Gluten-Free Baked Penne Alfredo

Last week I was looking for some easy things to make for dinner that didn't require a lot of ingredients and that used up stuff we already had in the pantry or fridge. I found just what I wanted with this Gluten-Free Baked Penne Alfredo. It was inspired by Gimme Some Oven's Chicken Alfredo Baked Ziti.


It's basically just gluten-free penne pasta (which we already had), jarred alfredo sauce, bacon (which we already had), peas, and shredded mozzarella cheese. The alfredo sauce didn't cost that much, the peas were 99 cents, and the store-brand shredded cheese is always really cheap.

The original recipe calls for making your own alfredo sauce. Uh, no thanks. I do have a really good alfredo sauce recipe from chef Rocco DiSpirito, but it's so much easier to just use a sauce that comes pre-made.


Ingredients:
12-ounce box of gluten-free penne pasta
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup of frozen peas
8 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled
jar of alfredo sauce (whatever the standard size is)
cooking spray

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a medium pot, boil the pasta according to the package directions. During the last two minutes of cook time, stir in the frozen peas.
3. When the pasta and peas are done cooking, drain them and then return them to the pot.
4. Stir in the alfredo sauce and the crumbled bacon.
5. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray, and then spread half of the pasta into the dish.
6. Sprinkle one cup of the shredded cheese on top.
7. Pour the rest of the pasta on top of the shredded cheese layer, and then top THAT with the remaining shredded cheese.
8. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes.


Notes:
1. Once plated, we sprinkled grated parmesan on top of ours because we just really like cheese.

2. You can also add chicken if you want, but we didn't have enough leftover rotisserie chicken meat from another meal, so I just left out chicken.

3. If you want yours to be extra saucy, use two jars of alfredo sauce. I think ours could have benefited from just a little more sauce, but it really was fine with just the one jar.

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