Easy Buffalo Chicken Pasta

This buffalo chicken pasta is super easy to make thanks to pre-cooked chicken breast chunks and a simple DIY buffalo pasta sauce. And since we focus on kinda healthy cookin’ around here, the chicken is lightly breaded and the pasta is a higher protein chickpea pasta.

When it’s all said and done, you’ll each serving of this buffalo chicken pasta has 24 grams of protein with just 29 grams of carbs and 320 calories! 

Ingredients for Buffalo Chicken Pasta

The ingredients are pretty straightforward, but I’ll cover a few things to know below. But first, here’s a look at everything you’ll need: 

• 2 sweet onions, 4 garlic cloves, black pepper, and olive oil
• buffalo sauce and your choice of milk 
• chickpea pasta (any pasta works)
• Perdue Simply Smart Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Chunks  (Disclaimer: I’m a paid Perdue Farms ambassador. Read more about my partnership with Perdue Farms.)

If you’ve never tried the Perdue frozen chicken breast chunks, you’re in for a treat. They get super crispy and taste just like popcorn chicken or nuggets you’d make at home. And look at the nutrition facts in the middle photo above—just 6 grams of fat compared to 15 grams of protein! 

Where to buy: Target is probably your best bet, but Perdue has a store locator on the product page. 

How to Make Buffalo Chicken Pasta

The easy parts: Bake or air fry the chicken according to the packaging and cook the pasta. (I love how Perdue puts air fryer instructions on its packaging.) That’s it! 

Aside from the chicken and pasta, all that’s left is the buffalo sauce. Start out by dicing two sweet onions and mincing some garlic. Then heat the olive oil in a large skillet (large enough to hold the sauce, cooked pasta, and chicken) and quickly sauté the onions.

Then you’ll throw the garlic in, cook for about 30-60 seconds, and add the milk and buffalo sauce. 

Continue cooking until you have a sauce. This should take about 4-6 minutes, though different skillets and stovetops will affect the cook time. See the two photos above for a reference of what the sauce should look like. 

Skillet note: If you’re using a stainless steel or cast iron skillet, add the milk and buffalo sauce slowly and use it to deglaze the pan (scrape any crispy bits off the bottom of the pan). 

Once you’ve got the sauce ready to rock, add the cooked pasta and chicken. Toss and serve! 

Recipe Modification Notes

During testing, I used everywhere between 1/4 cup and 1 cup of buffalo sauce. I felt the higher end was too salty but if you really love buffalo sauce, you can increase the ratio of buffalo to milk in the sauce. You might even try leaving the milk at its current level and cooking the sauce longer to reduce. 

Spice Level

This buffalo chicken pasta is on the milder side of the spice spectrum. If you’re super sensitive, you can reduce the amount of buffalo sauce used or go for full fat milk to balance the heat.

And if you end up with a spicy finished product, you could create a drizzle with blue cheese crumbles and a bit of fat free Greek yogurt. A source of sugar could help neutralize the heat as well. 

Cheese

If you hate blue cheese, you could go with another cheese like feta or freshly grated mozzarella, gruyère, or gouda. You could even pop it in the oven for a buffalo chicken pasta bake. Other options might include a low fat ranch drizzle or no cheese at all. 

And that’s a wrap. If you have a question about this buffalo chicken pasta, leave a comment below or join my Facebook group with 14,000 other healthy home cooks that would love to help you out! 

Buffalo Chicken Pasta

Baked-from-frozen crispy chicken chunks paired with chickpea pasta, a simple but delicious buffalo pasta sauce, and blue cheese crumbles.

4.19 from 22 votes

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Prep Time: 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes minutes

Servings: 8 servings

Calories: 320kcal

Author: Mason Woodruff

Ingredients

• 24 oz bag Perdue Simply Smart Lightly Breaded Chicken Chunks
• 1 Tbsp 16g Olive Oil
• 2 Sweet Onions diced
• 4 cloves Garlic peeled and minced
• 1 1/2 C 360g Cashew Milk, or your choice of milk
• 3/4 C 180g Buffalo Sauce, I used Frank's RedHot
• 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
• 8 oz dry Chickpea Pasta, or your choice of pasta
• 1/2 C 56g Blue Cheese Crumbles, optional

Instructions

• Bake or air fry the chicken according to its packaging and bring a pot of salted water to a boil to cook the pasta.**

For the Buffalo Pasta Sauce

• Heat a large skillet with the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and sauté for 3-4 minutes until they begin to soften and slightly brown.
• Add the garlic and cook for another 30-60 seconds until fragrant.
• Add the milk, buffalo sauce, and black pepper to the skillet and continue cooking over medium-high heat, stirring often, to reduce the mixture to a thick sauce. This should take around 4-6 minutes. Once the sauce has thickened, remove from the heat.
• Drain the cooked pasta and add to the sauce, tossing everything together, before adding the chicken. Fold everything together until the chicken is fully coated in the sauce.
• Top with blue cheese crumbles and fresh green onion, if desired.

Notes

**Cook the pasta for 2 minutes less than instructed on its packaging. And I like the chicken extra crunchy so I air fry for a few extra minutes. 

• Each serving of buffalo chicken pasta with blue cheese crumbles has 8 Smart Points.
• Without blue cheese, each serving has 295 calories, 23g protein, 29g carbs, 10g fat, and 7 Smart Points. 

Nutrition

Serving: 175grams | Calories: 320kcal | Carbohydrates: 29g | Protein: 24g | Fat: 12g

More Recipe Ideas for the Perdue Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Chunks

You could easily replace the homemade chicken “nuggets” in my General Tso Chicken, Orange Chicken, Copycat KFC Bowls, or Chicken and Protein Waffles with the Perdue chicken chunks.