Penne alla vodka with chicken from The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science (page 699) by J. Kenji López-Alt

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Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • eazyurk on February 04, 2026

    Good recipe! Added extra salt

  • eclairea on January 24, 2026

    This wasn’t bad. I agree with the commenters that this needed salt. I also found the pasta boiling method odd, and resulted in overcooked noodles by the time the water came to a boil. Glad I tried it, though, the sauce itself was nice.

  • kastnich15 on February 27, 2025

    This is one of our favourite pasta recipes! As others have said, you do need to add some salt and the chicken is kind of superfluous here (I would leave it out but my husband is a dedicated meat eater and likes it.) But this is delicious overall. I have served it for guests and they asked for the recipe.

  • Lepa on March 27, 2023

    This is good. As others have noted, it needs some salt.

  • anya_sf on October 10, 2021

    Delicious, although like chefmichael says, you do need to add salt to taste. I didn't see a reason for the odd pasta cooking instructions, so I just cooked it the regular way, draining it 2 minutes before the time on the package so it could finish cooking in the sauce. While the chicken was good here, it didn't stand out. I added basil on top.

  • sosayi on February 18, 2021

    Pretty good version of vodka sauce and relatively easy to execute. Not sure if it's my favorite ever, th0ugh, so I'll probably keep trying other versions.

  • lholtzman on December 04, 2020

    Sauce can be made in advance. Take 1/2 the sauce out before adding chicken to make half vegetarian.

  • chefmichael on November 14, 2020

    Very good but is anyone else surprised that other than salting the pasta water, Kenji doesn’t call for another grain of salt in the instructions? This didn’t stop me from salting as needed of course. Was just very surprised at Kenji here!

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