Does Olive Garden Make Its Soups Fresh In-House?
Known for its not-quite-authentic take on Italian classics and table-side cheese grating ("Say when," the waiter tells you — but what if you never do?), the Olive Garden experience continues to delight us and defy expectations, simply by doing what it does. Some of the most beloved dishes, besides the addictive breadsticks, are the delectable soups (look here for the definitive ranking from best to worst), of which there are four: Chicken and gnocchi, minestrone, pasta e fagioli, and zuppa toscana. As tasty as they are, though, are they made fresh in-restaurant?
As a matter of fact, they are. Speaking with PopSugar, a representative for Olive Garden told them that the soups are "made by hand and from scratch every morning." Kitchen staff use "fresh, whole ingredients" (they're even hand-chopping vegetables, like zucchini, carrots, and celery) to create the soups — they don't come to the store frozen in bags, as in other chains. Next time you sit down and enjoy unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, know that someone's hard work went into making the former with their own two hands.
Olive Garden's soup really doesn't arrive at the restaurants bagged?
There has been some chatter that Olive Garden's soups arrive into the store in bags, but that's simply not true; rather, according to smutwithclass on TikTok, the kitchen staff makes big batches of the soups before the restaurant opens, then cools and portions them out into gallon bags to reheat as needed throughout the day. They even, she adds, hold off on adding the "fragile ingredients," like spinach, kale, and pasta, until the very end.
@smutwithclass Replying to @hibiscus9717 OG secrets but not really. A lot of the stuff there is sus but the soups are definitely made in house #olivegarden #soupsaladbreadsticks
And it makes perfect sense for Olive Garden to do it this way, from the big batches of soup in the morning so they don't have to worry about making it for the rest of the day (unless they run out), to portioning into gallon bags so they don't have to worry about keeping the soup at a constant, safe temperature on the stove for hours. And adding pasta in at the end, presumably during reheating, is a stroke of genius, since pasta turns into mush when left in liquid too long.