Chicken Scampi with Garlic Parmesan Rice

A quick and easy skillet meal with tender chicken scampi over perfectly cooked buttery, garlic parmesan rice.

Did you know that scampi is an actual thing? I didn’t! I was doing a little research before I wrote this recipe post and learned that scampi isn’t merely a way of cooking garlicy shrimp but it’s actually the original crustacean used in the popular dish (hence the name)!

WHO KNEW?!

Scampi, which is actually the Italian plural of scampo, are very small lobsters also called Dublin Bay Prawns or Norway Lobster found in the Mediterranean and northeastern Atlantic from North Africa to Norway and Iceland.

Scampi were most often prepared in Italy by sautéing them with olive oil, garlic and white wine. Italian immigrants in America substituted shrimp in place of the scampi but kept the “scampi” name and cooking method which morphed over the years into the common menu item we’re familiar with: shrimp scampi.

Fascinating stuff, folks. Fascinating!

American cooks and restaurants have used the scampi method of cooking (again, we took this from an ingredient to a cooking style) for shrimp, lobster, crawfish and even chicken. The Olive Garden restaurant’s Chicken Scampi is one of their most popular menu items.

Which is actually what lead me to making this dish. I usually make this (or something almost exactly like it, though I’d never written down an actual recipe) with shrimp. Since not everyone loves shrimp, I decided to use chicken in this recipe so that more of you could enjoy it.

You can absolutely use this recipe to make this with shrimp too, by the way. Cook everything exactly the same way but maybe use a shrimp stock instead of chicken broth if you have it. You can simmer your shrimp shells and tails in the chicken broth for a bit to totally max out the flavor too.

It’s weird but my entire family agrees that the rice in this dish tastes a lot like, and has the same texture of the rice at our favorite Japanese restaurant. The only thing I can figure is that our hibachi hotspot uses sake in their rice so the white wine in my recipe must accomplish the same with the rice.
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