How to Make a Copy Cat Olive Garden Salad
Do you love Olive Garden’s Salad?
Learn how simple it is to make it at home so you can enjoy your favorite flavors without the cost of eating out!
When my kids were younger, eating out on a budget wasn’t too terribly difficult, even for our family of seven.
One of our favorite restaurants has always been the Olive Garden.
To the kids it was affectionately known to our family as “The Grape Place.”
That’s what the kids called it when they were very young based on their familiar logo.
Big portions of pasta and endless bowls of salad and baskets of breadsticks make for a hearty meal and went a long way with our large family.
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Written by Tara of Unsophisticook
But as time marches on, one by one my kids are starting to graduate from the children’s menu to the regular menu, and we’re finding out that a meal out can put quite a dent in our finances.
And that’s why we’ve started trying to recreate some of our favorite dining out dishes, like this Copy Cat Olive Garden’s Salad, at home.
A favorite restaurant copy cat dish of ours is this recipe for Olive Garden’s salad dressing.
Creamy and tangy just like the original.
It’s delicious poured over a big bowl of salad greens, topped with red onion, black olives, Roma tomato, pepperoncini, and your favorite croutons.
For homemade croutons, try this recipe for buttery sourdough garlic croutons.
Croutons are really easy to make and it is a great way to use up leftover bread that has maybe gone slightly stale.
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For a real Olive Garden restaurant-style experience, pick up one of these handheld rotary cheese graters and a big chunk of real, fresh parmesan cheese.
Though fresh parmesan is a little more pricey than its shelf-stable counterpart, a little of this cheese will go a long way.
And fresh parmesan lasts quite awhile when wrapped well and stored in the refrigerator.
Wondering what you should serve with your copy cat Olive Garden Salad?
If you’re a fan of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana, you may want to try this creamy and rich Italian Sausage and Kale Soup (known as Zuppa Toscana) to serve alongside your Olive Garden Salad.
Add a few slices of this savory rustic homemade bread for a delicious comforting Italian dinner at home for a fraction of the cost of eating out.
This bread recipe makes great garlic bread!
What is your favorite restaurant dish recipe to recreate at home?
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Copy Cat Olive Garden Salad and Dressing Recipe
Ingredients
For the dressing:
For the salad:
Instructions
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Let me know if you try this recipe and what you think of it by leaving a comment below.
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What kind of Olives do they use?
regular black olives
Made this tonight. Halved the recipe as I don’t often use the same dressing more than twice. This one I will. It was very good. I also thinly sliced chicken brcipe. Season with Greek seasoning and grilled. Sliced and served over top. Everybody ate it and thought it was delicious, even the kids. I didn’t have any croutons though. Will have to try again with them. Thanks so much for recipe.
So glad you liked it! Thanks for stopping by to tell us. 🙂
I use this salad dressing for all of my salads. My family of 5 goes through a batch within 4 days. Definitely try this recipe! WARNING: one huge bowl of salad needs like 1/4 cup of dressing. It is very easy to over-dress the salad!
That was the best salad ever! thank you so much!
Thank you for this recipe – I cannot wait to try it using all organic ingredients. I love Olive Garden dressing, but dislike the preservatives, the GMO high-fructose corn syrup and fake colorings. Going to try this!!
So good I made it two days in a row! I made it vegan by using sunflower mayonnaise and vegan parmesan and it was like the real thing I tell ya! Not sure what I did differently, but my dressing was not watery at all, I even ended up adding a bit of water to it. If there was ever a reason to buy a whole jar of pepperoncini, this is it. Thanks very much!
Hi there thanks for this recipe, will be giving it a go tonight as we are a little sick of our usual italian salad. For those of you saying it is too watery try adding a 1/4 tsp or so of xanthan gum to it (I always have it around due to being gluten free) it is a thickening agent used in a lot of store bought sauces and dressings, it won’t add flavour like overdoing it with mayo or other things.
The overall dressing is delicious, but as someone else commented, it was way too watery. I added about 1 more cup of mayo, and it was a much better consistency.
Hi Ijust read your recipe and hope to make it tonight,Thank you ahead of time.
hai i loved ur recipie. This was the one i was looking for the past 1 year. I just want to know which is the best lettuce to buy for this salad. Im not interested in salad bags. can u please help me.
Romaine lettuce.
OG uses Iceberg.
Does anyone know what parmesano and romano cheese blend to buy because i am not quite sure???
I bought the Homestyle 100% natural parmasean and romano (aged over 5mo.ths) it tastes pretty good.
Sorry, but I tried this recipe the other night with high expectations. Not even close to Olive Garden’s Italian salad dressing. Way too watery.
My daughter is the pickiest eater. I thought for sure
No matter what recipe I tried she would hate it.
Well, I was proudly wrong. This is a great
Recipe. Thank you so much for posting this
Before I make this wanted to know if you drain the pepperoncini when you toss it in the salad?
Yes, I would drain the juice off before putting them in the salad, but you don’t necessarily need to slice each one individually to drain out any juice inside them.
Wow! Thanks for the recipe! My friends and I are having dinner tonight, and we all wanted Olive Garden, but we’re all BROKE! So instead, we decided to make it all at my house and imitate it. Cannot wait to try this out. I’ll reply again with my results 🙂
Just made this, thanks for posting! I think it has a little bit too much sugar for my taste and not enough seasonings and cheese but it was a really good place to start
We actually do not use any parmesan cheese on the salads. Fresh romano cheese is what is in the cheese graters.
This salad looks delicious! Pinned!
Wow,
Neer thought of it as ” The Grape Place”…such a cute expression! Lovely recipe and I should really try it sometime. Would take out tonnes of sodium in the restaurant version definitely!
Shobha
“The grape place.” I love it. 🙂 I don’t think I’ve actually ever been to Olive Garden, which is really weird. I’m not a big fan of salad or vegetables (actually, they’re my least favorite food!) but my husband LOVES salad but rarely makes it. I’m definitely going to try this out. Thanks!
I love that! Cant wait to try it myself 🙂
Thank you for this post. The salad and the breadsticks are hands down two of my favorite things to eat (and unfortunately not so good for you). I’m gluten and dairy free, so will need to do a little tweaking, but I have a feeling this will allow me to get as close to the real thing as possible 🙂