add more water later if the sauce seems too dry or thick.)


This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Barilla®. The opinions and text are all mine.