Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Scampi (2024)

This Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Scampi recipe is just like the real thing! Chicken tenders are tossed with bell peppers and onion in a scampi sauce with pasta.

Why You Will Love This Recipe

Chicken Scampi is a dish that’s often associated with Italian-American cuisine.

It typically features sautéed chicken breast pieces in a creamy garlic buttery sauce, often with the addition of white wine, lemon juice, and red pepper flakes for a hint of heat.

The dish is usually served over pasta, such as linguine or spaghetti, just like its sister shrimp scampi recipe. The restaurant classic uses delicate angel hair pasta.

Chicken scampi pasta is one of my favorites when I want something outside of the cream, tomato, or pesto categories. And the restaurant classic was always delicious.

Copycat recipes are a great way to enjoy your restaurant favorites at home for a fraction of the price! And this Olive Garden copycat recipe is one of the most popular on this site and a popular dish at the restaurant!

I wanted to make a Olive Garden’s chicken scampi copycat for my own! And I am pretty proud of how this one turned out.

Ingredients

You can find full quantities and recipe instructions in the full recipe card below.

What is chicken scampi sauce made of? Here is what you need to make this sauce:

• Butter
• Yellow Onion
• White Wine – dry white wine is best such as chardonnay, pinot grigio, or sauvignon blanc
• Chicken Stock – or chicken broth
• Lemon Juice
• Parsley
• Red Pepper Flakes

To make the rest of the dish, you will also need:

• Chicken – Olive Garden uses chicken tenderloins, but use any cut that you like
• Colorful Bell Peppers – the restaurant uses a mix of yellow, green, and red bell peppers but you can use any combination. I like to use at least green bell pepper and a red or yellow bell pepper for the balance of flavors and sweetness.
• Red Onion
• Angel Hair Pasta (or shape of choice) – the more edges the pasta has, the more sauce you need to coat it
• All Purpose Flour – this is for the Olive Garden chicken as the restaurant uses very lightly floured chicken in the pasta
• Vegetable Oil – you can use olive oil instead, however it should not be heated above medium heat as it starts to burn and can create carcinogens
• Parmesan Cheese – for serving, if desired

This chicken pasta is made with chicken tenders, colored bell peppers, and red onion. It is tossed with angel hair pasta at the restaurant, but you could easily use any pasta you want (longer shapes are best here!).

The sauce is a tangy, buttery, garlic sauce that was tricky to replicate.

How Close is this Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Scampi to the Real Thing?

Olive Garden copycat recipes are popular dishes to recreate.

I played around with trying to create the Copycat Olive Garden Chicken Scampi recipe for a while. There are so many variations out there: cream or no cream? Lemon or no lemon? Wine? Thicken with flour?

But ultimately this is the version I landed on and when I tried it side by side with the real thing via takeout, WOW. It is pretty darn close.

So now that I have a good Olive Garden copycat recipe, I have a new dilemma of trying not to make it too often just like my Copycat Olive Garden Fettuccine Alfredo. Definitely a love-hate relationship and a balance of having access to something so yummy and not going overkill with it.

And it is SO good that I also made the Copycat Olive Garden Shrimp Scampi for you to try!

Instruction Overview

Make your scampi sauce by cooking onion and garlic in butter over medium heat, approximately 1-2 minutes.

Add the wine and slightly reduce.

Then add the stock or broth, red pepper flakes, parsley, and lemon juice.

Off the heat, whisk in the butter to create a silky sauce.

Lightly coat your chicken tenders with some flour and a pinch of salt.

Cook the chicken in a large skillet over medium heat with oil, approximately 5-7 minutes per side until cooked through and golden brown. The internal temperature should be 165F.

Cook your pasta until al dente as per package directions. Angel hair pasta cooks very quickly.

Cook your vegetables until they are just starting to get soft so that they still have a firm texture.

When everything is ready, combine it all together with the cooked pasta and season to taste with salt and black pepper as desired. Garnish with fresh parsley if you want.

It is up to you if you cut the cooked chicken or not.

Thin out the sauce if needed with a little pasta water or stock.

Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Add a splash of water to reinvigorate the sauce when reheating.

Kim’s Tips

Some people think this should be a creamy pasta, but it is NOT made with cream or milk. Any creaminess likely comes from the butter and/or cheese melting into the pasta. You can add heavy cream if desired, but it is not part of the restaurant recipe.

The Olive Garden chicken has a light coating on it which I tried a few variations of as well, such as dredging with eggs, etc. But just one pass in flour proved to be the most accurate.

It gives it a light and thing crust without density. I hope you love making this at home as much as I do!

The preference of sauce to pasta ratios for everyone, so you might want to consider only mixing in some of the pasta at first.

If you need to thin out the sauce, add a little water or more stock.

A dinner portion at the restaurant is a full half pound of pasta, plus the rest of the ingredients. This recipe has changed up the portions so there is less pasta and more chicken per serving. Adjust as desired for your preference.

FAQs

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