Lauren Habermehl for Taste of Home
Lauren Habermehl for Taste of Home
Published on Jan. 29, 2025
The Olive Garden salad martini has been circulating around TikTok, so I had to mix this one up at home.
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Oh, FoodTok. While some of your recipes make sense, like TikTok spaghetti and baked feta pasta, others are less…intuitive. This viral Olive Garden salad martini is the latest TikTok creation to take the internet by storm, and it made me do a serious double take.
If you have not seen the Olive Garden salad martini yet, it comes from creator @alessandrapizzz, who is known for her inventive cocktails. This recipe involves making a martini using bottled Olive Garden salad dressing as a mix-in and garnishing it with Parmesan cheese, croutons, pepperoncini and olives. Yes, salad dressing in a cocktail.
Shockingly, the comment section is pretty divided, with a good number of followers saying how delicious this martini is. (The other half is firmly in the hard pass category.) I was cautiously optimistic about this take on a martini recipe. If you enjoy mixology, then you might be aware of a technique known as fat-washing. Fat-washing is a process when gin, vodka or other spirits are infused with a form of fat (typically an oil) to enrich the flavor of the cocktail and give it a silkier mouthfeel. It has a similar effect to adding egg whites to a gin fizz. Perhaps this cocktail isn’t quite as strange as it sounds!
Ingredients for the Olive Garden Salad Martini
Lauren Habermehl for Taste of Home
- Vermouth: The first step in this Olive Garden martini recipe is to lightly mist the martini glass with vermouth.
- Parmesan cheese: Rim the glass with finely grated Parmesan cheese. Use a bit of the dressing to help the cheese stick to the rim of the martini glass.
- Gin or vodka: In the TikTok, our creator uses gin; however, use vodka if you prefer a vodka martini.
- Olive Garden salad dressing: Purchase a bottle from your supermarket or use our copycat Olive Garden salad dressing recipe to make some from scratch.
- Olive juice: To make the martini dirty, add an ounce or so of olive juice. In another version of the drink, creator @alessandrapizzz adds pepperoncini juice, which I felt better aligned with the flavors of an Olive Garden salad.
- Italian seasoning: Shake in dry Italian herbs to flavor the drink with notes of basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano and garlic.
- Garnishes: In the TikTok video, the finished cocktail is garnished with black pepper, a drizzle of olive oil and a skewer of basil, olives, Parmesan cheese and croutons. To stay true to an Olive Garden salad, opt for red onion, tomato, olives and pepperoncini peppers.
Directions
Step 1: Prep the martini glass
Spritz a martini glass lightly with vermouth.