The famous “Endless Bowl of House Salad” is here: American mix salad greens, pepperoncini, toasty croutons, red onion slices, black olives, Roma tomatoes and that famous dressing. And while you can buy the bottled version of the dressing in the grocery store, please don’t! Shelf stable foods are never the same as homemade. The food manufacturers of frozen and shelved grocery items typically need to include a lot of preservatives and stabilizers to ensure freshness. And this dressing only takes 5 minutes to make, time well spent, because of its delicious flavor!
The Olive Garden restaurants often refer to themselves as “The OG”, which of course makes sense. But I often wonder if they really mean “The Original Gangsters” because this restaurant chain is the top dog of Italian-American restaurant chains. The first Olive Garden was opened on December 13, 1982, in Orlando. By 1989, there were 145 Olive Garden restaurants, making it the fastest-growing units in the General Mills restaurant division. Now owned and operated by Darden Restaurants (named for Olive Garden’s founder, Bill Darden) it has over 900 locations in 15 countries and districts and boasts over $3 Billion a year in sales. That’s a lot of breadsticks!
The marketing campaign that The Olive Garden uses, with unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks, also adds to the restaurant chains popularity. And why shouldn’t it? It’s a heck of a deal when a family on a budget can treat the brood out to a fun night at a restaurant, fill up on soup, salad, and killer breadsticks and then bring the entrees home for dinner the next night. I would be lying if I said that my family has never done it and really, what family isn’t under a budget?
For a fun Olive Garden restaurant experience at home, serve the Olive Garden Famous House Salad with The Olive Garden’s Pasta Fagioli Soup or Minestrone and their Fettuccine Alfredo and Enjoy!
*Cheat*…the New York Style breadsticks in the grocery freezer section are a pretty good substitution for The OG’s.
Ingredients
- Dressing:
- 1/2 cup EVOO
- 6 TBL mayonnaise (Duke’s pref.)
- 2 TBL white wine vinegar
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 2 tsp. Kosher salt
- 3 tsp. white sugar
- 1 large garlic clove
- 1 ½ tsp. Good Seasons Italian seasoning
- 1/2 cup Parmesan, freshly grated
- Cracked black pepper, to taste
- Salad:
- 2 small heads of Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
- 1 small head Iceberg lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
- 1/3 head red cabbage, julienned
- 1 cup matchstick carrots, julienned
- 1 small red onion, cut in ¼” rings
- 2 Roma tomatoes, sliced ¼” thick
- 1 cup pitted black olives
- Whole pickled pepperoncini
- Olive Garden brand croutons.
Instructions
In a blender, blend all above Dressing Ingredients until very smooth and refrigerate until use.
In a large salad bowl, combine the salad ingredients. Toss with the House Dressing right before serving.
Serve with The Olive Garden's Fettuccine Alfredo and the Zuppa Toscana Tuscan Soup and Enjoy!
FULL VIDEO TUTORIAL
1 comment
Mayo ???