Copy Cat Olive Garden salad recipe - Better than the original! (2024)

This Copy Cat Olive Garden salad recipe is the perfect make at home recipe of the restaurant version. With crisp lettuce, pepperoncini peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives, croutons and homemade Olive Garden salad dressing. This hearty salad is perfect as a side dish, or add some grilled chicken or shrimp to make it a meal.

Olive Garden Salad Recipe

You are going to love this homemade Olive Garden Salad Recipe! With all the perfect fresh vegetable ingredients and homemade Olive Garden Salad dressing, this salad will be perfect for dinner!

Making copy cat recipes at home is one of my favorite things to do. I love finding meals I love at restaurants and then figuring out how to make them at home. This copy cat recipe is so easy to make, and a great way to change things up when you are having a salad with dinner.

What is an Olive Garden Salad?

Olive Garden salad is the amazing salad that you get when you are dining in at Olive Garden. A Salad that has lettuce, pepperoncini peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives and croutons.

Make it a meal!

This Olive Garden Salad Recipe works great for a main dish and also for packing a lunch. You can also add protein like chicken or shrimp to this salad and make the salad a meal in itself. If you love eating at Olive Garden be sure to check out our other Olive Garden Copy Cat recipes!

• Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce
• Shrimp Alfredo
• Chicken Gnocchi Soup
• Olive Garden Chicken
• Copy Cat Olive Garden Ziti al Forno

Tips for making this salad

Use fresh ingredients. When making any salad the ingredients used will make or break it. You want fresh ingredients including firm tomatoes, crispy lettuce and quality red onions.

Keep it simple. I like to keep things easy and grab a bag of American Salad blend because it has the carrots and cabbage in it already. If you want to use fresh chopped lettuce, then you can. Just add 1/4 cup of sliced red cabbage and 1/4 cup of shredded carrots.

Use grated parmesan cheese. I like to grate a block of parmesan cheese when making this salad, but if you only have the store bought canister you can use that too. If you like more parmesan cheese you can also shred it instead of grating it.

Can I make this in advance?

You sure can! This salad is great for making a head of time and meal planning. I do suggest that you wait to put the dressing on top until you are ready to eat it so the lettuce stays crispy. I like to put the keto olive garden salad in small mason jars and then the dressing in a container and then I just add the dressing when I am going to eat my salad.

If you are wanting to enjoy it for lunches I suggest only making 2-3 days worth at a time. The fresher the better and it is so easy to make that you can quickly toss it together as long as you have the ingredients on hand.

You can make a large batch of olive garden salad dressing to keep in the fridge to use any time you want it and make a fresh salad.

Olive Garden Salad Ingredients

• 1 batch Olive Garden Salad Dressing
• Bagged American Salad blend
• pepperoncini peppers
• tomato
• red onion
• black olives
• croutons
• parmesan cheese

How to Make Olive Garden Salad

Wash and chop the tomatoes, slice the olives and the onions.

In a large bowl place the bag of salad mix, then add the pepperoncini peppers, chopped tomatoes, sliced onions, sliced olives, croutons and grated parmesan cheese.

Use a salad spoon to mix everything together, then pour the homemade Olive Garden Salad dressing on top of the salad and toss with salad utensils.

Easy Salad Recipes

• Chicken Caesar Salad
• Chicken Taco Salad
• Beef taco salad
• BLT Salad
• Strawberry Spinach Salad
• Crispy chicken, cranberry and apple salad
• Big Mac Salad