Easy pasta dish that’s so full of flavors, you can’t stop eating it. Chicken breast cooked with lemon pepper spices and served on top of pasta that’s been tossed in lemon pepper sauce.
LEMON PEPPER CHICKEN FETTUCCINE
You ask for an easy dinner and I deliver! Well, I don’t actually deliver the meal but I “deliver” the recipe. It is very easy to make and SO tasty, you will have no trouble with this lemon pepper chicken at all.
It’s lemon pepper seasoned chicken on top of fettuccine that has been cooked in lemon pepper sauce. Lemon pepper seasoning is also homemade. Hubs thought it was so fancy that even the lemon pepper seasoning was homemade but what he didn’t know was that it was only homemade because I simply didn’t have any store-bought in the pantry.
Sometimes my family thinks that I’m all “Martha Stuart” and make homemade everything, but really, most times I just don’t feel like going to the store over one ingredient.
HOW TO MAKE LEMON PEPPER SEASONING
Next time you’re frantically looking for lemon pepper seasoning in your pantry, don’t panic. You can easily make homemade seasoning and there are only 3 ingredients.
You will need lemons, whole peppercorns or ground black pepper, and coarse salt.
First thing to do is zest 4 lemons and dry out the zest. Spread lemon zest in a baking sheet, on top of parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 170, which is the lowest setting most oven will go now. Place the baking sheet in the oven and let the lemon zest dry out completely. It takes about 30 minutes.
Once lemon zest has dried, combine it with peppercorns and coarse salt in an herb grinder and blend. (Psst, I actually use my coffee grinder as an herb grinder and it works perfectly well.)
Use what you need for the recipe and store the rest in an air-tight glass jar.
SOME MORE RECIPES TO TRY:
Fettuccine with Bourbon Bacon Sauce
Tomato Basil Sausage Pasta Skillet
One-Pan Fettuccine Alfredo from No. 2 Pencil
One-Pot Chicken Pot Pie Fettuccine from Whole and Heavenly Oven
If you made any of my recipes and shared them on Instagram, make sure to tag me @willcookforsmiles and #willcookforsmiles so I can see all the things you tried!
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Lemon Pepper Chicken Fettuccine
Ingredients
- 1 large chicken breast
- 1 Tbsp lemon pepper seasoning
- Vegetable oil for cooking
- 6-8 oz fettuccine
- Save 3 Tbsp of water from cooking pasta
- 3 Tbsp butter
- 1 large leek
- Salt
- Water from cooking pasta
- 1/3 cup chicken stock
- 2 tsp lemon pepper seasoning
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp Fresh grated Parmesan cheese for topping
- 1 tbsp Green onions for topping
Instructions
- Cook pasta, drain and set side. Make sure to save a little bit of pasta water.
- Cut off the dark green leaves off the leek and the very bottom by the roots, discard what you cut off or save it for making homemade vegetable stock. Wash the leeks and cut them length-wise in half. Thinly slice the leek halves into half circles. Set aside.
- Preheat a medium cooking pan, over medium heat. Add some vegetable oil.
- Cut chicken breast in half, width-wise, and season each side generously with lemon pepper seasoning.
- Cook seasoned chicken breasts until done. Take them out of the pan and set aside.
- In the same cooking pan, add butter and sliced leek and cook until golden, stirring often. Season with a little bit of salt.
- Once leeks are cooked, add pasta water, chicken stock and lemon juice. Mix well.
- Add lemon pepper seasoning, mix and taste if you need to add any more salt.
- Stir in pasta into the sauce and cook for about 5 minutes.
- Slice chicken and either mix it into the pasta or add it on top of pasta.
- Grate some Parmesan cheese on top. Add some diced green onion on top as well. Serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Alexandra says
Great, easy recipe…I didn’t have fettuccine so I used angel hair pasta and added asparagus. It was absolutely delish.
LyubaB says
Hi, Alexandra! I am so glad you liked it and thank you for taking the time to tell me. 🙂
David Harrison says
We just made this and it was a huge hit. The whole family loved it. No doubt that it’s fantastic as written, We only made a few minor changes, and two of those: 1) included the light-green parts of the green onions with the leeks. 2) added the zest of two lemons (used half on the chicken and half in the sauce), and 3) added some peas in with the pasta, just to have a bit more vegetables. I think artichoke hearts would also work really nicely in this dish. Also found that it’s nice to squeeze a bit of fresh lemon juice over the dish after it’s plated. That really gives it a nice brightness. Thanks for the recipe Lyuba. This is the first one of yours that we’ve made; looking forward to checking out some of the others.
David Harrison says
Sorry, got distracted while editing the post, came back and hit send. LOL *two of those don’t involve any extra ingredients.
lyuba says
Thank you so much for coming to tell me, David! I’m so glad you liked it and those sound like great changes. I do think the artichokes will go very well here because artichokes are great with lemon flavor. You can absolutely adjust lemon flavor as much as you prefer 🙂
nata says
How much pasta water do you add to the chicken stock and lemon juice? Is it the 3 T saved or a different amount?
This recipe looks delicious and easy.
Thank you.
lyuba says
Hi Nata,
Yes, you would add what you saved from cooking pasta. I hope you enjoy it!!