Olive Garden Chicken Alfredo | what Will eats (2024)

For Olive Garden’s price, you can make 10 plates at home.

Serve this alfredo with the warmness of Olive Garden breadsticks.

Olive Garden’s Chicken Alfredo is a fan favorite and a classic at every Olive Garden, even if it’s not authentically Italian. I learned that apparently Fettuccine Alfredo is authentically Italian, but it’s more similar to Cacio e Pepe.

The original recipe of “Fettuccine Alfredo” uses butter, freshly grated parmesan, and eggs to get the creamy sauce that Alfredo is known for. This version of Fettuccine Alfredo, and how I believe Olive Garden makes it uses butter, parmesan, garlic, cream, and flour.

This truly is a thick, creamy sauce that starts from a roux, is garlicky, salty, savory, and more importantly feels like it’s giving you a hug as you are eating it.

More importantly, Olive Garden’s alfredo costs $20 to eat, but buying all the ingredients not only costs less than $20, but you can make at least 10 plates with these ingredients.

Preparing the Alfredo Sauce

There’s not plenty of prep with a pasta recipe. Most of the preparation is seasoning the chicken. Start with sliced chicken thighs, in a metal bowl, add parsley, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

This goes on an oiled tray sheet, getting ready to cook.

As for the pasta, prep your garlic by mincing your fresh garlic cloves.

Cooking the Sauce

Start the alfredo sauce by adding olive oil and butter to a pan. When this melts, add minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Alternatively, you can use garlic powder, and to be honest, I have been when I’m lazy to chop garlic.

Garlic Powder vs Fresh Garlic

While you can use both garlic powder or fresh garlic (depending on which you have on hand), there are reasons why you should prefer using one over the other.

Overall, adding fresh garlic incorporates a more complex and nuanced garlic flavor. Meanwhile, garlic powder is a simpler garlic flavor or is best used when you want a mild garlic taste or if you ran out of garlic.

For this recipe, both are fine, but fresh garlic for the sauce and garlic powder for the chicken are the best directions.

Here’s a tip:

Since fresh garlic releases its flavor slower than garlic powder, add garlic earlier in the cooking process. Typically, you’d add this first with the first set of fat. Meanwhile, garlic powder can be adding later, like when the cream is added to the alfredo sauce.

What is a Roux?

As the garlic gets more fragrant, add a bit of flour and mix. It should come together and form a clump. This clump is a roux.

A roux is a mix of fat and starch, in this case, olive oil and butter mixed with flour. How it’s used is to thicken sauces. In many recipes like gumbo, gravy, stews, soups, and French sauces like béchamel, roux’s are used to thicken these and get them to a more consistent texture.

Roux overall does not need flour and butter. While these are the common ones, you can use other fats like lard, meat drippings (this is common for gravy), and oil (common in gumbo).

For this recipe, you should be using a white roux, which refers to how long the roux has been cooked. The longer the roux is cooked, the darker and deeper the flavor is. White roux is not cooked for long and has a neutral flavor. Blond roux is cooked a bit longer and as it gets color, also develops a nutty aroma. Lastly, brown roux (used for gumbos) has a deep color and with it, a deep toasted flavor.

Once the cream is added to the roux, whisk to get it to a thick consistency and break up the clump. Next, add the seasonings, and the grated parmesan. I emphasize that freshly grated parmesan makes a world of difference. Using pre-grated Parmesan cheese (the green bottle) is fine, but freshly grated parmesan melts better and keeps a smooth texture. Because pre-grated Parmesan cheese has anti-caking additives (like most pre-shredded cheese), it will clump up in your sauce and have an uneven texture.

Meanwhile, for the chicken, put it in the oven at 375F for 18 minutes or until the chicken reaches 165F internally.

As for the pasta, cook this accordingly to the box, but to your prepared doneness (recommended, al dente).

Serving the Alfredo

Once the pasta is cooked, serve with the alfredo sauce and then top with the chicken. Serve with more fresh parmesan.