DIY Homemade Olive Garden Salad Dressing
I thought I would bring you a little restaurant indulgence this week and I am really excited to finally share this recipe with you! It is one that I have been tweaking and working on over the last couple years and this fall I finally got it.

Olive Garden probably isn’t the fanciest restaurant in the world, but I think everyone would agree they totally nailed it when they created their house salad dressing. It is so addicting! And conveniently too, considering they do that whole all you can eat salad thing before your dinner comes!

DIY Homemade Olive Garden Salad Dressing
When they started selling their famous salad dressing by the bottle I used to save up to buy it (think college years…). But really that bottle that I thought I was being so healthy pouring over a nice salad for lunch, was full of blood sugar spiking high fructose corn syrup, and toxic, rancid soybean oil, among other additives.

DIY Homemade Olive Garden Salad Dressing
I started making my own salad dressings when I started my real food journey years ago, and as it turns out, many popular dressings at the store like Ranch, French, and Thousand Island are so fast to make at home with safer, more nourishing ingredients. This dressing comes together super quick and truly tastes just like the one from the restaurant! Don’t be afraid to serve it to the kids too – I pack it in my kindergartener’s lunch and my 3 year old devours it and likes to use it for dip with veggie sticks.

Get a pot of spaghetti going on the stove and let me show you how to make your own Olive Garden dressing for the salads and you can have an Italian night out at home!

DIY Homemade Olive Garden Salad Dressing
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DIY Homemade Olive Garden Salad Dressing

Renee - www.raisinggenerationnourished.com
I thought I would bring you a little restaurant indulgence this week and I am really excited to finally share this recipe with you! It is one that I have been tweaking and working on over the last couple years and this fall I finally got it.
4.75 from 4 votes
Prep Time 5 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Course Condiment
Cuisine American
Servings 16 servings

Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup avocado oil Or combo avocado oil & olive oil. I get my avocado oil at Costco.
  • ¼ cup white wine vinegar
  • ¼ cup water
  • 2 TB mayonnaise homemade preferable to avoid toxic oils
  • 1 TB Italian dressing mix this is not Italian seasoning – use salad dressing mix – my recipe is super quick to mix up! Go to the Italian dressing in THIS post and use the mix.
  • ½ tsp garlic powder
  • Optional ¼ cup Parmesan cheese I often make it without and it is just as delicious without if you can’t do the dairy! This batch did not have the cheese so you can see it is still creamy and delicious.

Instructions
 

  • Everything into a jar and use an immersion blender to mix. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can put all of the ingredients into a food processor except the oil. Then use the oil drip spout on your food processor to add the oil in to emulsify in the dressing slowly.
  • This recipe makes a good pint of dressing. Store the dressing in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks.
Keyword copycat Olive Garden salad dressing, Olive Garden salad dressing recipe
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

If you are looking for more restaurant inspired dressings, try this Caesar dressing, and this Asian dressing!

Also check out my DIY condiments pintrest board for more inspiration!

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53 Comments

  1. This is a great post, so helpful. I remember even as long as 10 years ago going to Olive Garden and asking the servers what was in the salad dressing that comes with their “bottomless” salad as I like to call it. I wasn’t happy when I was told one of the main ingredients was soybean oil. I grew up having my mother make homemade dressing and she always used olive oil, and with a name like Olive Garden it seems completely backward that this restaurant would use soybean oil instead of olive oil!

    I am grateful for posts like this which explain just how simple it is to make your own dressing, and which emphasize the flavor and nutrition as well. Thank you Renee!

    1. 4 stars
      Try rice bran oil from Japan or Korea. Mild tasting. Grape seed oil is fine. Sunflower oil is good, too.

  2. You can’t have avocados either? It’s such a random food allergy, I thought I was the only one. It makes me vomit. =( So sad because I used to love avocados on everything. I would probably just use all olive oil. It might not taste quite the same.

  3. I made this dressing last night and I was so upset. It tasted good, but was very runny. I did everything exactly as the recipe stated and used an immersion blender to mix it. Any idea what might have happened?

  4. My son just found out he is allergic to eggs. He LOVES Olive Garden dressing and will eat tons of salad if he has it. Now that we found out he can’t eat it because of the eggs, I am going to try and make an egg free version. I wonder if I use the food processor and drip the oil in to emulsify, can I just eliminate the mayo or will it change the flavor?

  5. Thanks for posting this recipe… I’m eating salads 2-3 times a day now. I used olive oil and vegan mayo… taste great to me.. no more store brought salad dressing. ❤️ The recipe 😋

  6. Can’t wait to try this! Have you also figured out a copycat gluten free breadstick recipe? That would be awesome.

  7. Do you have something I could substitute the mayo for? We don’t normally have mayo or yogurt in the house.