THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
I'm Todd Wilbur, Chronic Food Hacker

For over 30 years I've been deconstructing America's most iconic brand-name foods to make the best original copycat recipes for you to use at home. Welcome to my lab.

This Week's Big Secrets

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Top Secret Recipes Gift Certificate

    Gift the gift of great food! Order your Top Secret Recipes gift card in any denomination from $5 - $500! 

    You can send the gift card to your email, and print out the certificate, or send the gift card to a friend. The recipient will be sent an email with a special code and a note from you!

    The Gift Certificate can be used to purchase club memberships, individual recipes, cookbooks, spices, sauces, and gear! 

    Get your TSR Gift Card here, and start spreading joy today! 

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  • Not rated yet
    Starbucks Dark Toffee Bundt

    This new seasonal pastry is Starbucks’ version of sticky toffee pudding, in a handy portable single-serving size. Like the traditional recipe, this mini bundt cake is sweetened, in part, with date paste and is coated with a sticky sweet glaze. This version veers from tradition, though, with a dusting of a sugar/salt blend, and it’s speckled with Christmas sprinkles to amp up the festive limited-time-only vibe. 

    To create my Starbucks Dark Toffee Bundt copycat recipe, I relied heavily on the chain’s online ingredients list. Using that information, I could estimate ingredient ratios based on my initial weight of date paste. Starting there, I deduced measurements for the flour, butter, sugar, eggs, brown sugar, etc., knowing that the list is organized by weight. Getting the leavening right took some trial and error, but at the end of the day, with the help of a mini bundt cake pan, I was able to re-create the delicious little cakes in both appearance and taste.

    By the way, if you don’t have a mini bundt cake pan, no big deal. You can bake these cakes in a large (Texas-size) muffin pan or even a standard muffin pan, if that’s all you’ve got. For the sprinkles, Starbucks uses little trees, but you can top your cakes with whatever you like.

    Pair this with your favorite drink from Starbucks. Find more of my copycat recipes here.

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    Steak 'N Shake Genuine Chili

    Examining the list of ingredients on a can of this 500-unit Midwestern chain's chili reveals a traditional chili con carne formula with beans as the only vegetable ingredient. There is no tomato sauce in the recipe, as stated by Internet copycats. Nor is there any chocolate or cola in the mix, as some recipes claim. 

    Snag this recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Step-by Step".

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Panda Express Blazing Bourbon Chicken

    In collaboration with the YouTube talk show Hot Ones, Panda Express released its spiciest dish yet, which includes a new sauce made with the treacherous Apollo chili pepper. The Apollo pepper was created by famous chili breeder Ed Currie, who also cultivated the Carolina Reaper, once rated as the world’s hottest chili pepper. Measuring around 3 million Scoville units, the Apollo pepper is 1.4 times hotter than the Carolina Reaper.

    For my Panda Express Blazing Bourbon Chicken copycat recipe, I knew it would be unreasonable to expect you to buy Hot Ones’ The Last Dab Apollo Hot Sauce, the "secret" heat source in the real thing. A bottle of that sauce costs around 30 bucks, and you would only need one drop, so my first order of business was to find a much cheaper substitute.

    I landed on a ghost pepper sauce, which, at 1 million Scoville units, is one-third as hot as the Apollo. When ghost pepper is blended with other ingredients in a sauce, such as in Melinda’s Ghost Pepper Sauce (which I used for my clone), it's diluted, it's tasty, and it's not at all overwhelming.

    That ghost pepper sauce, plus garlic, ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, and just a touch of bourbon, will give you the perfect sauce to toss with onion, bell pepper, and crispy chicken for a delicious and fiery—but not too fiery—home hack of this tasty limited-time-only entrée.

    Find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    Chipotle Smoked Brisket

    In 2021, for a limited time, Chipotle added smoked and sauced brisket to its line of signature meats. The tender brisket is seasoned with a blend of peppers, garlic, cumin, and coriander, then seared and tossed with a smokey barbecue sauce fused with traditional Mexican flavors. It’s a significant departure from the chain’s signature south-of-the-border protein offerings, and when the dish came back to the menu in 2024, it was a food hacking challenge I couldn't refuse.

    For my Chipotle Smoked Brisket copycat recipe, I used the flat end of the brisket, as does the chain, and trimmed the fat, so the seasoning blend came in direct contact with the meat. I let the seasoning sit on the meat for at least four hours, then I smoked it and mopped it a couple of times with a vinegar blend to help keep it moist and to wake up the flavor. When the brisket hit 165 degrees F, I covered it and let it continue cooking until the internal temperature reached 200 degrees F, and a beautiful dark crust formed. I wrapped the brisket in foil and a thick towel and placed it in a cooler for a couple of hours to rest, and then it was ready to serve.

    Because the process took 12 to 14 hours, I found it best to refrigerate the brisket until the next day, when it can be prepped for serving. When everyone's hungry, and you’re ready to finish the brisket, chop it, sear it, season it, and sauce it with this barbecue sauce made from typical barbecue sauce ingredients, plus peppers and cumin to bring out the spirit of Mexico.

    And don’t worry if you don’t have a smoker. In the Tidbits below, I’ll tell you how to use your gas or charcoal grill to add beautiful smoke flavoring to your brisket, just like a legit smoker. 

    Try more of my Chipotle copycat recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    Grey Goose Honey Deuce

    This quenching combination of Grey Goose vodka, fresh lemonade, and Chambord raspberry liqueur was invented in 2007 by Grey Goose ambassador and restauranteur Nick Mautone for the vodka sponsorship deal struck with the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. Nick came up with a drink made with the refreshing flavor of raspberry lemonade, and the cocktail stick with three frozen honeydew melon balls resembling tennis balls was his perfectly inspired garnish.

    The popularity of the summer concoction at the U.S. Open peaked in 2023 when 460,275 Honey Deuces were sold in commemorative cups for $22 each. Sales of the drink that year reached over $10 million, and at the 2024 tournament, with an upped $23 price tag, sales are expected to be even higher.

    I designed my custom version of the Grey Goose Honey Deuce recipe for a 16-ounce glass, so I retooled the recipe shared by Grey Goose, which is measured to fit in a 12-ounce highball glass. Also, their recipe doesn’t mention how to make good lemonade, so I devised an easy formula that will give you 16 ounces of lemonade, which will be enough for four cocktails.

    Before making your drinks, use a melon baller to make honeydew melon balls. Pierce three on a cocktail stick for each drink you plan to make and freeze them for about an hour. Your serve.

    Find more of my famous drink copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Little Caesars Crazy Puffs with Crazy Sauce

    One of Little Caesars most successful new products is these mini deep-dish pizzas, baked until browned and bubbly, brushed with buttery garlic spread, and sprinkled with herbs and cheese. They come with pepperoni or just cheese, and they’re so good that the moment I tried one, I knew that a home hack was in my immediate future. 

    I wanted my Little Caesars Crazy Puffs copycat recipe to be better than any of the mom blog versions that rely on pre-made dough, so I made the dough from scratch using bread flour and cold-proofed it for 48 hours. This gave me a nicely fermented chewy dough that nicely matched the dough from Little Caesars in texture and flavor.

    After recently discovering that Little Caesars Crazy Sauce is the same recipe as their marinara pizza sauce, I redesigned my Little Caesars Crazy Sauce recipe from my 1995 cookbook, More Top Secret Recipes. And this time, I made the sauce without cooking it after a worker revealed that important secret. The sauce will eventually cook when it goes through the oven on the pizza. Meanwhile, in the back, some of that sauce is packaged into to-go cups and chilled until it's served to customers as Crazy Sauce for dipping. 

    You can make 21 Crazy Puffs clones in 2 batches using a 12-cup muffin pan coated with butter-flavored oil spray. I've made sure to include instructions for both versions: pepperoni and cheese & herb. Because choices are nice.

    Find more of my Little Caesar's copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Red Robin Ensenada Chicken

    This chain’s most popular chicken dish owes its appeal to two delicious sauces and the great way they work together. The dark red ancho chili sauce wakes the chicken with big, bold lime and chili flavors, and the salsa ranch drizzled over the top contributes a delicious, cooling layer of creaminess. If you like tequila lime chicken and fiesta chicken entrees from other restaurants, you'll really love this recipe.

    For my Red Robin Ensenada Chicken copycat recipe, you have the option of cooking the brined chicken on an outdoor barbecue grill, on a flat grill, or in a sauté pan. It’s unclear which cooking method Red Robin uses for the chicken since the photo of the dish in the menu clearly shows grill marks as if cooked on a grate, while my take-home sample of the dish showed signs of being cooked on a flat surface. In the end, either way works.

    The standout secret ingredient in this recipe is the A-1 sauce used in the ancho chili sauce, which contributes perfect fruity sweet-and-sour notes. That may sound like a strange addition, but it’s not unusual for Worcestershire sauce to be called for in ancho sauce, and A-1 is similar in many ways to Worcestershire.

    The recipe makes 1 1/3 cups each of the ancho sauce and salsa ranch, so after you make these servings, you’ll still have plenty of the goodness left over for more chicken later or for other dishes.

    Find more of your favorite Red Robin copycat recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    IHOP Protein Power Pancakes

    Protein is very powerful these days. According to a 2024 International Food Information Council survey, 71% of participants are trying to eat more protein. That's up from 67% in 2023, and 59% in 2022. Noting the trend, manufacturers have been developing ways to add protein to more products, and restaurants are following suit, as IHOP did with this new protein-packed stack.

    For my IHOP Protein Power Pancakes recipe, I carefully measured ingredients and calculated protein so that your counterfeit pancakes have 10 grams of protein each, just like the real ones—a stack of four pancakes like you get in the restaurant weighs in at a hefty 40 grams of protein.

    Also, as with the restaurant version, most protein is added as unflavored whey protein powder. I made sure to use the same combination of flour as the chain, including oat flour, which you can buy already ground or grind to flour yourself with a coffee grinder or small food processor.

    Once your batter is mixed, cook the pancakes on a well-buttered flat grill or on two or three non-stick sauté pans to make at least two pancakes at a time. The recipe yields 16 pancakes, so cooking multiple flapjacks simultaneously will streamline the process.  

    Check out my other IHOP recipe clones here.

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  • Not rated yet
    Cheesecake Factory Cuban Sandwich

    After a recent search for the best Cuban sandwich from a national chain, I found the winner at Cheesecake Factory. It had all the elements you want from a good Cuban: roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard, all on a toasted roll. After just one bite, I knew I needed to clone it, and my fate was sealed.

    For any good Cuban sandwich, the star of the show is the roasted pork, so I started there. After marinating, searing, baking, and braising several pork loins, I was sure I had found the best way to flavor and cook it. The trick to keeping the typically lean pork from drying out and becoming tough was to brine, sear, wrap, and bake it until it hit 145 degrees in the middle.

    Starting with good bread is also important, so you’ll want to track down some Cuban sandwich rolls. If you can’t find Cuban rolls, you can also use French or Italian rolls. Just be sure they’re on the soft side and not too crusty. A panini press is preferred for this recipe, but if you don’t have one, you can use a heavy pan as a weight to press down on the sandwich as it browns on one side, then flip the sandwich over to brown the other side.

    Try my Cheesecake Factory Cuban Sandwich copycat recipe below, and click here for more of my copycat recipes for Cheesecake Factory's famous cheesecakes, appetizers, entrées, soups and more!

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Maggiano's Italian Meatballs

    Not sure why I got called out at Maggiano’s. Perhaps I asked too many questions. Whatever the reason, my cover was blown on this clandestine meatball mission.

    While sitting at the restaurant bar enjoying a side of Maggiano’s fantastic meatballs, Adrian, the manager, poked his head around the corner and asked, “Are you the guy who copied our tenderloin medallions recipe?” He was right. Several years ago, I posted my version of the chain’s signature dish, so I was forced to admit that it was me. I thought that would end my intel gathering for the day, but the opposite happened.

    “I couldn’t believe how close you got,” he said, referring to the balsamic cream sauce on the medallions. I thanked him for the compliment and told him the dish was one of my favorites, and I had to clone it right. There was a vibe of mutual respect, so I saw an opportunity to ask him questions about the chain's meatballs, including the meats used. Adrian told me that Maggiano’s uses just ground chuck and not a blend of meats often used in meatballs, such as pork and veal.

    Thanks to Adrian I had some good information for starting my recipe. Still, I was about to get even more valuable tips when, five minutes later, Maggiano’s executive chef Alberto, with a thick Italian accent, came out to say “hello.”

    Alberto explained the braising process they use to make the delicious meatballs so fall-apart tender. He also stressed the importance of forming the meatballs loosely in your hands and not packing the meat. "These are meatballs, not snowballs", he says. In Alberto’s kitchen, you should be able to “cut the meatballs with a plastic spoon.”

    So, with the helpful tips from Adrian and Alberto, I present my version of the chain’s fabulous meatballs and hacked marinara sauce, for the closest copycat recipe you’ll ever get.

    Try my Maggiano's Italian Meatballs copycat recipe below, and find more of my Maggiano's copycat recipes here

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  • Not rated yet
    Pinkberry Original (Tart) Frozen Yogurt

    Every recipe I found online claiming to duplicate the tart frozen fat-free yogurt popularized by this 250-unit California-based chain—including one designed by chefs at Food Network Magazine—calls for Greek yogurt as the main ingredient when there is no Greek yogurt in the real thing. Plain fat-free yogurt is mentioned in the ingredients statement, and a worker at the store confirmed this fact. 

    The tartness in the yogurt comes from citric acid, sometimes called "sour salt," which you can find in many grocery stores or online. For my original Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt copycat recipe, you'll add the hydrocolloid found in the real thing (a gel that simulates fat) by using fat-free half-and-half, which contains natural vegetable gums to create a smooth mouthfeel and a less icy texture.

    Mix these six ingredients, pour the mixture into an ice cream maker, and in about 20 minutes, you'll have five cups of tart soft-serve frozen yogurt that tastes just like the famous original.    

    Try more of my famous dessert copycat recipes here.

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Step-By-Step by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Not rated yet
    Panera Bread Mac & Cheese

    Tender pasta must swim in a thick, creamy white cheddar cheese sauce for a home mac and cheese recipe to perfectly match Panera’s take on the dish. The sauce must be smooth as silk and not at all grainy, as many cheddar cheese sauces, especially white cheddar sauces, can be. And the flavor must be so good that when you get to the bottom of the bowl, you instantly crave some more.

    For my Panera Bread Mac & Cheese copycat recipe, you’ll want to use pipette pasta for the most similar clone, but any curvy pasta will do, such as elbows or small shells. The real secret here is the sauce, which can be a challenging hack since sharp cheese tends to melt poorly and create grainy and broken sauces, and all the white cheddar I found was either sharp or extra sharp.

    With that melting challenge in mind, I chose to control the consistency of the sauce in three ways: with a flour roux, a cornstarch slurry, and by adding several slices of Kraft white American cheese Singles. That particular type of cheese contains sodium citrate, a magical additive that emulsifies the sauce and prevents the cheese from separating. If you can’t find Kraft Singles, look for another sliced white American cheese that contains sodium citrate. The flour and cornstarch are there to help thicken the sauce to the same consistency as the chain's delicious secret recipe.

    Find more of your favorite Panera Bread copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Jack in the Box Smashed Jack Burger & Boss Sauce

    In 2024, Jack-in-the-Box introduced the chain’s best-reviewed burger, the Smashed Jack, with a ¼-pound “smashed-inspired” burger, grilled onions, and a new secret sauce. A press release from Jack-in-the-Box claimed that consumers in a taste test picked the new Smashed Jack as the best burger compared to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King burgers.

    You may have guessed that “smashed-inspired” means that these burgers aren’t prepared like burgers that are smashed with a press or heavy spatula on the grill—a process that triggers the Maillard reaction when amino acids and sugars are browned to give food a flavorful crust. But Jack-in-the-Box created a secret shortcut for speed and consistency that still gives the burgers that crust and the appearance of smashing without relying on cooks to actually smash them.

    For my Jack-in-the-Box Smashed Jack copycat recipe, we’ll smash the burger for real, but we’ll start with a knockoff of the new Boss Sauce, which gets its smokey flavor from just a little bit of liquid smoke. Once that sauce is done, it’s time to cook the burger patty, which I found is best copied with ground Angus beef. Use a press or heavy spatula to press down on the burger as it cooks to create a browned crust on both sides of the patty.

    After the burger is flipped, grilled onions are stacked on top, followed by American cheese. Then, the burger is finished with thick pickles and lots of your copycat Boss Sauce. This recipe shows you how to make one burger, but you’ll have enough leftover secret sauce to make several more.

    If you're a fan of Jack in the Box Jumbo Jack or any of Jack's Shakes, or their famous tacos, click here for my clone recipes.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Wahlburgers Wahl Sauce

    Chef Paul Wahlberg joined with his acting brothers Mark and Donnie Wahlberg to open the first Wahlburgers restaurant in Hingham, Massachusetts in 2011, and with the help of an A&E reality show in 2014, the chain experienced steady growth for over a decade, opening the 100th restaurant in February 2024.

    The famous family was a fantastic promotion machine for the chain, but let’s face it, the restaurant wouldn’t have become successful if the food didn't taste good. The secret to the chain’s great-tasting beef patties is a custom blend of Angus chuck, brisket, and short rib, and it’s the super secret Wahl Sauce that puts their burgers over the top. Once I tasted the chain’s signature “Our Burger,” it became clear that I needed to make a home copy of that special sauce, stat.

    For my Wahlburgers Wahl Sauce copycat recipe, it takes just nine common ingredients to replicate the spread, with lots of finely minced onion and sriracha sauce as standout ingredients that contribute to the special taste. This formula will give you one cup of sauce to use on your home burgers or as a dip for a variety of finger foods, but let it sit for a bit before you use it so that the flavors can mingle.

    Find more of my copycat recipes for famous sauces here.

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