Gently squeeze the basil leaves to remove moisture. Drain, then immediately rinse the basil leaves in cold water or drop into a bowl of ice water. Add the remaining 2 cups of the basil leaves and blanch for 20 seconds. Finely chop 1 cup of the basil leaves.Adding a little pasta water when you toss the sauce in can create a great texture for your dish. This is a good habit to get into any time you are making pasta. It's a key ingredient to achieving that creamy texture. Don't forget to reserve some of the pasta water when you are draining the pasta.This dish does reheat quite well so sometimes I make a double batch so I have leftovers for lunch during the week. To get the cheese to melt well, you really want to pan from the pasta to be hot, so if you are working on weekly meal prep and have another pasta dish planned you can throw some extra pasta in the pot and refrigerate that for later in the week.It doesn't stay quite a crispy but it will still have a good crunch and still tastes fabulous! If you want to do some of the prep for this recipe ahead of time, you can make the pancetta at the beginning of the week and keep it in the refrigerator for a couple of days.One of my goals for this year is to bring you more recipes that you can eat anytime while sticking with your healthier eating plans and loving what you're eating so if there is something you'd like to see on the blog leave me a note in the comments. Once you've cooked up the pancetta you just need to boil the pasta, quickly steam the peas and then toss everything back in with the warm pasta to give you creamy goodness. Also adding some of the pasta water makes the everything come together and give you that nice creamy texture. My solution here is a combination of greek yogurt and lower fat goat cheese, which melts well.
#How to make a cheese sauce with greek yogurt mac
One of the best things about mac and cheese is all that creamy cheese, so when trying to lighten it up the dilemma is how do you get that rich creamy texture without all that full-fat cheese. I was hoping to make this a one-pot recipe so it would be super easy as a weeknight meal but you really need to cook the pancetta separately, so I'll call it almost one pot as everything gets mixed up in the same pot you use for the cooking the pasta making clean-up relatively quick! As someone who loves food, and spends a lot of my time cooking and testing new recipes, it can be hard to stick to eating healthy all the time, do you know what I mean?! This lightened up version of mac & cheese still have all the creamy texture and amazing taste that you expect and as an added bonus this skinnier version has the added benefit that it has an entire serving of veggies built in! WIN!! Mac & cheese has always been one of my favorites, and I do still indulge in the "fully loaded" version from time to time. Let's face it, as much as we'd like to eat healthy all the time, sometimes we just crave warm, cheesy comfort food, especially in the form of pasta! At least I know I do! This lightened up version of mac & cheese is designed to satisfy that craving without completely blowing your healthy eating goals! When you crave creamy cheesy comfort food this Lighter Greek Yogurt Mac & Cheese topped with peas and crispy pancetta is the answer!