Bacon Chicken with Parmesan Cream Sauce

Tonight’s dinner? Perfectly cooked bacon and garlic, smothered in a creamy, buttery Parmesan sauce, poured right on chicken and piled high on fettuccine, for a filling, delicious family friendly meal. 

 

Creamy Parmesan Bacon Chicken Recipe

Now this recipe has several steps, but do not get overwhelmed. Overall its a super easy recipe, but because making this chicken recipe requires cooking chicken, pasta, and sauce, you will have to pull out a few pans to get started.

(hint: Make sure your dishwasher is empty!)

The first thing I am going to do is apologize for the images. I was simply cooking up dinner and decided to capture it with my cell phone just in case it was delicious- and it was- so I knew I had to share.

While the images are def not professional, the food is delicious and this is a recipe you will thoroughly enjoy tonight for dinner. 

The best way to really see the recipe and see if its something you want to eat is to check out the video included. I captured some cell phone video recipe footage because it always helps to see real life food in action. 

And this recipe is simple – make pasta, fry up your flavorful chicken, create a cream sauce and combine it all! I have done my best to break down all the steps below to make it easy to follow, but please ask any questions you may have. 

INGREDIENTS

Scroll to the bottom for a printable version of this post, including all measurements and instructions, so you can follow along in your kitchen without being on your phone. 

Here is what ingredients you need to gather to get started: 

• butter
• heavy whipping cream
• fettuccine
• uncooked bacon
• chicken breasts
• flour
• shaved Parmesan
• minced garlic
• sea salt
• garlic powder
• peppercorn
• chicken broth

RELATED RECIPES: Asparagus Stuffed Chicken, Garlic Parmesan Chicken, Chicken and Rice Bake, Ritz Cracker Chicken, Alice Springs Chicken Copycat, Ritz Cracker Chicken Casserole

SIDE DISHES TO SERVE WITH THIS DISH: Creamed Peas, Smashed Potatoes, Spinach Salad, Baked Asparagus

Make the Pasta

Start with half a pack of fettuccine pasta and make as directed, until al dente, drain and set aside. 

In case you are wondering, there are worlds of delicious pasta styles, types and textures out there. You can always substitute pasta but they all soak up sauce differently and as this is a heavy cream sauce with bacon and Parmesan, its helpful to have a thicker pasta like fettuccine. If you alter it for something like angel hair, the sauce is too heavy and the pasta will wilt. Stick with thicker pastas like egg noodles or even pappardelle (my favorite but its not readily available here) would be fine if you didn’t have fettuccine on hand. 

Make the Crispy Bacon

You can be generous with your bacon if you want, I use half a pack of bacon personally.

Cut uncooked bacon up until small pieces (smaller than one inch) and place in a medium-high heat hot pan.

Get your bacon good and crispy and then carefully remove the bacon and set aside. (this takes about 8-10 minutes).

*while bacon is cooking, move onto step two prepping chicken*

Leave bacon grease in pan and add an additional tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Add 1 tablespoon minced garlic to oil and combine.

Allow vegetable oil to get up to pan heat and garlic to cook, about a minute or two, before adding your prepped chicken.

Make the Crispy Garlic Chicken

While bacon is cooking, get started with the chicken, pull out plastic wrap and put on counter. Put breasts on plastic wrap and cover top with another sheet of wrap. 

Pound chicken breasts down, keeping them all even (helps with ending cooking around the same time) to about half an inch thick. 

 

(this is an image from my stuffed chicken recipe, I do it the same way there – just wanted to give you a visual!)

Sprinkle salt (I prefer large grain sea salt), ground peppercorn, and garlic powder to both sides of chicken.

Repeat with all four breasts. 

Add approximately 1 cup of flour to a plate and dredge chicken in flour on both sides.

Throw any unused flour away. 

Place chicken breasts in skillet for 6 minutes on each side. Do not try to flip chicken too quickly as it will stick to the pan.

At 6 minutes your chicken should easily flip to the other side to finish cooking and have a nice brown coloring. 

NOTE ABOUT COOKING:

• Times may vary depending on how thick your breasts are, so adjust if needed. Chicken needs to be cooked all the way through before consuming. Please note that you finish warming your chicken in the pan near the end (right in the sauce) so its ok if its nearly finished at this point. 
• My family is a family of four, so we always make four chicken breasts, but feel free to just make two if you like. I wouldn’t really alter the sauce content even if you make two as having the extra sauce is delicious.  If you are making extra chicken, you may need two pans, depending on how large your skillets are and that is fine too. Just fry up the second set of breasts in a separate skillet before moving on.

 

Make the Creamy Parmesan Sauce

Once chicken is done being cooked, set aside. No need to drain any excess oil or bits in the pan. 

Add chicken broth, butter, bacon pieces and whipping cream back to the pan until it boils, stirring constantly. Sauce should begin to thicken in a few minutes.

Add half a cup of fresh shaved Parmesan cheese to sauce. 

Lower temperature on pan and add chicken breasts into sauce for 3- 5 minutes. 

Add fettuccine pasta to pan and use tongs to mix everything up.

Sprinkle with extra shaved Parmesan if desired.

Serve!

This is a heavy meal, and could use some color, so I recommend serving with some roasted veggies. 

Variations

• Substitute bacon for pancetta 

If you made my recipe and altered it or have feedback, please let me know. I love hearing how you made this recipe your own and some of my best future alterations have come from reader suggestions.