Recipe Notes: Chicken Scampi

12 January 2020

Recipe from Cook's Country, December 2018.

Diane often orders shrimp scampi in restaurants. I don't enjoy shrimp so we are not likely to serve this at home. I discovered an ATK recipe for chicken scampi and mentioned it to Diane. She replied that she'd been thinking it had been a while since she had a chance to enjoy shrimp scampi so she was certainly up for trying the chicken variant of shrimp served in a garlic butter sauce.

The recipe called for chicken tenderloins. Not seeing these in the supermarket I used the suggested alternative, boneless skinless chicken breast sliced into ¾-inch strips. These were patted dry, seasoned with salt and pepper, dipped in lightly beaten eggs, dredged in flour and fried in vegetable oil. After setting the chicken aside and wiping out the skillet, the sauce was made by cooking red bell pepper and sliced garlic in vegetable oil, thickening this with flour, then stirring in dry white wine and chicken broth. After simmering to reduce the mixture, butter was stirred into the mixture until it melted and the chicken was returned to the skillet. Total time was 50 minutes.

This relatively quick dinner (two dinners for us using one pound of chicken) was good. The sauce was very buttery and garlic though Diane doesn't recall having eaten scampi sauce that included red bell pepper. Even though I didn't take the temperature of the chicken while it cooked it was all cooked through and still tender and moist despite the variation in sizes. The leftovers were just reheated in the microwave and they were still goo. This dish is worth making again as a reasonably quick chicken dinner that uses common ingredients.