Chicken pasta dishes - not in Italy?

I don't know why there are no traditional chicken pasta dishes, at least none that I know of. Hey, I am no pasta expert!

But my guess is that chicken, being a mild-tasting meat, does not go well with strong sauces. Or maybe it is just that the Italians did not eat a lot of chicken.

With today's perception of chicken being a healthy white meat, however, there is a growing interest in chicken and pasta recipes. (But see the health notes below. Modern chicken is not as healthy as most people think.)

In response to the growing interest in chicken, modern pasta chefs have obliged with a good variety of chicken pasta dishes such as garlic chicken. Some are variations of classic pasta recipes while others are brand new recipes such as pasta salads.

Chicken noodles

In Asia, however, chicken is very widely consumed and there are plenty of chicken noodle dishes - chicken noodle soup, curry chicken noodles, rice noodles with shredded chicken, dry (meaning with sauce instead of soup) chicken noodles with chunks of chopped chicken... and so on. The popular Malay / Indonesian noodle dish, mee soto, is a spicy chicken broth with shreds of chicken meat.

There are even "genuine" chicken pasta dishes - using pasta rather than noodles - in "Chinese" cooking. These are the many variations of chicken macaroni soup. In Asia - all the way from China and Hong Kong to Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore - this soup is more commonly served by Chinese food hawkers than (if at all) by Italian pasta chefs.

This section provides links to several chicken and pasta recipes, including Western / Italian pasta dishes as well as variations of Asian chicken noodle dishes, using pasta instead of noodle.

Italian / Western pasta with chicken
	Garlic chicken pasta
	Spinach chicken Alfredo
	"Fun" chicken carbonara
Asian chicken noodle / pasta dishes
	Chinese garlic chicken noodles / pasta

HEALTH NOTES: Are chicken pasta dishes healthy?

Chicken, because of modern intensive farming, is not all that healthy. They are kept in cramped conditions, with several hundred thousand chickens in a "factory farm". They are injected with growth hormones. They do not get sunlight nor exercise; they have to be constantly fed antibiotics to prevent illness.

Another issue is that chicken feed routinely contains arsenic, a highly toxic heavy metal. This is added to prevent the growth of fungus. It was only in June 2011, after some 60 years of denial, that the US Food and Drug Administration finally admitted that arsenic in chicken feed can cause health issues in people who eat chicken.

For healthier options, choose organic, free-range or antibiotic-free chicken to prepare your chicken pasta dishes.

Such terms can still be misleading, however. "Free-range chicken" might have been raised in cages most of their lives and only released to roam freely just a few days before slaughter.

In Singapore, "kampong chicken" is widely understood to be the local equivalent of free-range chicken. The word "kampong" means village and so many people understand "kampong chicken" to mean chickens that roam freely in the villages. In reality, "kampong chicken" merely refers to a breed of chicken.

Ideally, look for chicken where the details of farming practices are clearly stated. For example, one company recently introduced Sakura Chicken. They are probably still raised in cages etc, but the company observes healthier farming practices, such as not giving growth hormones, as well as preventing infection by feeding the chickens probiotics or friendly bacteria, rather than antibiotics.