The Closest You'll Get To Olive Garden's Chicken Scampi Without Leaving Home

Olive Garden, everyone's favorite place to eat unlimited soup and salad and dive into never-ending pasta bowls, has been a fixture among Italian chain restaurants since the 1980s. By its second decade, it had added chicken scampi to the menu, and a quarter century later, this dish remains one of its enduringly popular and classic entrees. It's also something you can make at home without too much difficulty, with the DIY version being fresher, cheaper, and more customizable. (Plus, there's no need to figure out a tip when you'll be serving yourself.)

According to developer Julianne De Witt, "This homemade version of Olive Garden's Chicken Scampi brings all the bold flavors of the restaurant favorite — tender sauteed chicken, colorful bell peppers, and a rich, buttery garlic-wine sauce tossed with pasta. It's comforting, satisfying, and easy to make." As the dish combines both pasta and meat, it's pretty much a one-pot meal, but a salad on the side (and maybe a few breadsticks) would make for a more Olive Garden-like experience.

This dish is made from boneless, skinless chicken, bell peppers (both red and orange are pictured here), garlic, white wine, heavy cream, and Parmesan cheese. You'll also need salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and parsley for flavoring, butter and olive oil for cooking, and angel hair pasta to soak up all the sauce.

Fill a large pot with water and let it boil over high heat. Once boiling, add the kosher salt.

Add the angel hair pasta and cook for 3 minutes or until al dente.

Once the pasta is done cooking, drain it and set it aside.

In a large non-stick skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium-high heat.

Add the chicken to the pan.

Cook the chicken on one side until lightly browned, for about 2 minutes.

Season the chicken to taste with salt and pepper.

Flip the chicken and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a small bowl and set aside.

Add the peppers and garlic to the skillet and cook for 2 minutes. Set the peppers aside.

Deglaze the skillet with white wine.

Add the cream, Parmesan, Italian seasoning, and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk.

Let the sauce reduce for 2 minutes.

Add the parsley to the sauce and whisk.

Add the pasta, chicken, and peppers back to the skillet. Toss to combine.

Serve with additional Parmesan and parsley if desired.

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The original scampi recipe, which may date back to the Italian Renaissance, was possibly made with crayfish, although the Italian words "scampi" or "scampo" can also translate to mean prawns, shrimp, or langoustines. The first reference in English to the somewhat redundant-sounding dish known as shrimp scampi is credited to an 18th-century British cookbook author called Hannah Glasse. Her recipe consisted of shrimp fried in butter and served with lemon, but modern shrimp scampi, which became popular in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century, frequently includes garlic and white wine and may be served over pasta.

The term chicken scampi is technically an oxymoron, in a similar fashion to chicken fajitas. (The word "fajita" was originally applied only to skirt steak.) However, "scampi" now seems to have morphed into a shortcut name for anything cooked in a scampi style. The Olive Garden's version, while it includes most of the classic elements, omits lemon juice and adds both heavy cream and bell peppers.

Since scampi seems to have been a pretty flexible recipe throughout its long history, there's no reason you can't make a few tweaks of your own. One way would be to lighten up the sauce by omitting the cream, and of course, you can pass on the bell peppers, too. If you want to keep some sort of vegetable component, you could always add mushrooms, spinach, or onions — the Olive Garden's version actually includes red onions along with bell peppers, while its shrimp scampi is made with tomatoes and asparagus. Another option is to make a spicy version of the sauce by exchanging mild bell peppers for green chiles.

The chicken, too, can be swapped out for shrimp, or you could opt for pork or steak strips, or even tofu. Instead of angel hair pasta, spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccine would work, or you could pass up the noodles in favor of rice. The saucy chicken could also be accompanied by French or Italian bread for dipping, or you could go low-carb with zoodles or cauliflower rice.

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