It’s not a regular menu item at Panda Express, so if the chain’s great SweetFire Chicken Breast isn’t available at a restaurant near you, you can use my Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast recipe below to get your fix. 

I've worked up a simple hack here for the sweet-and-spicy sauce that gets poured over the crispy chicken chunks, and I’m also including a breading technique for perfect bite-size portions of crispy chicken. Add some onions, red bell pepper, and pineapple chunks, and you’ve just made a spot-on copy of the popular limited dish.

Find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here. 

The number one appetizer on Joe's menu is called Blue Crab Dip, but you don't need blue crab to clone it. You don't even need to use fresh crab. For my Joe's Crab Shack Blue Crab Dip recipe below, I used some delicious lump crabmeat from Phillip's Seafood that comes in 16-ounce cans (you may find it at Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, and Vons) and the dip turned out great. You could also use the crabmeat that comes in 6-ounce cans found at practically every supermarket—you'll need two of them. Just be sure to get the kind that includes leg meat, and don't forget to drain off the liquid before you toss it in.

Try more of my Joe's Crab Shack copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Rotini, cukes, tomatoes, scallions and vinaigrette dressing on the side."

On the back of each menu at this popular dinner house chain is the "Hooters Saga"—a tongue-in-cheek tale of the restaurant's origin. The story claims that the chain's founders, referred to as "The Hooters Six," were arrested shortly after opening the first Hooters restaurant "for impersonating restauranteurs (sic). There were no indictments," the story explains. "But the stigma lingers on."

Even though the "saga" claims the building for the first Hooters restaurant was originally going to be used as a "giant walk-in dumpster," each Hooters outlet is designed to look like a Florida beachouse. And whether it's December or July, day or night, you'll notice the trademark multicolored Christmas lights are always on.

Since Hooters is more than just Buffalo wings and shrimp, I thought I'd hack another popular item on the menu: Hooters Pasta Salad. You'll love the tasty tri-color pasta salad tossed with tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onion, and a delicious vinaigrette. Use my version of the pink vinaigrette dressing on a variety of salads or sub sandwiches, or even as a marinade.

Get your wing fix with my copycat recipes for the wings that made Hooter's famous here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Chick-fil-A’s popular Frosted Lemonade is a delicious, blended combination of lemonade and the chain’s trademarked Icedream soft serve product. Just like Dairy Queen’s famous soft serve, Icedream looks and tastes like ice cream, but it contains considerably less butterfat since it’s made with milk, rather than cream.

For my Chick-Fil-A Frosted Lemonade recipe though, cream-less ice cream is not a necessity. Regular ice cream works just fine here, although light ice cream, which is usually made with a milk base (Blue Bell Vanilla Light Ice Cream is one example), also makes a great clone.

Give yourself a little time for the fresh lemonade to chill in your freezer before adding it to your blender with the other ingredients. In a matter of seconds, when all the ice is crushed, you’ll have two frosty 16-ounce drinks that taste just like the real deal, but at a mere fraction of the cost.

Try more of my Chick-Fil-A copycat recipes like their famous chicken sandwich here. 

This iconic Chinese chicken salad, born at Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois restaurant in Santa Monica, California, can also be found on menus at other Puck dining rooms, including Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill and Wolfgang Puck Player’s Locker, both in Las Vegas.

It's a decades-old secret recipe that is often imitated but never duplicated since no knockoff I've found includes all the ingredients necessary to create the signature taste. In my underground lab, I sat down with my “to-go” salad (dressing on the side, of course) and meticulously deconstructed it by separating all the ingredients into small bowls. After working for about 45 minutes with the tweezers, I had separate piles of napa cabbage, various greens including frisée, radicchio, shredded carrot, and another shredded root vegetable that I have yet to see anyone include in their so-called “hack”: daikon radish.

In my Wolfgang Puck Chinois Chicken Salad recipe below I’ll show you how to make the perfect blend of greens (including another secret ingredient that recipes miss), and the ultimate way to clone the famous dressing. I’ve also got easy hacks for perfect candied sesame cashews and crunchy wontons to sprinkle on top, plus I’m including a handful of step photos to ensure that your salad comes out perfect.

It would take quite a bit of real lemon juice to give this moist loaf clone the perfect lemony zip of the original. With too much liquid we wind up with thin batter, and ultimately a baked lemon loaf that lacks the dense and flavorful quality of the coffeehouse original.  So, to avoid producing a batter that's too runny, we must turn to lemon extract. It's over by the vanilla extract in the baking aisle. This concentrated lemon flavoring works well alongside real lemon juice to give us the perfectly intense lemon flavor we need for a killer Starbucks lemon loaf cake true copycat recipe. The lemon extract also works like a charm to flavor the icing that will top off your fauxed food. Try my Starbucks Iced Lemon Loaf recipe below, I know you're gonna love it. 

Re-create more of your favorite Starbucks drinks and treats here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Tiny apple pies have been a signature dessert on the McDonald’s menu for decades, but the chain upped its pie game recently with a tasty new treat featuring a duo of fillings in a flaky, lightly-iced crust. And no one has developed a good hack...until now.

To duplicate these personal McDonald's Strawberry and Crème pies at home, I’ve created a new crust formula and filled it with thickened, puréed frozen strawberries next to a sweetened cream cheese filling. You'll find everything you'll need in my McDonald's Strawberry and Cream Pie recipe below. 

To apply the perfect amount of filling, you can convert small plastic storage bags into mini piping bags by snipping off a corner. Squeeze the fillings onto the dough, then seal up the pies, brush them with light icing, and pop them in the oven. This recipe makes ten pies, which is a good thing because everyone who watches you make these will want one.   

Find my McDonald's Apple Pie recipe in "Top Secret Recipes Step-by-Step".

Searching for a great fried calamari recipe from a large chain to hack, I finally landed on Carrabba’s popular appetizer, with two dipping sauces, including the chain's top secret Ricardo Sauce.

I like this preparation because it's super simple, with a two-stage breading process that calls for just egg whites to moisten the calamari before it gets dropped into the seasoned flour. The egg whites will give the breading a light texture and prevent your calamari from browning as it would with any milk or egg yolk in the mix. Browning is just fine for other fried calamari dishes, but a hack for Carrabba’s version needs to produce crispy calamari with a tender crunch and light golden color.

A good Carrabba’s Calamari recipe will also need to include both dipping sauces, so hacks for the chain’s marinara sauce and famous Ricardo Sauce recipes are here. Ricardo Sauce is a creamy lemon butter sauce with added red bell peppers, pepperoncini, and crushed red peppers, and this exclusive TSR formula will give you the absolute best results of any recipe that exists in the known universe.

I've hacked a ton of dishes from Carrabba's. Check to see if I hacked your favorites here.

Menu Description: "Three thick slices grilled golden brown and sprinkled with powdered sugar."

This popular breakfast choice at America's number one diner chain takes center stage on the cover of the menu. Three slices of thick bread are dipped in a slightly sweet egg batter, browned to perfection and served up with a dusting of powdered sugar, some soft butter and thick maple syrup on the side. Find the thick-sliced Texas toast bread in your bakery, or use any white bread that's sliced around 3/4-inch thick. My Denny's French toast recipe below will make enough for two servings of three slices each, and it's the perfect recipe for waking up a special someone with breakfast in bed.

Find more amazing breakfast ideas here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

In 2022, for the first time in its 29-year history, Chipotle debuted a new style of grilled chicken, and it became an instant hit. At least it was at the Chipotle near me, where the Pollo Asado was ordered more than any other protein, according to servers there. But the new flavor is for a limited-time-only, and when it’s gone, my exclusive Chipotle Pollo Asado recipe may be the only way to satisfy your deep desire.

It appears that Chipotle’s new chicken is marinated in a vacuum meat tumbler similar to the way the Mexican chicken chain El Pollo Loco does it. I sure wish I had one of those awesome tumblers because they speed up and improve the marinating process, producing moist chicken packed with flavor all the way through. But those tumblers are expensive and bulky, and I have absolutely zero space left in my kitchen to store one. So, an overnight marinade, along with a bit of patience, must suffice. 

The next day, grill your marinated chicken, chop it up, toss it with the secret citrusy sauce hacked here, add some fresh cilantro and lime juice, then use it as you see fit on burritos, tacos, salads, and bowls.

You might also like my clone recipe for Qdoba Grilled Adobo Chicken.

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.

Mosey on over to the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday and you'll find this sweet, creamy apple salad somewhere down at the end. It's a simple recipe to clone with just nine ingredients, and it makes a great side for any casual cookout, picnic, reunion, or mandatory boring office party. Dried cranberries rehydrate to add notes of concentrated sweetness, and the celery and chopped pecans contribute extra crunch. You'll need two kinds of apples—one green and one red. Plan ahead on this one so that you can let the salad sit for several hours before you serve it. It tastes much better after a good fridge nap. My Ruby Tuesday Apple Salad recipe yields enough for 6 servings, but it can easily be doubled or quadrupled to fill more mouths.

Find more tasty Ruby Tuesday clone recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

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.

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.

Menu Description: "Smoked chicken, black beans, corn, jalapeño Jack cheese, red peppers and spinach wrapped inside a crispy flour tortilla. We serve it with our avocado-ranch dipping sauce."

Chili's was the first chain to popularize the Southwestern-style egg roll, but as with any successful menu item, clones have been popping up on other major chains' appetizer menus over the past several years. Even though it's more like a small chimichanga than an egg roll, this appetizer is a fabulous creation with monster flavor. A flour tortilla is stuffed with a spicy blend of corn, green onions, black beans, spinach, jalapeño peppers, Monterey Jack cheese and spices; then it's deep-fried. Slice the fried rolls diagonally, dunk the wedges into a creamy avocado ranch sauce, and you've done your taste buds a solid. 

I suggest you make your homemade Chili's Soutwestern egg rolls several hours before you plan to serve them, so they can freeze before frying (it's a great dish to make a day ahead of a party or event). This freezing step will help the outside fry to a golden brown, but the egg rolls will stay folded, and oil won't seep in. Assembling the egg rolls takes a little time, so if you like these, I suggest making a double batch. Since you'll be freezing them, you'll have extra on hand in the freezer ready to cook with just a little additional effort.

Find more of my Chili's copycat recipes 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.

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. 

To help fill the void left by a lack of dine-in customers when the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. in early 2020, restaurant operators had to get creative. That spring and summer we saw a surge in ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants where all the food was prepared for delivery only. Ghost kitchens are kitchens without seating and minimal, if any, signage. Virtual restaurants are delivery-only services where food is prepared in established restaurant kitchens.

It's Just Wings is a concept cooked up by Brinker, the team behind Chili’s and Maggiano’s, with a menu limited to wings in three styles—bone-in, boneless, and smoked—tossed in your choice of eight creative sauces or two dry rubs. Since I've already hacked a variety of traditional wings and boneless wings, I chose to clone It's Just Wings stand-out smoked wings which are prepared in the same pecan wood smoking ovens (called Combitherms) Chili’s uses to make baby back ribs. 

The secret is to brine the chicken first, then blot it dry and rub the skin with oil to help make it crispy while it smokes. If you don’t have a smoker, you can smoke the wings on your grill by heating one side of the grill and placing the wings on the other side. Set wood chips or pellets in foil over the heated side, then close the lid.   

Below you'll find my recipe for It's Just Wings Smoked Wings and three of their most notable sauces: Honey Sriracha, Honey Chipotle, and Truffle Hot Sauce. Pick one (or more), toss your wings in it, and dive in. Or maybe you just want to go naked? These wings also taste great without any sauce at all.

I've hacked a ton of famous fried chicken wings. See if I cloned your favorite 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.

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.

Menu Description: "Grilled chicken breasts topped with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil pesto, and a lemon garlic sauce.”

My Olive Garden grilled chicken margherita recipe starts with a quick 30-minute brine to bless the chicken with flavor and juiciness. While the chicken is marinating and then grilling, you’ll have plenty of time to make the basil pesto and lemon garlic sauce knockoffs.

When the chicken comes off the grill, top it with cheese and pop under the broiler for a nice melt. Once plated, the chicken is doused with the delicious lemon garlic sauce, topped with pesto, and dressed up with colorful grape tomatoes.

And if you’re into it, I’ve also worked up a clone for the side served with this entrée at Olive Garden—Parmesan zucchini. The hack is in the Tidbits below if you’d like to include this simple side with your copycat plate, like they do in the restaurant.

This recipe makes four servings, which is four lunch-size servings at Olive Garden, or two dinner portions. Now, how hungry are you?

Find more of my Olive Garden 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.

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.

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.