Ground Chicken Bolognese
⏱ 15 min prep · 🍳 25 min · 🍽 4
5:40pm on a school night: the car's still got two soccer bags in it, the youngest fell asleep on the drive home from daycare, and the ground meat you pulled from the freezer turns out to be chicken, not the beef the recipe card in your head was expecting. Same red sauce your kids already know — just lighter in flavor and easier on the stomach than the usual version.
Ground chicken browns faster than beef, so the sauce is ready well before the pasta finishes boiling. Carrot, onion, garlic, a can of crushed tomatoes — the rest is whatever's already in your pantry on a given week.
File this one under the meal plan slot for nights you can't face deciding dinner from scratch: same method every single time, with only the meat changing depending on what's actually in the freezer.
Ingredients
- 1.000 gulrot
- 1.000 løk
- 2.000 stk hvitløk
- 1.000 package kyllingbryst
- 240.000 g tomat
- 1.000 jar tørket rosmarin
- 4.929 ml tørket timian
- 29.574 ml olivenolje
- 4.929 ml krydder (diverse)
- 180.000 g paprika
- 200.000 g pasta
- 14.787 ml smør
Instructions
Peel the carrot, onion, and garlic.
Finely chop them using a food processor.
Brown the chicken mince in a pan with a bit of olive oil.
Add the chopped vegetables, rosemary, and thyme, and cook for several more minutes.
Pour in the diced tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for five minutes.
Bring a pot of water to boil with 1 teaspoon salt per liter.
Cook the pasta according to package directions (approximately 10 minutes for penne).
Drain, reserving 2 tablespoons of pasta water.
Add the butter and stir.
Combine the meat sauce with the pasta.
Serve as Pasta Bolognese.
Ground chicken disappears into tomato sauce more completely than ground beef does — the texture is finer, so it's often enough to get a skeptical "meat sauce" kid eating without comment, even when that same kid picks chunks of chicken out of meatballs. The sauce freezes in flat portions without breaking or going watery, so a doubled Sunday batch reliably covers one weeknight you already know will be a scramble. The one real difference from the beef version is browning time: ground chicken is done in under half the time beef needs, which matters more than it sounds like at 5:45pm with the carpool still running.
FAQ
Can I freeze chicken bolognese?
The sauce freezes well on its own for up to three months — let it cool completely before packing it into freezer bags or containers, ideally in single-meal portions. Don't freeze it already mixed with cooked pasta, since the pasta turns mushy on thawing. Cook fresh pasta when you reheat the sauce instead, warming it in a saucepan with a splash of water if it's thickened up.
Can I substitute ground chicken for something else?
Ground beef or ground pork both work in the exact same recipe — just give the meat a few extra minutes in the pan to build the depth of flavor that chicken gets to faster. For a vegetarian version, swap the meat for red lentils and cut the sauce's simmer time by about five minutes, since lentils need less time than meat to soften.
How do I make the sauce milder for younger kids?
Run the carrot and onion through a food processor or grate them finely before they hit the pan, so they nearly disappear into the finished sauce. Serve shorter pasta shapes — penne or elbow macaroni — if spaghetti is still a coordination challenge. Season the pot for the youngest person at the table, and adjust your own plate afterward with chili flakes or extra garlic.
Can I make this ahead?
Yes — the sauce holds well for a couple of days stored in a sealed container in the fridge until you're ready to use it. Cook the pasta fresh the night you serve it; it only takes a few minutes and holds its texture better than pasta that's been sitting in sauce. This is one of those dinners worth slotting into a night you already know will be tight, since all you're doing that evening is reheating and boiling water.
How long do leftovers keep in the fridge?
Pasta already mixed with sauce keeps for two to three days in a sealed container in the fridge. Reheat it thoroughly, and stir in a little water or olive oil since the pasta keeps absorbing sauce the longer it sits.
Can kids help make this recipe?
They can peel carrots with a kid-safe peeler, measure out pasta in a measuring cup, or stir the sauce while it simmers with an adult nearby at the stove. Draining the pasta is usually the job they ask for by name, so let the oldest one try it with help steadying the pot. Give them the same task a few times in a row and it turns into something they just do, without a reminder.