In-N-Out Burger's delicious shakes are made with real ice cream, and that's a good thing, but this vanilla shake has a unique taste that's more than just straight vanilla—I sense a hint of buttery caramel. Riffing on that idea, I came up with an easy recipe for In-N-Out Vanilla Shakes, using a blend of French vanilla ice cream and whole milk, along with a simple secret ingredient: caramel topping. Spooning just 1 tablespoon of Smucker’s caramel topping into the blender before mixing it all up produced a vanilla shake remarkably similar to the one that’s been served at In-N-Out Burger since 1975.

Unfortunately, a milkshake produced with a home blender is thinner than a restaurant milkshake made with a milkshake machine. To fix that, after mixing your shake in the blender, place the blender in your freezer for a bit until the shake firms up, then mix it once again, spoon it into a tall glass, and serve it with a wide straw.

Pair this with my improved In-n-Out Double-Double hamburger recipe here.

Outback takes a traditional Mexican street corn recipe and lightens it up for this new premium side menu addition. The corn comes off the cob after grilling it, and butter steps in where mayonnaise and Mexican sour cream are included in the traditional recipe. Want to do something cool for dinner tonight with those fresh ears of corn? Try my Outback Steakhouse Chili Lime Corn recipe below for an easy side dish.

Find more of your favorite dishes from Outback here.

There a are few decent bottled salad dressings out there, but there's nothing on the shelf that compares in taste to this homemade version of the house salad dressing from Bonefish Grill. Not only that, it's a heck of a lot cheaper to make your own vinaigrette from scratch. And check out the easy steps in my Bonefish Grill Citrus Herb Vinaigrette recipe: Mix everything together in a bowl, microwave for 1 minute, whisk to emulsify, then chill. If you're a salad lover, this is the clone for you. 

You might also like my recipe for Bonefish Grill Bang Bang Shrimp.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Ever wonder where Riblets come from?

"Riblets" is Applebee’s trademarked name for button ribs or rib tips (as they are called at Walmart), which is a short cut trimmed from the back end of pork spareribs, packed with lots of connective tissue. And that's a good thing because, after 3 to 4 hours of braising, that connective tissue will break down, producing fork-tender meat that slips off the bone. Of the cooking methods I tried for my version of Applebee's Riblets recipe, which included steaming, slow-roasting, and smoking; braising made the most tender, flavorful ribs—even before the sauce went on. 

For the braising formula, I found that chicken broth infused with liquid smoke creates tender ribs that taste as if they came out of a smoker. Finish off the braised ribs on your grill and baste them with the original TSR hack below that clones Applebee’s honey barbecue sauce, or use your favorite bottled sauce. 

And if you'd like to serve these riblets with almond rice pilaf as they do in the restaurant, you can find my clone recipe here on the site.

The American restaurant business has been shaped by many entrepreneurs, so determined to realize their dreams of owning a hot dog cart or starting a restaurant that they sell everything they own to raise cash. Food lore is littered with these stories, and this one is no exception. This time the family car was sold to pay for one month's rent on a converted World War II army tent, an oven, refrigerator, rolling pin, and some hand tools. It was 1948, and that's all Marie Callender and her family needed to make enough pies to start delivering to restaurants in Long Beach, California.

It was the pies that started the company, but soon the bakeries became restaurants and they started serving meals. One of my favorites is the Famous Golden Cornbread and whipped honey butter that comes with many of the entrees. What makes this cornbread so scrumptious is its cake-like quality. My Marie Callender's cornbread recipe below requires more flour than traditional cornbread recipes, making the finished product soft and spongy just like Marie's.

Check out my other Marie Callender's hacks here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Meaty and spicy, served piping-hot with chopped onions, shredded cheddar, and a whole jalapeño."

When you're craving a big hot bowl of hearty chili to warm the bones and fill your belly make one that has become a classic. My Lone Star chili recipe is easy-to-make, low in fat, and delicious. And if it's super brisk outside, you might want to add an additional tablespoon of diced jalapeño to the pot to aggressively stoke some internal flames.

Check out my other clone recipes for top dishes from Lone Star Steakhouse here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Brothers Dave and Larry Raymond came up with a top secret recipe for barbecue sauce that was so good they entered it in Chicago’s Rib Fest barbecue competition in the late ‘80s. The fourth time they entered, in 1985, they took home the 2^nd place trophy. By the following year, they were selling bottles of their now-famous sauce in stores, and the brand became a huge success.

The brothers sold their $30-million-a-year sauce business in 2005, and the brand kept growing. By 2008, Sweet Baby Ray’s was America's #2 best-selling barbecue sauce.

Now, with my Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce recipe, you can make 2 cups of a taste-alike sauce with mostly common ingredients plus pineapple juice, celery salt, and tamarind paste to help nail down the familiar award-winning taste.

Try other famous copycat sauce recipes here.

This hit entrée at the 80-unit Yard House brings crispy Nashville hot chicken together with house-made sweet potato pancakes and honey hot sauce syrup on one beautiful plate, and now you can re-create that gorgeous entrée at home with these exclusive secrets, right down to the crispy sage leaves on top.

In my version of Yard House's Nashville Chicken recipe, the crispy chicken is brined to make it moist and juicy on the inside, and just before serving it gets tossed with the Nashville hot sauce for a perfect re-creation of the plate's main attraction. The honey hot sauce is a simple concoction of five ingredients, and the pancakes are simplified by using canned sweet potatoes rather than fresh ones that require an additional cooking step. 

Bring it all together for four impressive plates, and be sure to serve ‘em up with something tall and cold to drink. 

Find my famous cocktail recipes here.

For 25 years Fuddruckers has been serving huge, cooked-when-ordered beef patties on freshly baked buns. You decorate your hamburger creation with sliced tomato, onions, lettuce, pickles, peppers, relish and whatever else is offered at the toppings bar. Everyone builds their burger differently, yet the company claims these are "The Worlds Greatest Hamburgers." What makes them so good? Fuddruckers boasts that it uses only 100% USDA choice, aged ground beef. 

What Fuddruckers won't tell you is which secret ingredients make up the delicious burger seasoning used on each of those patties. After analyzing a sample of the blend used in the shakers back by the griddle, I've come up with this simple Fuddruckers Hamburger Seasoning recipe which you can now mix up at home, and pour into an empty shaker bottle. Sprinkle it onto 1/3- or 1/2-pound ground beef patties just before they cook, then grab some fresh buns in the bakery section of your store. Add your choice of other fresh toppings, and you'll soon have a hamburger clone that tastes just like those served at the more than 230 Fuddruckers.

Wash down that tasty burger with my recipe for In-N-Out Burger Vanilla Shake.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

In late 2021, Popeyes debuted a new macaroni and cheese recipe made with cheddar, cream, and butter, and browned nicely on top like it was just pulled out of Mom’s home oven. After analyzing the real thing from Popeyes in my kitchen lab and experimenting with multiple batches, I was eventually able to reproduce the dish so the same great mac & cheese taste can now come out of your OWN home oven. And the best part: it's super easy to make. You'll like that.

I created my Popeyes Mac & Cheese recipe using the same ingredients used by the chain: cheddar cheese, whole milk, heavy cream, unsalted butter—all wholesome foods without any weird stuff. We'll make a quick roux for the cheese sauce using a little flour, and I’m also adding easy-melting American cheese into the mix for its keen ability to keep the sauce from becoming grainy, as cheddar-based sauces tend to do.

Combine the sauce with the pasta, brown the top under a broiler, and you just home-styled your way to a delicious mac & cheese masterpiece.

Get more cool Popeyes hacked recipes here.

Similar to cloning the coleslaw at KFC, the secret technique for duplicating Cracker Barrel's delicious coleslaw starts with slicing the cabbage into very small pieces. A mandoline works great for this, or use whatever slicing contraption you have. Slice the heads of green and red cabbage on the thinnest setting, and then chop those strips into small bits. The carrot can be shredded using a cheese grater. Mix it all up and then let the coleslaw chill out for several hours so the mixture can get its flavor on and ends up tasting just like Cracker Barrel's famous dish. An overnight chill is even sweeter.

Try more of my Cracker Barrel recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Fruit leather first emerged in the U.S. in New York City in the early 1900s when Syrian immigrants dried apricot paste until it was chewy, and it came in one flavor: apricot. Louis Shalhoub, whose grandfather George was one of those immigrants selling apricot fruit leather in the early days, founded Joray in the 1960s and sold the first commercial fruit rollups in America in a variety of non-apricot flavors. Shortly after that, General Mills came out with their own brand of Fruit Roll-Ups in various kid-friendly forms including Fruit-by-the-Foot and Gushers, and today those are the chewy fruit snacks that dominate the market.

After checking out the ingredients in the Joray and General Mills chewy fruit products, neither seemed worthy of a clone. Joray rolls are all apricot puree-based fruit rolls, sweetened with corn syrup and sugar, artificially flavored, and diluted with flour for a red licorice vibe. The texture of these rolls was hard and overly chewy, and the fruit flavors were lacking. On the other hand, the flavor of the General Mills rolls was delicious, and the products were always soft and chewy as you would expect. But with so much sugar and just a wee bit of real fruit pear puree in the mix, these products aren’t much more than candy.

As it turns out, the fruit rolls with the deepest histories are not the best fruit rolls on the market. That honor goes to Jovy, a brand from Mexico with fruit rolls in a variety of flavors that actually taste like the fruit that’s printed on the label. Jovy does this by using real fruit and berries combined with a blend of apple and pear. Apples and pears have subtle flavors that party well with other fruits, plus their high pectin content contributes a pleasant chewy texture to the finished product. Jovy enhances the fruitiness of their product by adding artificial flavors and colors to the rolls, but I chose to go with all-natural ingredients in this hack so that the real fruit flavors could shine.

I’m including recipes for three Jovy Fruit Roll flavors: strawberry, raspberry, and mango; all of which call for frozen fruit or berries so you can make these any time of the year. Puree everything for the roll of your choice in a food processor or blender, then pour 1/3-cup portions onto baking mats and bake at a low temperature until you can peel off the tasty fruit leather. If you have a “time bake” or “cook time” setting on your oven, you can start a batch in the evening, the oven will turn off automatically when it's done, and your fruit will be cool and ready to roll in the morning.

Find more fun snack recipes here. 

If you like baked beans you'll want to try my clone recipe from the world's first theme restaurant chain. Combine ingredients in a covered casserole dish, and bake for an hour and a half. This makes the dish handy if transporting to another location for a party or potluck, since you can fill the dish, cover it, then pop it into the oven once you arrive. For the pulled pork, you can either use the recipe here Hard Rock Cafe Pig Sandwich clone, or you can add some pre-made pulled pork found in most stores. Or just leave that ingredient out. Either way, my Hard Rock Café BBQ Beans recipe will make a tasty side dish or solo snack.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

First impressions are important, and after my first bite of Denny's new buttermilk pancakes, I couldn't stop thinking about waffle cones. Back in the lab, I mashed together a standard waffle cone recipe with one of mine for buttermilk pancakes and was able to create the perfect recipe for Denny’s new, improved buttermilk flapjacks. And because of their unique waffle cone flavor, these pancakes taste just as great doused with maple syrup as they do topped with a big scoop of ice cream.

My Denny's Buttermilk Pancakes recipe makes eight big 6-inch pancakes, which you will form by measuring 1/2 cup of batter onto your preheated griddle or skillet. If you have a large griddle pan, you may be able to make a couple of these at a time. With smaller pans, though, you’ll have to make one at a time, which will take a little longer. And that’s why they invented mimosas.

Looking for more Denny's copycat recipes? You can find them here. 

Creative chefs at Outback Steakhouse have transformed the chain’s fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs into a fantastic appetizer by adding crispy Bloomin’ Onion breading, sweet barbecue sauce, and a drizzle of Bloomin’ Onion dipping sauce. I reverse-engineered the Outback Twisted Ribs recipe thanks to a kind server who let me take some home with sauces on the side, and now you can copy every twisted bit of it yourself with this exclusive hack.

Outback’s ribs are smoked, but we’ll duplicate the taste without a smoker using a liquid smoke brine. This marinade will not only add flavor to the ribs, but it will also help keep the meat moist and juicy when cooked twice. Tweaked hacks for my Bloomin’ Onion breading and dipping sauce are here to complete your twisted appetizer, and you'll also get my new easy way to knock off the chain’s tasty house-made spicy pickles that come on the side. Plus, I'm including a batch of step-by-step photos so your dish will come out picture-perfect.

Brush your ribs with Sweet Baby Ray's Original barbecue sauce since it tastes similar to what Outback uses, or use your favorite barbecue sauce, and you'll have a messy, but insanely delicious and exclusive new finger food favorite for your hungry crew.

Check out more of my Top Secret Recipes for Outback Steakhouse favorites here.

Over a century ago, Detroit, Michigan became the Coney Island chili dog capital of the world, even though Coney Island is nowhere near there. Greek immigrants who entered the U.S. through Ellis Island adapted a recipe for the hot dogs they ate while visiting Coney Island, New York, on their way to the Midwest. When they settled in southern Michigan, many opened restaurants to sell their clones of the food they ate when they first got to America, turning New York-style Coney Dogs into a Midwest phenomenon.

Two of the most famous Coney Island restaurants in Detroit are Lafayette Coney Island and its next-door neighbor, American Coney Island. The two buildings were originally one building with a single restaurant inside, built by brothers Gus and Bill Keros in 1915. But somewhere along the way the brothers had a falling out and split the restaurant in half, right down the middle, and it stayed that way. Today, the two Coney Island restaurants are under different ownership, but they still remain next-door rivals.

I decided the best Coney dog to hack is from American Coney Island, not only because of the restaurant’s deep history, but also because I was able to order the chili dogs shipped to my house in a kit. That’s always good news, since shipped foods must list ingredients, and I get to see exactly what’s in the chili. Built the traditional way, a typical Detroit Coney Island chili dog features a natural-casing hot dog in a soft white bun, smothered in chili sauce, drizzled with mustard, and topped with a pile of diced sweet onion. The kit came with everything I needed, including the tub of chili with clearly-labeled ingredients that I was counting on.

With the help of that information, I was able to create a thick, flavorful chili sauce that you can use on your favorite hot dogs to make a delicious clone of American Coney Island Chili Dogs. Crushed soda crackers thicken the chili, and extra beef fat adds a smooth quality that mimics the famous 100-year-old American Coney Island chili recipe.

The chili must simmer for four hours to properly tenderize the meat, so plan your Coney dog cloning adventure accordingly.

Try making your other favorite condiments at home, like ketchup or mustard, with my copycat recipes here. 

Menu Description: “Tender pieces of chicken. Snow peas, shiitake mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a Thai coconut-curry sauce with cashews and pineapple. Served with white rice.”

Sautéed white meat chicken comes swimming in the chain’s magical coconut-lime curry sauce, served alongside a bed of rice, with stir-fried vegetables, and topped with pineapple relish, cashews, and toasted coconut. The Cheesecake Factory captures great Thai flavors in this striking entrée from the restaurant chain’s specialty menu selections, and you can re-create the Cheesecake Factory Thai-Coconut Lime Chicken dish at home, with this exclusive recipe that I’ve sleuthed out down to every delicious detail.

The star of the show is the mouthwatering coconut-lime curry sauce that brings together the traditional Thai combination of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy flavors. The sauce brings in sour from lime and tamarind, sweet from honey, salt from fish sauce, and spicy heat from red pepper flakes. And if the sauce is cooked minimally after the parsley is added, the leafy herb will stay bright green for a beautiful and tasty dish that perfectly mirrors the original Cheesecake Factory Thai Coconut-Lime Chicken.

Check out more of my copycat Cheesecake Factory recipes here.

Waiting for a plane in Philadelphia isn’t so bad if your gate is near the airport location of this 20-unit crab house and sports bar chain where weather delay frustrations melt away over a cold beer, a Philly cheesesteak, and a bucket of Chickie’s & Pete’s Famous Crabfries.

Crabfries, despite the name, do not have any crab on them. When the first Chickie’s & Pete’s opened its doors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1977, the restaurant served crab only in the summer. While brainstorming off-season uses for the seafood seasoning, founder Pete Ciarrocchi sprinkled some over crinkle-cut fries, served them with a side of secret cheese dipping sauce, and the most popular dish at his crab house was born.

The beauty of this Chickie’s & Pete’s Crabfries recipe is its simplicity since you’ll need to prepare only two things, and they’re both easy: the secret crab seasoning and the secret cheese sauce. Since the chain’s cheese sauce is also used on their cheesesteak sandwiches, I surmised that a combination of the two easy-melting cheeses most commonly used on Philly cheesesteaks—white American and Cheez Whiz—would make a sauce with the taste and color of the restaurant version. This smooth sauce goes great with the fries, and it also puts the "Philly" into your next homemade cheesesteak.

Once your cheese sauce is done and your seasoning is mixed, cook up a bag of crinkle-cut fries following the directions on the package, toss them with the seasoning, and serve immediately with the warm cheese sauce on the side.

Find more famous french fry recipes from KFC, Taco Bell, and McDonald's here.

A scoop of cocoa powder and a handful of chocolate chips are mixed into the chain’s famous buttermilk batter for a bold stack that is a chocoholic’s dream come true. And making a picture-perfect home hack with my IHOP Chocolate Chip Pancake recipe is about as easy as cooking can get.

Just before you serve up each stack, drizzle it with chocolate syrup and add more chips. Finish it up with a pile of whipped cream on top, and some warmed maple syrup on the side.

Check here for many more of my IHOP copycat recipes.

Bojangles’ was founded in 1977 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and today the 750-unit chain is famous throughout the southeastern U.S. for its juicy fried chicken, fluffy buttermilk biscuits, and Cajun dirty rice.

And just like McDonald’s, Bo’s has a special sauce that’s pretty famous too. It’s arguably much better than McDonald’s Big Mac sauce, especially if you like the flavors of horseradish and roasted red bell pepper. The lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and sugar team up for the appropriate sweet-and-sour notes found in any decent special sauce, and the herbs add a nice finish you don’t get with other sandwich sauces. You might also like to know that my Bo's special sauce recipe is made without the high-fructose corn syrup that’s listed as the third ingredient in the real thing.

Mix everything in a bowl and park it in the fridge for a spell so the flavors can mingle, then use the sauce as you see fit on sandwiches made with fried chicken, grilled chicken, and roast beef, or as a dip for chicken fingers and nuggets.

Get this recipe in "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed" exclusively on Amazon.com.

The majority of paper that I ingested as a kid most likely came from eating these crunchy candy dots of flavored sugar. Peeling the buttons off the strips was never an entirely pure candy experience since there were always several buttons removed with haste that came with a bonus layer of paper stuck to the underside. And perhaps part of the candy’s charm was making a game out of attaining a clean, paper-free button removal.

Candy Buttons or Candy Dots were created in the 1930s when an engineer at Cumberland Valley Company in New York created a machine to produce tiny dots of flavored sugar onto strips of paper. Necco bought Cumberland Valley in 1980 and became the sole manufacturer of the colorful candy strips until the company declared bankruptcy in 2018, and the famous candies, including Necco Wafers, Sweethearts, and Clark Bar, were sold off to the highest bidders. Candy buttons almost became a dead food, but fortunately, the product was resurrected when it was purchased by Cincinnati-based Doscher’s Candies, and today candy buttons are alive and well.

A strip of the original pastel-colored candy buttons includes a combination of cherry, lemon, and lime flavors, but you can make your homemade Necco candy buttons any flavor or color you like with this recipe using the same ingredients as the real deal. For flavoring, find the popular LorAnn candy flavoring oils and add one bottle to the pan as the candy is cooling. Get some coated butcher paper and cut it into 11x2-inch strips (or any size you want, really), and use the back end of a skewer to place your dots on the paper. After a couple of days of drying the candy will be crunchy just like the original, and with coated paper, the sugar should make a clean release for a paperless burst of sweet nostalgia.

The recipe will make at least 1000 candy buttons, but I’m not sure of the exact amount since I only got through about half of the pan of candy syrup to determine yield when my sanity came into question. Don’t feel obligated to use up the whole pan of candy for your buttons. For three different flavors of buttons on each strip like the original, you'll need to make three batches of candy.

Click here for more of my copycat recipes of famous candy.

If you worship chocolate, this simple-to-make recipe of Starbucks' famous fudgy brownie is a blessing. The brownie is made with a double dose of chocolate—unsweetened cocoa and milk chocolate—and the top is sprinkled with chunks of dark chocolate.  The result is a moist, chewy brownie made with a perfect blend of chocolate. And it tastes like heaven.

Prep your pan with a sling made from parchment paper. Slice the parchment long so that it fits into the bottom of the pan with each of the ends hanging over the top of the pan. I use two small binder clips to hold the paper in place so that it doesn’t fold into the pan during baking. When the brownies have cooled, remove the clips, grab the overhanging paper, and lift the brownies cleanly out of the pan to be sliced.

Find more of your favorite Starbucks copycat recipes here. 

If you’re ranking Pad Thai served at U.S. chains, Pei Wei’s tasty take on the dish comes in at the top. The secret sauce is perfectly sweet, sour, salty, and lightly spicy, and the chicken is moist, tender, and filled with great flavor.

To duplicate Pei Wei Pad Thai at home, you'll first brine the chicken so it doesn't dry out as white meat tends to do. The secret marinade here includes fish sauce; Thailand's MSG. When soaked in the salty sauce the natural aminos contribute fantastic umami goodness to the chicken, and when you cook it with moist heat as described in the steps below it will come out fork-tender and juicy.

The noodles at Pei Wei are thin, so grab the skinniest rice noodles on the shelf. Then prepare them for stir fry by steeping them in a bowl of hot water rather than in a pan of boiling water on the stovetop as may be suggested on the package. When they're done, give the noodles a rinse under cold water and they’ll hold until you need them. 

This hack will make two large meal-size entrées—just like you get at the restaurant—which can easily be split into four more modest side servings. And I've included a bunch of step photos to help you along so you can serve a picture-perfect dish.

Check out my recipe for Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken here. 

Menu Description: “Two crisp pastry shells stuffed with sweet ricotta and chocolate chip filling, topped with pistachios and powdered sugar.”           

For great traditional cannoli, one need not look any further than a nearby Carrabba’s Italian Grill. The cannoli there are exactly what you want cannoli to be: a crunchy shell that isn’t soggy or too thick, packed with sweetened ricotta cheese filling that’s smooth and not grainy. And with that classic crunchy/creamy combination comes a hint of cinnamon lingering in the background to complete the traditional taste of a legit cannoli.

To make Carrabba's cannoli at home, you’ll need 8 cannoli tubes to form the shells. After wrapping circles of dough around these 5-inch long metal tubes, they get deep-fried for a few minutes resulting in shells that are perfectly golden brown.

As for the filling, it needs to be smooth if you want a good clone, so try to find ricotta cheese that isn’t too grainy. We’ll first strain the cheese overnight so that most of the liquid runs off for a thicker filling, but if your cheese is still grainy run the filling through a food processor until the cheese is smooth before folding in the whipped cream. Now that’s good cannoli.

Click here for more of your favorite dishes from Carrabba's.