This pesto chicken and green beans is a low carb pasta night with a clever noodle: french green beans, which hold their bite where soft swaps go to mush. Tossed with chicken and pesto in one quick pan, it comes in around 5 grams of net carbs and never turns watery.
Well I just couldn't make you wait any longer for a recipe with that yummy pesto I made earlier in the week. This is one of those recipes that is so simple that you will probably hear yourself saying "why didn't I think of that". If you miss pasta this recipe is the natural replacement for the urge. Let me introduce you to the all natural pasta replacement aka the green bean. I prefer to use french green beans because they are smaller. Now you can have your pesto pasta and not feel guilty.
The green bean noodle holds its shape
Most pasta swaps fall apart under a sauce. Zucchini noodles weep, shirataki can go rubbery, and both turn a bright dish into a puddle. Green beans do the opposite: cooked to al dente they stay firm and snappy, which is exactly what you want under an oil-based pesto that would otherwise slide right off a soft noodle. There is even an Italian precedent for it. Pesto alla genovese, the basil sauce from Liguria, is traditionally tossed with pasta and green beans together, so dropping the pasta and keeping the beans is a natural low-carb nod to the original Genoese plate. The french beans I prefer are thinner and read more like a noodle.
One pan, two burners
The whole thing cooks in about fifteen minutes if you run two burners. Steam the green beans on one while the cubed chicken cooks with a spoon of pesto on the other, and they finish together. The one thing that matters is draining: get the water off the beans and any liquid off the chicken before you toss everything with the rest of the pesto, so the sauce coats instead of pooling. Cook the chicken through to 165 degrees F, the USDA mark for poultry, and finish with grated parmesan. For another way with the same beans, my parmesan garlic green bean fries make a crisp side, and this dish is one of the carriers in my low carb pasta substitutes guide.
Sources
USDA FoodData Central, nutrient references for green beans, chicken, and pesto; poultry safe temperature.
Sugarfreechic test kitchen, low-carb pasta notes.
