Here's Which Pasta Sauces Olive Garden Actually Makes From Scratch

Olive Garden describes its sauces as being made from scratch by its very own "soup and sauce masters" on its website, but what does "made from scratch" mean when a restaurant has hundreds of locations? Well, the answer may vary by sauce. The chain has five main sauces on its current menu: traditional marinara, five cheese marinara, Alfredo, meat sauce, and creamy mushroom — but they don't all follow the same preparation process.

The Alfredo is made in a similar way to the Olive Garden copycat Alfredo sauce you could make at home, from simple ingredients like Parmesan, cream, garlic, and butter, which only lends to its house-made appeal. In an exclusive interview with Tasting Table, Olive Garden executive chef Terrence Tookes described the Alfredo as being made fresh on-site in batches throughout the day. In other words, this one really does start and finish in the Olive Garden kitchen. 

The creamy mushroom may follow a similar route — commenters on Reddit claim it is made by combining the prepared Alfredo sauce with sauteed mushrooms and porcini mushroom powder, but the chain doesn't officially disclose its preparation. The remaining sauces on the current menu all involve a different process, because their preparation actually begins before the ingredients reach the restaurant. 

In the case of the marinara sauce, this really demonstrates how the chain manages to produce its food consistently across hundreds of restaurants around the country. Reporting from Spoon University and Tasting Table gives us a closer look at the actual process. Olive Garden sources its tomatoes from California, where they are processed into a lightly seasoned tomato base to its specifications before they make their way to the restaurants. Terrence Tookes explained to Tasting Table that once the seasoned tomato base arrives at the restaurant, a concentrated flavor base mixture called battuto is added (battuto being a cornerstone of authentic Italian cooking that includes garlic, onions, and spices).

The meat sauce has a similar journey with its own customized tomato base. Once it reaches the restaurant, pan-seared pork and beef along with the battuto are added. And the five cheese marinara is made from a combination of the marinara and Alfredo, to which an Italian five-cheese blend is added to make it extra melty and indulgent.

Olive Garden has used the phrase "made from scratch" for sauces beyond its current lineup too — back in 2014, its Cucina Mia menu featured sauces including Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato, Spicy Diavolo, Primavera, and Fresh Tomato Pomodoro, none of which are still available but all of which were described as "made from scratch." We don't have the same detailed information about how those sauces were actually produced, but we can infer that the chain has long used this term for sauces that were most likely part of a larger preparation process.

Basically, one of the lesser-known facts about Olive Garden is that "made from scratch" doesn't always mean that every sauce begins as raw products in the very restaurant you're sitting in. Instead, Olive Garden has a system in which customized ingredients are prepared to its specifications, shipped to individual restaurants, and then incorporated into sauces with other additions by the kitchen cooks. And for a chain operating at this scale, that's exactly how it is able to stay consistent across locations while still doing the bulk of the actual cooking in-house. 

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