I’ve been playing around with a lot of new recipes lately. I mentioned a few months ago that I’ve been busting out some of my old cookbooks and revisiting old recipes I’ve wanted to try but haven’t. I was trying to think of what to make the other night and I had some ricotta cheese that was about to go bad and some chicken I needed to use up and did some creative Googling and boom… found a recipe that gave me the inspiration to create this one.

It ended up turning out SO yummy and both John and I went back for seconds AND we had leftovers.

Hope you enjoy this one!

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RECIPE | Pesto Chicken Stuffed Shells

An easy and delicious recipe for pesto and chicken stuffed shells.

Course Main

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 4 -5

Author Molly Stillman

Ingredients

• 12-16 jumbo pasta shells
• 8 oz. of ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese divided
• 1 cup of mozzarella cheese divided
• 2 cloves of minced garlic
• 1 lb. of chicken breast cubed
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning
• 3-4 tablespoons of pesto

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large skillet, add the olive oil and garlic and bring to a simmer. Then, add in the cubed chicken breast and top with the Italian seasoning. Cook the chicken all the way. Once the chicken is fully cooked, I "shred" the chicken by just "cutting it up" with my wooden spatulas... if that makes sense. You just basically want to break up the chicken so it's in small pieces.
3. In a large pot, cook the jumbo pasta shells according to the directions. Then, drain them but leave just a little bit of water in the pot so that they don't get stuck together.
4. In a large bowl, mix the ricotta cheese, half the parmesan cheese, about half the mozzarella cheese, and the pesto. Once that's all mixed up, add in the chicken and really mix it all together.
5. Then, stuff each shell with the mixture and place in a pre-greased baking dish. Then top with the remaining parmesan cheese and mozzarella cheese. I added a lot of extra cheese because that's how I like it.
6. Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
7. Serve and enjoy!

What about you? Are you a stuffed shell fan? Will you try this?

Recipe heavily adapted from here.

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