The ridiculously popular crispy chicken sandwich at Popeyes comes with your choice of regular mayonnaise or kicked-up with spicy mayonnaise. Fortunately, I was able to hack the sandwich before it sold out just a couple weeks after its debut (get the recipe here), but that recipe includes just plain mayonnaise. Recently I had the chance to hack the secret spicy mayonnaise, and I’m glad I did. Popeyes chicken sandwich with regular mayonnaise is crazy good, but with spicy mayonnaise, that sandwich is great.

You can use this sauce on a variety of sandwiches and burgers, or as a dip for chicken fingers, nuggets, and fried shrimp.

Check out my other Popeyes clone recipes for their famous red beans and rice, buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken.

I never thought dinner rolls were something I could get excited about before I got my hand into the breadbasket at Texas Roadhouse. The rolls are fresh out of the oven and they hit the table when you do, so there’s no waiting to tear into a magnificently gooey sweet roll topped with soft cinnamon butter. The first bite you take will make you think of a fresh cinnamon roll, and then you can’t stop eating it. And when the first roll’s gone, you are powerless to resist grabbing for just one more. But it’s never just one more. It’s two or three more, plus a few extra to take home for tomorrow.

Discovering the secret to making rolls at home that taste as good as the real ones involved making numerous batches of dough, each one sweeter than the last (sweetened with sugar, not honey—I checked), until a very sticky batch, proofed for 2 hours, produced exactly what I was looking for. You can make the dough with a stand mixer or a hand-held one, the only difference being that you must knead the dough by hand without a stand mixer. When working with the dough add a little bit of flour at a time to keep it from sticking, and just know that the dough will be less sticky and more workable after the first rise.

Roll the dough out and measure it as specified here, and after a final proofing and a quick bake—plus a generous brushing of butter on the tops—you will produce dinner rolls that look and taste just like the best rolls I’ve had at any famous American dinner chain.

Now, how 'bout a nice steak to go with your rolls? Check out these copycat recipes for famous entrees.

This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken (#2), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (#4), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

When Popeyes debuted its new crispy chicken sandwich on August 12, 2019, the company was not prepared for the eruption of social media video posts comparing the new sandwich to Chick-fil-A’s classic chicken sandwich. As a result of the apparently unplanned instant viral campaign in which Popeyes almost always emerges as the winner, customers swarmed the stores and waited in long lines to try the now-famous sandwich. The buzz continued to build, day-by-day, and just two weeks after its debut the sandwich had sold out—a full month ahead of schedule.

But—sold out or not—you don’t need Popeyes to get the great taste combo of the crispy buttermilk breaded chicken breast, soft buttered brioche bun, mayo, and pickles. Fortunately, I was able to get my hands on several of the sandwiches before they were gone, and cranked out a clone recipe so you can now re-create the hit sandwich any time you want. With these new tricks you’ll be able to make crispy chicken at home that’s flavorful, juicy, and tender, just like Popeyes, coated in a thick golden breading with the same light crunch.

The secret to moist, tasty chicken is to brine it for several hours in a mixture of buttermilk, salt, and MSG. The buttermilk is slightly acidic, so it will help tenderize the chicken without making it too tough like harsher acids, while the salt adds flavor (as does the MSG) and keeps the chicken juicy. The MSG (monosodium glutamate) is an amino acid with a salt-like flavor that at one time was thought to be unhealthy but is now considered an important culinary additive. Popeyes uses it in their chicken because it provides an essential savory flavor to the chicken called “umami,” and you cannot make an accurate clone without it.

To imitate the light, crispy breading, we’ll use baking powder in the flour. The baking powder forms bubbles in the flour when the chicken cooks so that the breading is tender and crispy, rather than crusty and dense. I found that self-rising flour works great since it conveniently has just the right amount of baking powder and salt already added. But don't use a low-protein self-rising flour like White Lily. That brand is awesome for biscuits, but its low gluten content makes it not stick well on chicken breasts. I used Gold Medal self-rising flour, and it worked great. If all-purpose flour is all you’ve got, that can work as well. I’ve put measurements for using A.P. flour, plus baking powder and salt, in the Tidbits below. 

If you'd like to kick up your sandwich, clone the spicier version by replacing the plain mayo with my easy hack for Popeyes Spicy Mayonnaise. 

In January of 2017, Starbucks perfected slow-cooked sous vide-style egg snacks that can be prepped and served quickly by the baristas at any location. To speed up service, Starbucks makes the egg pucks ahead of time, then freezes and ships them to the coffee stores where they are defrosted and reheated in blazing hot convection ovens.

Sous vide refers to the method of cooking food sealed in bags or jars at a low, consistent temperature for a long time. This technique creates food that’s softer in texture and less dried out than food cooked with other, faster methods. Cooks who use sous vide will often vacuum pack their food in bags and use special machines to regulate temperature. But you won’t need an expensive machine like that for this recipe—just some 8-ounce canning jars and a blender.

The secret to duplicating the smooth texture starts with blending the cheeses very well until no lumps remain. Rub some between your fingers to make sure it’s smooth before you pour it into the jars. It’s also important to monitor the temperature of the water. Try to keep it in a range of between 170 and 180 degrees F. so that your eggs are neither too tough nor too soft. It’s best to use a cooking thermometer for this, but if you don’t have one, the right temperature is just below where you see tiny bubbles rising to the surface. Also, if you hear the jars jiggling in the water, that’s their way of telling you the water is a bit too hot.

The same slow-cooking technique is used to copy this yolk-less companion to the Bacon & Gruyere Sous Vide Egg Bites, but instead of bacon, this version comes with roasted red pepper, green onion, and spinach.

Because there is no yolk, a little rice flour is used to help hold everything together. I suspect Starbucks chose rice flour to keep the product gluten-free, even though most people really don’t mind a little gluten, and gluten does a much better job of binding. I include the rice flour here but you can substitute with all-purpose wheat flour if gluten isn't a concern, and if you don’t feel like buying a whole bag of rice flour just to use 2 teaspoons out of it.  

To get the same smooth texture in your egg bites as Starbucks be sure to blend the mixture until no bits of cheese can be felt when you rub some between your fingers. The recipe tastes best with full-fat cottage cheese, but you can still use low-fat cottage cheese if you feel like trimming some of the fat.

Check out my other clone recipes for your favorite Starbucks drinks and baked goods here.

The 729-unit chain did not start its life as Qdoba. When the Mexican food chain was first founded by Robert Miller and Anthony Hauser in Denver, Colorado in 1995 it was called Zuma Mexican Grill, named after a friend’s cat. As it turns out, a restaurant in Boston had that same name and threatened to sue, so the partners changed the name to Z-Teca. It wasn’t long before two different restaurants threatened to sue for that name—Z’Tejas in Arizona and Azteca in Washington—and the partners were forced to change the name yet again. This time they called their restaurant Qdoba, a completely made-up name that was unlikely to be used by anyone else.             

A signature item and consistent top seller is this marinated adobo chicken, offered as a main ingredient in most of the chain’s selections. Make this chicken by marinating thigh meat for a couple of days in the secret adobo sauce (a worker there told me they let it soak for up to 8 days) then grill and chop. Use the flavorful chicken in burritos, tacos, bowls, on nachos, and in tortilla soup.

I like making fortune cookies because it means I get to write fortunes. My fortunes are sometimes ridiculous (“No matter what, be sure you don’t…ah, nevermind. Have a cookie.”), sometimes sarcastic (“Wow, you broke a cookie! Have you been working out?”), and sometimes paradoxical (“These cookies are filled with lies.”). But’s let’s face it, the fortune isn't the best part. What matters most is that the cookie tastes good.

Contrary to popular belief, fortune cookies are not from China. They don’t even serve them in China. Fortune cookies are an American invention, created either in San Francisco or Los Angeles in the early 1900s—the exact origin is in dispute.  Originally, I set out to clone the best-selling fortune cookie in the U.S., called Golden Bowl, made by Wonton Foods. But I found out that I don’t like those cookies. They're thin and tasteless and have an unnatural orange tint to them. Instead, I chose to hack the thicker, tastier, golden brown fortune cookies you get at the largest Chinese take-out chain.

Fortune cookies start their life looking like pancake batter. The batter is formed into 3-inch circles, that when baked, become thin cookies that are pliable when warm and crispy when cool—so you’ll need to work fast when forming them. Because they’re so thin, it’s best to bake the cookies on a silicone pad or non-stick foil. You can also use parchment paper, but it tends to ripple from the moisture of the batter, and that ripple shows up on the surface of the cookies.

I suggest baking just three or four cookies at a time so that they'll all be warm and pliable while you add the fortunes and shape them. And if you're very fortunate, you can find a helpful someone to assist you with that part, so you'll be able to make more cookies faster. 

The hottest of Taco Bell’s five hot sauces cranks up the heat meter with a special blend of peppers for true chili heads. Diablo Sauce was introduced on Cinco de Mayo in 2015 as a limited-time-only product and was soon discontinued. But demanding fans pleaded for the chain to bring the sauce back, and on May 5^th of the following year, Diablo Sauce got a permanent spot in the Taco Bell hot sauce lineup.

According to Taco Bell, the sauce contains aji panca, a sweet Peruvian red pepper, and chipotle, which is smoked red jalapeno. Since aji panca can be hard to find we'll use ground ancho instead, which has a similar taste. There are other peppers in Diablo Sauce which remain a mystery, but it's easy to tell that at least one of them comes packing big heat. I added habanero and cayenne and the sauce had a perfect kick.

Puree all of it in a blender then cook it for 10 minutes. Once cooled you’ll have an easy home hot sauce, with great flavor, and heat that’ll turn your face red. Just like the real one.

I’m not sure when it happened, but it appears Taco Bell recently changed its seasoned beef recipe. I hacked the recipe several years ago for the book TSR Step-by-Step, and I recall the recipe had much more oat filler, so that’s how I cloned it. Taco Bell came under fire in 2011 for the significant amount of oats in the recipe that the chain was listing as “spices.” And after that, Taco Bell was more transparent about ingredients. But somewhere along the way it appears the company tweaked the recipe to include less filler and more flavor, so I decided a new Top Secret Recipe for the beef had to be created.

This recipe makes a duplicate of the beef currently served at Taco Bell. If you want to turn it into a Chalupa—which the restaurant makes by deep frying the flatbread used for Gorditas—the instructions are here. But you can also use this new, improved beef hack for anything you’re copying, whether it's tacos, burritos, Enchiritos, Mexican Pizzas, or a big pile of nachos.

The secret ingredient in our hack is Knorr tomato bouillon. This flavor powder adds many ingredients found in the original recipe and provides the umami savoriness that’s required for a spot-on clone of the famous seasoned ground beef. To get the right flavor, you need to find "Knorr Tomato Bouillon with Chicken Flavor" powder, in a jar. Not the bouillon cubes.

The weather’s cooler, the days are shorter, and pumpkin spice lattes are back in style. When Fall arrives, it brings with it the traditional edibles we have come to expect. Usually, that’s something warm and/or orange and/or with squash in it. Panera’s top Fall release soup is all of the above. And its great taste inspired this new hack.

On Panera’s ingredients statement for this soup, there is no specification for which types of squash are used. The ingredients mention only “squash,” so it’s possible there is more than one type of squash in it. Butternut squash has a great taste and rich orange color, so that’s an obvious choice, but I am also adding another flavorful squash to our pot: acorn squash. Its flesh is golden in color and tastes like pumpkin, but it’s sweeter and more buttery. I found the blended color and flavor from the combination of both butternut squash and acorn squash worked perfectly here.

The flavor of the soup is created with several spices including cinnamon, curry, and cardamom, plus ginger puree, honey, apple juice, and Neufchatel cheese. Just a little cream at the end gives the soup body and a smooth richness you will love.

When the soup is thick, serve it hot with freshly toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, and taste the season.

After the success of Panera Bread’s Cinnamon Crunch Bagels, the popular sandwich chain went back into the development kitchen and came out with these incredible scones, filled with the same crunchy cinnamon drops found in the bagels and drizzled with cinnamon icing.

When first released, these scones were cut as triangles and frosted, but in 2018 the shape was changed to more “rustic”-shaped round blobs with drizzled or piped icing on top. I like to hack the latest recipe, so the newer version of this pastry is the version I’ve re-created here.

These are cream scones, so cream is the main wet ingredient that holds the dough together—but keep the dough crumbly as you mix it, and try not to compress it much, or you risk making the final product too dense. The best way to form the scones is to use both hands and shape the dough like you’re making a loose snowball. Then use one hand to place the dough onto the baking sheet and form it into a rough dome shape. The scones will flatten and spread out a little bit as they bake.

Panera’s turkey chili is a wholesome and flavorful mix of dark meat turkey, beans, tomatoes, chilies, carrots, onions and spices that’s easy to hack at home, once you know the secrets. I found that adding turkey in two forms—ground and sliced—resulted in the best copy. The sliced turkey should be dark meat, if possible, but if you can’t find uncooked, sliced dark meat, white meat is fine. It doesn’t finish quite as tender and flavorful as the dark meat, but it still works.

To further improve flavor I’m slipping in some nutritional yeast, which acts like MSG. Panera uses a natural yeast extract similar to this in many of their soups to improve flavor, so we’ll do the same. You can find nutritional yeast, or “nooch,” at Whole Foods or another well-stocked food store. If you can’t track it down, add another ¼ teaspoon of salt to the pot.

And take note that you won’t be adding the edamame until the latter half of the cooking process. We do it this way so that when the chili is ready, the edamame will still be green, rather than an unappetizing grey color that can curse overcooked soybeans.

Several puzzles had to be solved to make this burger a satisfying hack of the signature sandwich from the rapidly expanding New York chain. First, our burger must include a spot-on facsimile of the secret ShackSauce. I got a sample of the sauce from one of our Las Vegas Shake Shacks and determined the seven common ingredients, including pickle juice, to combine for a great clone.

Second, the burger must be made with a special ground mix of four different cuts of beef and the patties need to be cooked the right way. I tested many combinations of meat until I landed on a flavorful blend of chuck, brisket, skirt steak, and short ribs. If you don't have a meat grinder at home, you can have your butcher grind these for you. At the restaurant, the ground beef blend is formed into 1/4-pound pucks that are smashed onto the grill with a metal press. Grab a strong spatula and heat up a heavy skillet.

And third, you'll need some soft buttered-and-toasted potato buns to hold it all together. Shake Shack uses Martin's rolls which are not cut all the way through, allowing the buns to be hinged open for loading. If you can’t find Martin’s, any soft potato rolls will do.

Use these secrets and follow the easy steps below and soon you’ll be biting into a perfect re-creation of the famous cheeseburger that helped this chain grow from a single food cart in New York City to over 162 stores.

Since Panera Bread makes all its ingredients known, it's not hard to find out that there’s no chicken broth in the original recipe, yet every copycat recipe I located online calls for chicken broth, as well as other ingredients clearly not found in Panera's version. Unlike those other recipes, this hack uses the same or similar ingredients found listed on the company’s website.

One of the ingredients in the soup, according to the posted list, is yeast extract. This tasty ingredient adds an MSG-like savoriness to Panera’s soup, and we can duplicate it by using nutritional yeast—often called "nooch"—now found in many stores, including Whole Foods. A little bit of nooch will provide the umami deliciousness that replaces chicken broth or bouillon.

Panera keeps its soup gluten-free by thickening it with a combination of rice flour and cornstarch, rather than wheat flour. I’ve included those ingredients as well so that your clone is similarly gluten-free. Use the steps below and in about an hour you’ll have 8 servings of a soup that is a culinary doppelganger to Panera Bread's all-time favorite soup, and at a mere fraction of the cost.

Other recipes I’ve seen that claim to duplicate the fabulous flavor of this popular soup do not make good clones, yet the long grain and wild rice mix that many of these recipes call for is a great way to get the exact amount of rice you need in a perfect blend. Just be sure not to use the flavor packet that comes with those rice kits, or you won’t get a good clone of the Panera original. Toss out that blend (or you can use it elsewhere, see Tidbits) and use the recipe below to make a better flavoring for the soup.

Thanks to Panera Bread's policy of completely transparent ingredients, I discovered a surprising ingredient or two (wow, cabbage!), and was able to craft the best clone you’ll find for this top secret signature soup.

In Los Angeles in 1957, Del Johnson noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal about a successful $1.09 per steak steakhouse chain with locations in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Inspired by the article, Del decided to open his own steakhouse in L.A., but with a twist that would save him money. His idea was to develop a steakhouse where customers would order their food at a food counter and pick it up when it was ready. Doesn't sound that exciting, but the concept was a hit. After the first Sizzler was open for a year, Del decided to run a two-day, one-cent anniversary sale: buy one steak at the regular price and get a second for just a penny. Del said, "We opened at 11:00. People were lined up from 11:00 until 9:00 at night, and we sold 1,050 steaks in one day and about 1,200 the second day."

With every meal, Sizzler serves a slice of tasty cheese toast. It's a simple hack recipe that goes well with just about any entree.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Swiss Chalet is one of the biggest Canada-based restaurant chains with over 200 stores, and it’s the place our northern neighbors go when they want delicious rotisserie chicken and ribs. At one time there were a few Swiss Chalet restaurants in the U.S., but the last of those closed in 2010. So, if you want to taste the food from Swiss Chalet and you live in the States, you’re out of luck. Unless you do some food hacking.

Fortunately, the Canadian chain makes a few of its products available to purchase outside of the restaurant, including the most sought-after recipe from the chain: the dipping sauce. The famous dipping sauce is used on the chain’s popular chicken, fries and rolls, and the instant version of the sauce comes in 36g envelopes, but even those are tough to find in the States. Luckily, I found some on eBay and got to work.

An instant mix like this sauce powder is often tough to copy since many ingredients in the packet are hard to find in supermarkets. For this hack though, I found Knorr tomato bouillon cubes to be incredibly useful. These cuboids of concentrated flavor contain many of the ingredients we need for a great clone, including tomato powder and chicken fat, both of which can be found in the original sauce packet.

After you pulverize the bouillon cube into powder, combine it with the other ingredients in a small bowl, and you’ve got an instant dry blend that can be converted into a flavorful sauce in minutes, just like the real thing.

A requirement of any visit to Chicago is eating at least one slice of deep dish pizza in the city that perfected it. Deep dish pizza quickly became a Chicago staple after Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo opened the first Pizzeria Uno in 1943 and served a hearty new style of pizza constructed in a high-rimmed cake pan. The yeast crust was tender and flakey, like a pastry, and the cheese was layered under the sauce so that it wouldn’t burn in a hot oven for the long cooking time.

While researching a home hack of this now iconic recipe I discovered an unexpected technique that I hadn’t seen in other deep dish recipes. Employees told me the pizza crusts are partially cooked each morning to cut down on the wait time for customers. Before the restaurant opens each day, cooks press the dough into a pan and then sprinkle it with a little shredded cheese. The shells are then partially baked and set aside. Later, when an order comes in, the pizza is built into one of the par-baked crusts and finished off. This way customers get their food faster, and the tables turn over quicker.

Copying that delicious, flakey crust was the task that took me the longest. After two weeks of baking, I finally settled on a formula that mashed-up yeast dough and pie crust, making a perfectly tender deep dish crust with great flavor that exactly mimicked the original. If you like Uno, you will love this.

Regarding the cheese: be sure your cheese is at room temperature, and not cold, or it may not melt all the way through. Also, it’s best if you buy cheese by the block and shred it yourself. Pre-shredded cheese is dusted with cornstarch so that the shreds don’t stick together in the bag, and it won’t melt as smoothly as cheese you shred by hand.

This recipe will make enough sauce for two pizzas. I just thought you should know that in case you get the urge to make another deep dish after this one disappears.

This recipe was our #4 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes of the year: Texas Roadhouse Rolls (#1) KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken (#2), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

Three components must be mastered to properly hack this top menu pick at the country’s largest fast Chinese chain: candied nuts, honey sauce, and perfectly battered shrimp. For the candied walnuts, I came up with a technique using the oven, which means there’s no candy thermometer required and it’s a no-brainer. For the sauce, you just whisk the ingredients together in a bowl.

To make your shrimp look like the shrimp at Panda Express, you don’t want them tightly curled up when they fry. You can keep them from curling by pinching the tail end of each shrimp after it has been floured and dipping it into the batter headfirst. When you pull it out, the weight of the batter will help unfurl the shrimp a bit, and if you then lower it slowly into the oil it will mostly stay that way.

When all the shrimp have been fried, bake them in the oven so that they are crispy and warm, then toss the shrimp and the nuts in the sweet honey sauce and serve.

Panera’s top soup pick in the summer is a creamy vegetarian chowder that’s full of flavor and easy to copy at home once you know an important flavor secret. I started my hack using a vegetable broth since that’s what all the other “copycats” call for, but I found its strong vegetable flavor dominated the soup, so I quickly bailed on that plan.

Starting over, I referred to the soup’s ingredients posted online by Panera Bread and noticed there is no broth in the soup, which means every copycat recipe online is wrong. I didn’t want to make the same mistake in my recipe, but without the broth my soup would be lacking some important flavor components, and that’s no good either.

In many soup recipes, the broth or stock is important for the umami quality provided by the yeast extract added to the product. Yeast extracts are one of the many ways food manufacturers add an MSG flavor-enhancing effect without adding MSG. Panera does in fact list “yeast extract” as one of the ingredients in the soup, so I needed to find a readily available ingredient that provides the same savory quality.

Enter nutritional yeast—or “nooch” as it’s often called—a flakey, nutrient-packed, vegan ingredient that’s growing quickly in popularity thanks to the savory, cheesy flavor it adds to a variety of foods (it’s great on popcorn). Nooch is also popular with the vegans and vegetarians since it’s fortified with vitamin B12, an essential nutrient that's mainly found in animal-sourced foods.

Now, with nooch in there, along with yellow corn, red skin potatoes, poblano pepper, tomatoes, cilantro, and other tasty things, no broth is required. Just give it water and a little patience. 

Good things come in small packages. Just like these hit scones that have been a staple Starbucks favorite for years.

Unlike many scones that end up too dry and tasteless, these miniature scones are moist and full of great vanilla flavor. They’re deliciously sweet and creamy, with real vanilla bean in both the dough and the glaze. Want to make some great scones? Make these.

For more of my copycat Starbucks recipes, click here.

The PSL is doing A-OK at Starbucks. In 2018, Starbucks moved the release of its seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte from September to August in anticipation of record sales for the 15-year-old product. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, consumers in 2017 “visited PSL establishments twice as many times as typical patrons,” most likely because they know the drinks are around for only a short time.

The trick when hacking this Starbucks superstar is making a perfect clone of the syrup used in the drink. I found a friendly barista who was willing to squirt a little of the secret syrup into a cup for me to take back to headquarters for examination. Back in the lab, I discovered the mysterious light orange-colored syrup had no spice particles in it whatsoever, meaning the flavors are added as extracts or oils. Most home cooks like you and me cannot get such ingredients, so I had to come up with a formula using easily accessible ground spices and pumpkin puree. 

Pumpkin pie spice makes this recipe easy and much cheaper than buying all the spices separately. It’s a convenient blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, plus either allspice or clove, and it’s found in practically all food stores. For our hack, the blend is combined with a sugar solution and cooked until syrupy, then sweetened condensed milk is stirred in. Condensed milk is also used in the original syrup at Starbucks—according to the ingredients list—which is why the syrup they use is opaque and creamy. When your syrup is done, add a couple tablespoons to your latte, then top it off with whipped cream and a sprinkling of more spice.

Lattes are made with espresso, and in this case you’ll need a double shot, which is about ¼ cup. If you can’t make espresso, then make some strong coffee and use ½ cup of it. If you don’t have a way to steam milk, you can heat it up in the microwave for 2 minutes or until hot, then make it foamy with a milk foamer, immersion blender, or whisk.

Now, how about using that leftover syrup to make a Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew? Or try one of my recipes to recreate your favorite Starbucks pastries at home. 

The problem with adding sauce to fried food is that the wet sauce makes the crunchy fried food not so crunchy. Panda Express manages to keep the crispy beef in Beijing Beef crispy even though it may be sitting for over 20 minutes in the sauce until it’s served to a hungry you. My early attempts at hacking my favorite dish at the massive Chinese food chain all resulted in gummy, soggy beef that was more like a flat dumpling than the delicious crunchy strips of joy they were meant to be.

Then finally, on one batch, I decided to fry the coated beef for much longer than I intuitively felt it should be cooked, resulting in dark browning on the cornstarch, and an even darker piece of meat beneath it. I anticipated a beef jerky experience, but when I took a bite, I found it to be delicious! It wasn’t tough and chewy as I expected it to be. And when this seemingly overcooked beef was stirred into the sauce, it stayed crispy until served, just like the real thing.

Now, with the soggy beef problem solved, we’ve finally got a good hack for this famous sweet and spicy dish.

This limited-time-only new product from the country’s biggest Mexican fast food chain is easy to make with bagged fries found in the freezer section of your food store, and you can make as many or as few as you want at one time since there is enough seasoning and cheese sauce for one 2-pound bag. Get Ore-Ida Golden Fries if you can find them, and if you want the best clone you really should fry them, although baking works too.

The secret spicy ingredient in the nacho cheese sauce is brine from the bottled jalapeno nacho slices, plus a little cayenne for extra boom.

Banking on the popularity of the chain's Cheddar Bay Biscuits, Red Lobster chefs created this pizza-shaped appetizer with a crust made from the biscuit dough, and crab and Cheddar cheese baked on top. If you like those tender, cheesy garlic biscuits that come with every meal at Red Lobster—and you like crab—then you'll definitely like this.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur. 

Menu Description: "Tender, select-cut pork spare ribs basted with our special-recipe sauce. Nothing could be finer..."

This smoky sauce is perfectly sweetened with honey and molasses, and it bites just a bit with pepper sauce. Smother pork spareribs, baby back ribs and beef ribs with the sauce, as they do at the restaurant. Use the cooking technique from here to make the ribs.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

If you like the flavor of Taco Bell's sauce but don't like the burn, this is the sauce for you. It used to be that you could only get this sauce in the little blister packs from Taco Bell restaurants, but now the chain has partnered with Kraft Foods to sell the stuff in 7.5-ounce bottles in supermarkets. For the record, those bottles of hot sauce will set you back around $1.59 at the store, while the 6-ounce can of tomato paste required for this recipe is only 59 cents—and you end up with more than three times the amount of sauce.

Sauce: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Chargrilled all-white meat turkey burger, served on a toasted whole wheat bun with lettuce, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts, onions and avocado."

Noting the success of the first T.G.I. Friday's in New York City, a group of fun-loving Dallas businessmen opened the first franchise store. The investors decorated their Dallas T.G.I. Friday's with antiques and collectibles gathered from around the countryside—now all of the Friday's are decorated that way. Six months after the opening of the Dallas location, waiters and waitresses began doing skits and riding bicycles and roller skates around the restaurant. That's also when the now defunct tradition of ringing in every Friday evolved. Thursday night at midnight was like a New Year's Eve party at T.G.I. Friday's, with champagne, confetti, noisemakers, and a guy jumping around in a gorilla suit.

Here's a favorite of burger lovers who don't care where the beef is. It's an alternative to America's most popular food with turkey instead of beef, plus some alfalfa sprouts and avocado to give it a "California" twist.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

With the sweet, sour, spicy and salty flavors that are traditional to Thai cuisine, tom ka gai soup is a party on your palate. It's a dish that I've been wanting to hack for years, but could not find a famous chain with a popular version. That is until recently, when Trader Vic's landed in Las Vegas at the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino. This upscale, worldwide Polynesian-themed chain adds eggplant to this soup where you would traditionally find straw mushrooms, and thinly julienned peppers where Thai chili peppers would usually be. Other than that the soup has the same traditional flavors of some of the best tom ka gai soups I have eagerly slurped up. For this clone you'll need to track down a couple stalks of lemongrass—a whole stalk is about a foot long. Cut each in half and get medieval on it with a kitchen mallet so the flavors are released into the soup as it cooks. Before serving the soup you may want to fish out the lemongrass and the chunks of ginger, or you may be brushing up on your Heimlich maneuver.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

You may not know that the delicious "pizzas" you get from the world's largest Mexican food chain have 36 grams of fat. If you like Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza as much as I do, you'll be happy to know that you can make a home version with only 10 grams of fat, and fewer calories, too.

The secret fat savings come from baking, rather than frying, the flour tortillas. You'll also say "adios" to much of the fat by using reduced-fat Cheddar and Jack cheeses. I picked reduced-fat for these, because the fat-free stuff does not melt well when the pizza is baked.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 pizza
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–427 (Original–570)
Fat per serving–10g (Original–36g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

You've got to hand it to him. Alan Stillman thought that if he opened his own restaurant, it might be a great way to meet the flight attendants who lived in his New York City neighborhood. Not only did the dude follow through on his plan in 1965 with the first T.G.I. Friday's, but today the company is 387 units strong. 

Friday's kitchen came up with a delicious blend of barbecue sauce and apple butter for coating the deep-fried chicken wings. For our reduced-fat clone, we'll re-create the same taste of the barbecue sauce, but we'll strip the skin from the chicken wings and bake the wings to cut the fat way down.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–3 pieces
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–150 (Original–235)
Fat per serving–6 g (Original–16 g)

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

Menu Description: "Sliced Portobello mushrooms between layers of Provolone & Monterey Jack cheeses, roasted onions and tomatoes on grilled, buttery bread."

Contestants on the November 1, 2006 episode of Top Chef on Bravo were challenged to take a childhood favorite dish and update it with a twist. Friday's Senior Executive Chef Stephen Bulgarelli sat at the judges table and endured a bizarre wonderland mushroom plate, a sloppy cheese steak sandwich, and an over-salted surf and turf tragedy. Finally, it was the delicious variation on a grilled cheese sandwich created by Betty Fraser that took the top spot. As a reward, Betty's sandwich was added to over 500 Friday's menus across the country, and now we have a Top Secret clone to easily recreate the tasty winner at home. Friday's modified Betty's recipe to make it easier to prepare in the quick-service environment of the restaurant, and that's the version I've cloned for you in this recipe.

Click here to see if I hacked more of your favorites from T.G.I. Friday's.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Here's a way to make plenty of hot sauce that tastes just like the stuff people are pouring over the tacos at Taco Bell. If you like it even hotter, check out my recipes for Taco Bell Diablo Sauce, Fire Border Sauce, and Lava Sauce.

Now that you've got your sauce, whatcha gonna slather it on?  Find all your favorite Taco Bell copycat recipes here. 

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

How's this for coincidence: both McDonald's and Taco Bell got their start in San Bernardino, California, in the early '50s. Glen Bell opened a hamburger and hot dog stand called Bell's Drive-In, while the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, were just around the corner with their golden arches and speedy drive-up service. "The appearance of another hamburger stand worried me then," says Glen. "I just didn't think there was enough room in town for both of us." Turns out there was enough room—for a while.

In 1962 Glen decided that it was time to offer an alternative to the hamburger stands that were saturating the area, so he opened the first Taco Bell and changed his menu to Mexican food.

Ten years and hundreds of new taco Bell openings later, the Burrito Supreme hit the menu and became an instant hit. By making this reduced-fat clone version at home, we can knock the fat down to less than one-fifth of the original.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 burrito
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–325 (Original–503)
Fat per serving–4g (Original–22g)

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

Taco Bell had very little luck with light menu items over the years. In 1983 the Mexican fast-food chain introduced Taco Light, a taco with a fried flour tortilla shell. But the fried flour tortilla that replaced the traditional corn tortilla only made the taco light in weight and color; not in fat or calories. The item was quickly discontinued. In 1995, the chain tried again with Light Line, a selection of several lower-fat menu items. Those items were also quickly nixed from the menu boards due to poor sales.

When we cook at home, though, we often like to make a meal better on the waistline, especially if it takes no extra effort and the food still tastes good. This recipe will show you how to do just that: knock the fat way down—from ten grams to just two grams—without compromising flavor. Check it out.

Nutrition Facts 
Serving size–1 taco
Total servings–6
Calories per serving–172 (Original–213)
Fat per serving–2g (Original–10g)

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

When we cook at home, and want to clone the flavor of food like Taco Bell's, it takes no extra effort to make the meal significantly lower in fat than what you get at the restaurant. Why not give this recipe a go? You'll soon find out these tacos taste just like the soft tacos you get from the world's largest Mexican food chain, but with only one-quarter of the fat.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 taco
Total servings–5
Calories per serving–170 (Original–225)
Fat per serving–3g (Original–12g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur. 

Here's a hack for a new menu item at Tony Roma's that's served alongside the Carolina Honeys BBQ Salmon. Combine maple syrup, cinnamon and pecans with sweet potatoes and you've got an irresistable side dish just like the popular restaurant side.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Healthful, nonalcoholic frozen fruit drinks." Gold Medalist: "Coconut and pineapple, blended with grenadine, strawberries and bananas." Tropical Runner: "Fresh banana, pineapple and pina colada mix with frozen with crushed ice."

From the "obscure statistics" file, T.G.I. Friday's promotional material claims the restaurant was the first chain to offer stone-ground whole wheat bread as an option to its guest. It was also the first chain to put avocados, bean sprouts, and Mexican appetizers on the menu.

Also a first: Friday's Smoothies. In response to growing demand for nonalcoholic drinks, T.G.I. Friday's created smoothies. Here are recipes to clone two of the nine different fruit blend varieties. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Not only does the restaurant still serve some of the tastiest cocktails and mixed drinks, but T.G.I. Friday's also has one of the best selections of custom non-alcoholic drinks in the business. The smoothies and shakes at Friday's are all excellent, as are the designer sodas called "Flings." These are hand-mixed soda beverages made in a fashion reminiscent of old-time soda fountains. Juices and sweeteners are mixed with cold soda water and served over ice—you can't go wrong with one of these. The Fling cloned here uses cranberry juice, apple juice, simple syrup, and sweet-and-sour mix.

Source: Top Secret Recipes: Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes by Todd Wilbur.

Tony Roma had already been in the restaurant business for many years when he opened Tony Roma's Place in North Miami, Florida in 1972. This casual diner featured food at reasonable prices, nightly live entertainment and the house specialty: baby back ribs. Soon, customers were traveling from miles away to get a taste of the succulent, mouth-watering ribs. One rib-lover came from Texas in 1976: Clint Murchison, Jr., a Texas financier and owner of the Dallas Cowboys. After sampling the baby backs, and claiming they were the best he'd ever tasted, he struck up a deal with Tony to purchase the majority of the U.S. rights to the company and planned for a major expansion. 

The famous barbecue ribs served at the restaurant have been judged the best in America at a national rib cook-off and have won more than 30 awards at other state and local competitions. The secret to the tender, melt-in-your-mouth quality of the ribs at Tony Roma's is the long, slow-cooking process. Here is the Top Secret Recipes version of the cooking technique. 

The sauce cloned here is the sauce the made the chain famous—Tony Roma's serves it on their Original Baby Back Ribs. This version of the sauce uses a ketchup base, vinegar, dark corn syrup and a bit of Tabasco. The chain uses their sauce on baby back ribs and has started selling it by the bottle in each restaurant. Now you can make a version of your own that is less costly than the bottled brand, and can be used on any cut of ribs, or even chicken. Check out my clone recipes for these other 3 sauces: Caroline Honey Sauce, Blue Ridge Smokies Sauce, and Red Hots Sauce.


Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

For years Taco Bell customers had only the "mild" and "hot" varieties of free taco sauce blister packs to choose from to kick up their fistful of tacos. That is, until a recent addition to the hot sauce selection bumped the heat-o-meter up a few notches. True chili heads might find this sauce mild when compared with the glut of extreme pepper sauces on the market today, but it's definitely a recipe that improves on the Mexican fast-food chain's original hot sauce formula. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Sales erupted at Taco Bell when the chain introduced the new Volcano Taco in September 2008. A red corn tortilla shell filled with standard taco ingredients including spiced ground beef, lettuce, and cheese, is topped with a super-spicy cheese-based secret ingredient called Lava Sauce that makes this product one of the chain's most successful new menu items. When the Volcano Taco was removed from stores three months after its launch, internet groups quickly formed demanding the product's hasty return. Those campaigns worked. The Volcano taco returned to stores as a permanent menu item, along with a new burrito that also features the Lava Sauce. But there's no need to go all the way to Taco Bell and beg for extra sauce if you want to spread the same spicy joy on your homemade Mexican-style creations. Get a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and use the powdered cheese inside to whip up your own Lava Sauce clone. Cayenne pepper cranks the sauce up to 800 Scoville units of heat compared to Taco Bell's Fire Sauce at 500 Scoville units, which makes this the hottest stuff you can get at the chain. Now, with this secret formula, you can adjust the heat up or down to your preference just by playing with the amount of cayenne you add. You can also make the sauce lower in fat by using reduced-fat mayo.

Menu Description: "A house specialty full of baked potatoes and topped with Cheddar cheese, bacon and green onions."

The thick-and-creamy texture and rich taste of Tony Roma's best-selling soup is duplicated with a little flour, some half-and-half, and most notably, instant mashed potatoes. Give yourself an hour to bake the potatoes and around 30 minutes to prepare the soup. Garnish each serving with shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and green onions, and then humbly await your due praise.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Before there was Lone Star, Outback, or Ruth's Chris, a real rancher named Stuart Anderson was serving up huge cuts of delicious prime beef in his Seattle-based restaurant chain. The first Black Angus restaurant opened on April Fool's Day in 1964 and quickly became known for its huge, juicy cuts of prime rib.

Early on, Stuart Anderson's Black Angus served a signature bread dubbed "Ranch Bread" free with each meal. Around five years ago that evolved into Cheesy Garlic Bread, which is no longer free, but it is still a delicious and often requested side for any meal. Try to find a large loaf of French or Italian bread for this recipe. The recipe works with just about any type of bread loaf, but to make it more like the original, bigger is better.

Now, for your entree..how about a big 'ole juicy Whiskey Pepper Steak?

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

So good, and yet so easy. Now you can re-create this one at home by tossing a few ingredients into a saucepan. Try to find one of the large 32-ounce cartons of chicken broth from Swanson—there's four cups in there, so it's perfect for this recipe. One big head of broccoli should provide enough florets for you. Use only the florets and ditch the tough stems, but be sure to cut the florets into bite-size pieces before dropping them in.

Grab your favorite T.G.I. Friday's recipes over here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Our flour tortilla is packed with sauteed chicken, sausage, bruschetta marinara, bacon and oozing with Monterey Jack cheese. We coat it with Parmesan, and pan-fry it to a crispy, golden brown, then drizzle it with balsamic glaze." 

Italy meets Mexico in this new hit appetizer that combines a cheese-filled tortilla with ingredients you wouldn't usually find inside a quesadilla, including Friday's bruschetta marinara. Parmesan cheese is crusted on the outside of the tortilla, and the balsamic glaze drizzle is the perfect finishing touch. This is an awesome party dish appetizer since the whole recipe makes 4 quesadillas that can each be sliced into as many as 8 pieces.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

The Jack Daniels Grill Glaze is one of the most scrumptious sauces you will ever taste on just about any meat. Introduced in April of 1997, this glaze has become one of Friday's best-selling items. This versatile sweet-and-slightly-spicy sauce can be ordered on salmon (pictured here), baby back ribs, steak, chicken, pork chops—even on chicken wings. I was asked to clone the sauce for an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show and I wanted the clone to be a good one, so I persuaded a T.G.I. Friday's server to show me the list of ingredients on the box the sauce was shipped in. I jotted down the info and created this recipe using only those ingredients, which helped a lot in creating this tasty hack. Use it to top your favorite meat, but if you're grilling, be sure to apply the sauce late in the cooking process just before taking the meat off the flame, since the sauce has a lot of sugar in it and will quickly burn. And don't forget to serve extra on the side.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Loaded with cheddar cheese and bacon. Served with sour cream and chives."

Perfume salesman Alan Stillman was a single guy in New York City in 1965, looking for a way to meet women who lived in his neighborhood. He figured out a way to get their attention: buy a broken-down beer joint in the area, jazz it up, and call it "The T.G.I.F." to attract the career crowd. Within a week, police had barricaded the area to control crowds flocking to Alan's new restaurant. The restaurant made $1 million in its first year—a lot of dough back then. Soon restaurateurs across the country were imitating the concept.

In 1974 T.G.I. Friday's invented an appetizer that would also be copied by many in the following years. Potato skins are still the most popular item on the T.G.I. Friday's menu, with nearly 4 million orders served every year. The recipe has the added benefit of providing you with leftover baked potato ready for mashing.

T.G.I Friday's has several popular dishes. See if I cloned your favorites here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Hope your crew is hungry, because this recipe makes four Mexican Pizzas like those served at the Bell: seasoned ground beef and refried beans are sandwiched between two crispy flour tortillas, topped with melted cheddar cheese, salsa, diced tomato and chopped green onion. Slice it like a pizza and serve it with a smile. Prepare to blow your diners away with this one if they're at all familiar with the real thing.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

To copy Taco Bell's most famous burrito at home you first must assemble the meaty foundation of many of the chain's top-selling products: the spiced ground beef. Toss it and seven other tasty ingredients into a large flour tortilla and fold using the same technique as taught to new recruits to the chain. Add your favorite hot sauce for a bit of heat, or clone a Taco Bell hot sauce, such as the Taco Bell Fire Border Sauce with the clone recipe here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.