Meals · Pasta & noodle bakes

Chicken alfredo

Name: Chicken alfredo
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 2 breasts chicken breast; 1 tbsp olive oil; 1 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 3 tbsp butter; 2 cloves garlic, minced; 1 cup heavy cream; 1 cup grated parmesan; 400 g dry fettuccine pasta, cooked al dente, water saved; to finish fresh parsley, chopped

America's favourite pasta order, from scratch: seared chicken over fettuccine in a parmesan-cream sauce that takes ten minutes and no jar. The honest numbers are the point.

Time: 30 min (10 prep + 20 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 938 kcal
Protein: 51 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

2 breasts chicken breast500 g
1 tbsp olive oil15 g
1 tsp salt5 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g

Sauce

3 tbsp butter45 g
2 cloves garlic, minced8 g
1 cup heavy cream240 g
1 cup grated parmesan90 g

400 g dry fettuccine pasta, cooked al dente, water saved944 g
to finish fresh parsley, chopped5 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Season the chicken, sear it in the oil 5–6 minutes a side until golden and cooked through, and rest it under foil.
Same pan: butter and garlic for a minute, then the cream. Simmer 3–4 minutes until it coats a spoon.
Off the heat, whisk in the parmesan a handful at a time — boiled parmesan turns to string; residual heat turns it to silk.
Toss with the pasta and a splash of pasta water, top with the sliced chicken and parsley.

Why does restaurant alfredo taste heavier?

Because it is — most chains mount the sauce with extra butter and use more cream per plate than this whole recipe. The Richer build gets you there, with the number attached.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

22% of kcal

55% water

5 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 3753 kcal goes into the pot, 1853 g of ingredients comes out as ~1584 g of food → 237 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 237
Protein: (22%); 13 g
Fat: (45%); 12 g
Carbohydrates: (33%); 20 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 340 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.