THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES

Carl's Jr.

Good job. You just found recipes for all your favorite famous foods! Bestselling author and TV Host Todd Wilbur shows you how to easily duplicate the taste of iconic dishes and treats at home for less money than eating out. Todd’s recipes are easy to follow and fun to make! Find your favorite copycat recipes from Carl's Jr. here. New recipes added every week.

Products: 114 of 14
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    Hardee's 1/4-Pound Hamburger

    In 1975 Hardee's opened its 1,000th restaurant. The 2,000th unit was opened in 1983, and shortly after that, in 1988, the 3,000th unit opened its doors. This pattern of expansion has continued: a new Hardee's restaurant now opens on the average of one each workday. With the acquisition of the Roy Rogers chain in 1990, Hardee's neared the 4,000-unit mark, ringing up system-wide sales of more than $3 billion. This is a chain that has come a long way since its first menu in 1961, which contained only eight items, including fifteen-cent hamburgers and ten-cent soft drinks.

    As part of its continuing effort to offer nutrition-conscious customers a range of menu choices, Hardee's was one of the first of the "Big Four" burger chains to switch to low-calorie mayonnaise for its sandwiches. 

    Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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    Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s Hand-Breaded Chicken & Waffle Sandwich

    Amid the chicken sandwich wars of 2019-2021, Carl’s Jr. (Hardee’s) debuted a simple chicken and waffle sandwich that is remarkably good. Crispy chicken breast is doused with maple butter sauce and sandwiched between two Belgian waffle buns for a sweet-and-savory handful of fab.     

    To clone the sandwich at home, the chicken gets brined for great flavor and juiciness like the real thing, and then it’s cooked until perfectly golden brown and crispy. The maple butter sauce is easy to hack with just three ingredients and a mixer.

    The biggest secret I reveal is how to make Belgian waffles with one flat side just like the real sandwich using a standard waffle iron and a piece of folded aluminum foil. Those exclusive tricks are here plus plenty of helpful step photos so your homemade Carl's Jr. chicken & waffle sandwich will come out perfect.

    Find more of my copycat Carl's Jr. recipes here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Carl's Jr. Fried Zucchini

    For decades, Carl’s Jr. has effectively cornered the market on fried zucchini at major fast food chains by serving a great crispy breaded version that’s flavorful all the way through. Now you can make zucchini that tastes just as good, as long as you know the secret step that other fried zucchini recipes miss. It makes all the difference.

    The secret is a brine. I found that this fried zucchini tastes best when it takes a salted water bath before breading. In 60 minutes, the salt in the brine is absorbed by the zucchini, spreading good flavor all the way through. After the brine, the zucchini is rinsed, coated twice with flour and once with seasoned breadcrumbs, and fried to a beautiful golden brown.

    I’m giving you a couple choices here. You can make the recipe all the way through and serve it immediately, or if you want to serve it later, you can par-fry the zucchini and freeze it for several days. After that, when an occasion arises, a couple minutes is all it takes to finish off the dish and serve it. My Carl's Jr. Fried Zucchini recipe makes enough for a small gathering, but you can easily cut it in half for a more intimate hang.

    Click here for more amazing Carl's Jr. copycat recipes. 

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Carl's Jr. The Six Dollar Burger

    In 2001 this West Coast chain came up with a great idea: clone the type of burger you'd get at a casual restaurant chain such as Chili's or T.G.I. Friday's for around six bucks, but sell it for just $3.95. It's 1/3 pound of ground beef stacked on top of plenty of fixings, including red onion and those sweet-tasting bread-and-butter pickle slices. And the cost gets even lower when you make your own Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger at home. How does less than two bucks grab ya?

    Try my Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger recipe below, and find more famous sandwiches from Carl's Jr. here.

    Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 4.00 (votes: 2)
    Carl's Jr. Charbroiled Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich Reduced-Fat

    In the last few years, Carl's Jr. has become one of the fastest-growing fast-food chains in the country. In 1997, the burger joint grew from 930 restaurants in nine states to nearly 3,900 in forty-four states with its purchase of Hardee's hamburger outlets. This makes Carl's Jr. the fourth-largest burger chain in the country, behind McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's.

    One of the unique sandwiches that makes Carl's a popular stop for the lunch crowd is this Charbroiled Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich with the delicious spicy sauce. It's that tasty sauce that gives the real thing much of its fat, so by cloning it with nonfat ingredients, we can cut the grease on this sandwich to one-fifth of the original, while keeping all of the flavor. 

    Try my Carl's Jr. Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich reduced-fat recipe below, or click here for the original recipe.

    Nutrition Facts
    Serving size–1 sandwich
    Total servings–4
    Calories per serving–305 (Original–530)
    Fat per serving–5.5g (Original–29g)

    Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Carl's Jr. Chicken Club

    The first days receipts at Carl Karcher's just-purchased hot-dog cart in 1941 totaled $14.75. Peanuts, right? But Karcher was determined to make it big. So during the next two years he purchased several more stands throughout the Los Angeles area, later expanding into restaurants and diversifying the menu. In 1993, what had once been a business of one tiny hot-dog cart had become a multi-million-dollar company with 642 outlets. From $14.75 on the first day to today's $1.6 million in daily receipts, old Carl was on the right track.

    Now you can use my Carl's Jr. Chicken Club recipe to duplicate the delicious teriyaki marinated chicken breast, bacon, and Swiss cheese sandwich at home. 

    Find more of your favorite Carl's Jr. burgers and sides here

    Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Carl's Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger

    Onion rings, bacon, American cheese and tasty barbecue sauce combine to make a manly gut-grinder that can be thoroughly enjoyed during the grilling season, or any time of the year if you use an indoor grill. The sandwich was introduced in 1983, and has since become so successful that it has spawned variations, from a junior version to the monstrous double, both of which are included here in my Carl's Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger recipe below.

    While any barbecue sauce you use for this recipe will work just fine, track down some Bulls-Eye Hickory Smoke flavor barbecue sauce if you want the closest cloned results. My recipe makes one sandwich. Double, triple, and quadruple it as needed based on current hunger requirements.

    Click here for more recipes of your favorite Carl's Jr. items here.

    Source: "More Top Secret Recipes" by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Carl's Jr. Famous Star

    It was in Los Angeles in 1941 that Carl Karcher and his wife, Margaret, found a hotdog cart on Florence and Central for sale for $326. They borrowed $311 on their Plymouth, added $15 of their own, and bought the brightly colored stand. Although the sign on this first stand read "Hugo's Hot Dogs," Karcher began purchasing more carts, painting on them "Carl's Hot Dog's." In 1945 Karcher opened his first drive-thru restaurant, which he named "Carl's Drive-In Barbecue." In 1956 he opened two smaller restaurants in Anaheim and Brea, California, and used the Carl's Jr. name for the first time.

    With 630 units as of 1991, the chain's trademark smiling star can be seen throughout the West and Southwestern United States, as well as in Mexico, Japan, and Malaysia. The chain has come a long way from the days when Karcher used to mix the secret sauce in twenty-gallon batches on his back porch. Carl's Jr. takes credit for introducing salad bars to fast-food restaurants back in 1977. Today, salads are regular fare at most of the major chains.

    Carl's top-of-the-line hamburger is still the flame-broiled Famous Star, one of several products that has made Carl's Jr. famous. 

    Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Carl's Jr. Bacon Swiss Crispy Chicken Sandwich

    If you love crispy chicken sandwiches—and especially if you don't live in the West, where this chain is located—you'll want to try out this clone of the tasty Carl's Jr. creation. 

    My Carl's Jr. Bacon Swiss Crispy Chicken Sandwich recipe below makes four of the addicting chicken sandwiches from the California-based fast-food chain, but will also come in handy for making a delicious homemade ranch dressing. Try using some lean turkey bacon, fat-free Swiss cheese, and fat-free mayonnaise if you feel like cutting back on the fat.

    Find more of my copycat Carl's Jr. recipes here.

    Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Carl's Jr. Ranch Crispy Chicken Sandwich

    Carl's Jr.'s fried chicken breast sandwich includes lettuce and tomato, and is slathered with a Carl's tasty ranch dressing. We'll use elements of my Carl's Jr. Bacon Swiss Crispy Chicken Sandwich recipe to whip up this variation of the Carl's Jr. crispy chicken sandwiches. Use both of these sandwich recipes to serve up two different sandwiches with different tastes, with little extra effort.

    Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 4.36 (votes: 14)
    Carl's Jr. Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich

    This is a simple fast food sandwich to clone, and it's one of my favorites to make at home. This sandwich has been around since March of 1991, and has been a popular choice at Carl's Jr. outlets dotting the western United States. 

    Chicken fillets are marinated in teriyaki sauce and grilled. The chicken is then stacked on a whole wheat bun along with American cheese, lettuce, mild green chili peppers and a spicy southwestern-style spread. If you're looking to fire up the barbecue for a little chicken grilling, give my Carl's Jr. Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich recipe a go and bring a surprise to the table.

    Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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    Carl's Jr. Charbroiled Chicken Club Sandwich Reduced-Fat

    Eight weeks after the board of directors locked seventy-six-year old Carl Karcher out of his office in 1993, he was engineering a takeover of the "Happy Star" company that he had built over five decades. Crafty Carl found financier William P. Foley to assume his debts in exchange for stock and take control of the company as the new chairman of the board. Carl was named chairman emeritus and finally got his desk back. His plan to sell Mexican food at Carl's Jr. restaurants was later adopted and became a huge success for the chain, and almost all of the executives who had fired him have since left the company.

    Here's one of Carl's delicious sandwiches that we can clone with much fewer fat grams by using turkey bacon, fat-free mayonnaise, and fat-free Swiss cheese. These substitutions for full-fat ingredients can bring the fat down from twenty-nine grams to just over ten without compromising that distinctive Carl's Jr. taste.

    Nutrition Facts 
    Serving size–1 sandwich
    Total servings–4
    Calories per serving–366 (Original–570)
    Fat per serving–10.5g (Original–29g)

    Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Not rated yet
    Carl's Jr. Bacon Swiss Crispy Chicken Sandwich Reduced-Fat

    Helping Carl's Jr. rebound from its sales slump was a series of TV commercials featuring over sauced sandwiches that splattered ketchup and mayo onto floors, clothes, and shoes. The tag line, "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face," made sloppy synonymous with tasty.

    If you look forward to messing up your clean clothes but don't need all the saturated fat that usually comes with this drippy fare, you'll want to try my reduced fat Carl's Jr. Bacon Swiss Crispy Chicken Sandwich recipe below. The fat-free ranch dressing saves you from oodles of nasty fat grams, and then the special baking technique that clones the taste and texture of deep-frying eliminates a bunch more.

    Nutrition Facts
    Serving size–1 sandwich
    Total servings–4
    Calories per serving–660 (Original–720)
    Fat per serving–19g (Original–36g)

    Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Not rated yet
    Carl's Jr. Ranch Crispy Chicken Sandwich Reduced-Fat

    The 1980s were the beginning of tough times for one of the worlds largest burger chains. Carl Karcher had built the little hot-dog cart he purchased for $311 in 1941 into a successful West Coast hamburger chain 600 units strong; but his luck was about to change. Carl took his company public, then opened several Carl's Jr. restaurants in Texas. The bottom line for the Texas stores fell way below expectations, and the stock began to skid. In 1988 Carl was charged with insider trading for selling stock just before its price fell, and he paid almost $1 million in fines. When poor Southern California real estate investments left him million of dollars in debt, Carl was desperate to find a way out of the hole. He proposed to the board of directors that Carl's Jr. should sell Mexican food. The board voted to fire Carl instead, and the man with the vision was ousted from the very company he had founded.

    For this reduced-fat clone of an excellent chicken sandwich, well make the ranch dressing from scratch with fat-free ingredients. Then well use a special Top Secret Recipes baking technique of the fat we can't avoid when frying.

    Nutrition Facts
    Serving size–1 sandwich
    Total Servings–4
    Calories–580 (Original–620)
    Fat–11g (Original–29g)

    Source: Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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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.

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