One Pot Chickpea Orzo
A creamy pasta recipe that you can hide healthy proteins inside of! Wooo!
I love a pantry dinner. I open all the cabinets, fridges, and freezers to scavenge together a recipe for dinner. It gets my creative juices flowing. This creamy pasta has some good protein and fiber from canned chickpeas. Smash these chickpeas to completely hide the beans and showcase a delicious gut-friendly creamy pasta recipe. Sprinkle in some pecorino cheese or your favorite aged Italian cheese for a delicious pop of flavor. I’m making this at least once a month and serving it up with a seasonal roasted veg.
Growing up Italian-American chickpeas were always shoved into the bean category. Sometimes we added them to our pasta salads or our soups and that’s their only purpose. After cooking for almost 15 years now, you start to understand the purpose of all these food groups and how they can benefit blending with other starches. Chickpeas for example act as a great binder for the recipe to develop into a creamy sauce without any additional starches or creams. Not only do we have a dish now that’s packed with low-cal high-protein beans, it also doubles to volume of pasta!
Orzo is my go-to one-pot pasta because it’s small enough to toast with vegetables or made into soups. Only one cup of orzo is enough, a little bit of orzo goes a long way.
Low cost recipes are the ones I gravitate to the most right now and this chickpea orzo pasta is going in the BANK! Save some money, save your time cooking, and make this recipe right away. It’s tasty and ultimately customizable. Happy cooking!
One Pot Chickpea Orzo
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium onion, finely diced
- 4 garlic cloves, finely minced
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 1/2 cups orzo
- 1/3 cup white wine *optional*
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 2 cups half and half
- 1 can chickpeas, half smashed
- 3/4 cup grated pecorino cheese
- Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
Preparation
- Preheat a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat and add olive oil.
- Add onions, minced garlic and pepper flakes to the pan and cook until onions turn translucent and garlic starts to brown.
- Add orzo to the mixture, stirring constantly until some of the orzo starts turning golden brown.
- Deglaze the pan with white wine and let reduce by half before adding in the chicken stock and half and half. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce to low.
- Once orzo is al dente, stir in smashed and whole chickpeas to the dish. Continue cooking until the pasta is cooked through. You may need to add tablespoon or more of water if the mixture cooked down too much.
- Remove from heat and stir in pecorino cheese. Taste for seasoning.
- Garnish with black pepper and enjoy!