Where Does Olive Garden Get Their Crispy Chicken Fritta

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This Olive Garden Copycat recipe, Lasagna fritta is a breaded, deep-fried, traditional Italian dish. Layers of lasagna noodles, meat, cheese, and hearty tomato sauce come together in this comforting dinner.

This recipe is one of my favorite Olive Garden Copycat recipes. If you love it, you have to try my other Olive Garden knock-offs Slow Cooker Chicken Gnocchi Soup, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Simple Weeknight Chicken Scampi.

What made this recipe especially delightful to me was the blend of red and white sauce under and over the pasta along with the texture of the fried lasagne. It was the best of flavors combined on one plate without me having to pick and choose.

And now, at home a recipe I love whipping up when I am throwing a dinner party for guests. Turns out, pretty much everyone loves this recipe!

What is Lasagna Fritta?

If you haven't been to Olive Garden lately, you may be entirely in the dark as to the origins of this over-the-top, cheesy, decadence.

Discovered on their appetizer section, it's a rolled pasta dish filled with traditional lasagna filling and fried. The pasta is then served over a bed of alfredo sauce and topped with a drizzle of classic marinara. It's savory, crispy with the fried pasta, and filling. The flavors blended so well together and aren't lost in layers of melted cheese. Needless to say, it made an impression.

What you need to make this recipe

This recipe does require a few ingredients and some prep work, but for a one-in-a-while treat, absolutely worth it.

Gather lasagna noodles, milk, parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, pepper, butter, your favorite marinara sauce, alfredo sauce, egg, bread crumbs, and ground sausage if you would like to add that as shown in this recipe.

Want to keep this meat-free? You can totally skip the ground sausage! Even without it, this recipe is incredibly delicious.

How to make Lasagna Fritta

Ok, this recipe is a little tricky, but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier! Here are our step-by-step photos and handy how-to make guide for this copy-cat Olive Garden recipe.

Start by prepping the cheese sauce, boiling the milk, and whisking in the parmesan, ricotta, white pepper, and butter. I also opted to add a heavy dose of Italian seasoning at this point.

Prep your pasta by boiling it. After the pasta has boiled, drain it and hang it over a sanitized wire hanger so that the noodles don't become stuck to one another in the pot.

Next, spread the milk and cheese mixture into each noodle. If using, now is when you sprinkle the cooked sausage over the center as well.

Roll up each pasta in thirds, like a piece of paper going into an envelope. Make sure you give yourself time to freeze the pasta at this point. Par-freezing the pasta for 1 hour helps the pasta to firm up and retain its shape when you place it in the fryer. It's a key part of making sure this recipe works. Don't skip it.

Once the pasta has been in the freezer for 1 hour, prep your oil for frying in a deep fryer or Dutch oven with a heavy bottom and high sides. As a rule of thumb, for frying, make sure you have at least 2″ above the oil of high walls to protect from oil splashing out minimizing the thread to burns and fire.

Dip the par frozen pasta in the egg wash and bread crumbs to get a nice coating and fry until crispy.

Remove the pasta from the fryer with a long-handled wire spoon. Set on a wire rack over a paper towel-lined baking sheet to drain any excess oil while you assemble the platter as fancy as you like.

The final steps are lining the bottom of a plate with marinara and stacking the lasagna fritta on top like tilting dominoes. Finally, spoon heated marinara over top and garnish.

For presentation, one big dish is beautiful when serving this. However, these steps can be repeated on smaller serving plates for individual portions.

This dish was originally discovered as an appetizer and is amazing at big parties for just that. But when it's a regular week night I serve this lasagna fritta with a salad as the main course.

If you're also itching for some more easy Italian-inspired recipes, look no further. These recipes will warm you up inside and out!

Weeknight Fettuccini with Sausage and Kale
Skinny Stuffed Shells
Pesto Artichoke Lasagna Rolls

If you've tried my Lasagna Fritta recipe or any other recipe on passthesushi.com please don't forget torate the recipe and let me know where you found it in the comments below, I love hearing from you! You can also follow along for more good eats and travel tips on Instagram @passthesushi &@girlcarnivore, Twitter&Facebook.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 18 minutes

Additional Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 28 minutes

Ingredients

For the Lasagna:

⅔ cup milk
1 cup Parmesan cheese
6 oz ricotta
¼ tsp white pepper
1 tbsp butter
7 lasagna noodles
marinara sauce
alfredo sauce

For the Breading:

¼ cup milk
1 egg
2 cups Italian Bread

Instructions

Preparation:

Boil and stir together butter, white pepper, milk, parmesan, and ricotta cheese.
Boil Lasagna noodles as directed.
When the noodles are finished, spread a thin layer of cheese & milk mix along noodle and fold into 2 inch pieces.
Let set in the freezer for 1 hour, placing something heavy on top to keep it together.
When you take them out of the freezer, cut the pieces in half long-ways.
Dip each piece in the milk/egg mixture, then the bread crumbs.
Fry at 350° for 4 minutes
Spread Alfredo on the bottom of the serving plate, placing each piece in the sauce.
Drizzle marinara sauce on top.

Notes

I added a handful of Italian seasoning to the ricotta mixture when it was being boiled.

I also browned some fresh ground sausage and added it as a layer inside the roll-ups as well to my marinara sauce. Simply sprinkle the cooked ground sausage over the cheese layer before you roll the pasta up.

The original reference recipe calls for feta instead of ricotta, but I don't really think feta would give the flavor I was going for, so I substituted the ricotta.

Adapted from Tastebook