In the past, I was using more ground chicken in our meals instead of ground beef, primarily for health reasons. Then, when I was grocery shopping I could rarely find it at the store, and slowly but surely I started slacking on my ground chicken purchases and going back to ground beef.

Turns out that ground chicken needs to be my ‘regular’ instead of ground beef since I have issues with cholesterol. Seriously it’s just not fair to have high cholesterol when you eat healthy…ugh stinking genetics!

So, as I was venturing out on my latest grocery store trip, I found ground chicken at Walmart! Even better…it was cheaper than the ground beef! That’s a win in my book!

I decided that for dinner, I really wanted a comfort type meal. I’m not sure why when I think of comfort meals I think of pasta but it’s filling! I love that I can make a casserole style meal with some pasta and have enough to feed a large family or feed my family multiple times over!

This dish easily could feed at least 10! We have enough to last us a week, but I’m sure I’ll be eating it for lunch and dinner, so maybe not quite that long. I also enjoy adding a Mexican twist to give it a little spice…not too much of course but just enough!

I added a little taco seasoning to our ground chicken, then I mixed those into the noodles along with a few other ingredients and assembled my layered casserole! The chicken is delicious and honestly I can’t even tell the difference between it and the ground beef. My husband and I loved the taste and the texture of this ground chicken.

This is a great dish for a pot luck too since it has lots of servings. As we head back to school this week, I’m so happy that I made this because it also gave me a night off from cooking and allowed us to focus on all the back to school fun activities!

For this recipe, I adapted my Mexican Lasagna. I knew that since the lasagna was a hit this would be too and it sure was! We paired it with a side salad for the perfect dinner!

[print_recipe]

Steps

Preheat oven to 350*.

1. In a large skillet, sprayed with non stick cooking spray, cook the ground chicken until well done.

2. While the chicken is cooking, prepare and cook the macaroni as instructed on the package. Drain and return to the bowl.

3. Once the chicken is done, drain it and return to the skillet adding in the taco seasoning and preparing as it is indicated on the package.

4. Add the cooked and seasoned chicken to the macaroni pasta along with the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes with chilies. Mix this until all the pasta is well coated.

5. Spray a 9x13 dish with non stick cooking spray, then place 1/2 the pasta mixture on the bottom of the dish evenly.

6. Top it evenly with the ranch style beans, half of the olives and onions, then sprinkle with 1/2 cup of the cheese.

7. Place the remaining pasta on top of this layer.

8. Top with the remaining black olives, onions, and cheese.

9. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Serves 8-10