THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES

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Re-create your favorite restaurant dishes with copycat recipes you won't find anywhere else from America's most trusted food hacker, Todd Wilbur. Browse by dish here. New recipes added every week.

Products: 124 of 1236
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    Cheesecake Factory Key Lime Cheesecake

    Just 15 minutes after the very first Cheesecake Factory opened in Beverly Hills back in 1978, the lines began forming. These guys know how to make a dang good cheesecake! 

    You'll love this yummy twist on Key lime pie. Since Key limes and Key lime juice can be hard to find, I decided to use standard lime juice in my Cheesecake Factory Key Lime Cheesecake copycat recipe, which can be purchased bottled or squeezed fresh. If you can find Key lime juice, bear in mind that Key limes are more tart, so you'll need only half as much juice. You'll also need a springform pan. If you don't have one, you can use two 9-inch pie pans and make two smaller cheesecakes.

    Try more of my Cheesecake Factory hacks here.

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Hooters Buffalo Chicken Wings (Improved)

    Menu Description: "The one and only! The style we invented over 30 years ago; they're breaded by hand, tossed in your choice of wing sauce and served by your favorite Hooters girl."

    When I first hacked this recipe back in 1997 for the book Top Secret Restaurant Recipes, Hooters wings looked different than they do today. The chain used to leave the pointy end of the wing attached to the middle piece, or “flat,” which, frankly, is unnecessary because there is very little meat on the tip segment. Today the chain serves wings like everyone else, with drumettes and flats completely separated, and delivered by waitresses in the same bright orange shorts as when the chain started in 1983.

    One thing that wasn't available to me back then was the opportunity to examine the chain’s packaging for the lists of ingredients on signature items like sauces and breading. Today, since they sell these items as retail products, I can take advantage of labeling laws that require ingredients to be clearly listed and see what really goes into these recipes. Using that new information, I’ve made a few small tweaks to improve my Hooters Wings copycat recipe from over 20 years ago, including two versions of the kickass wing sauce—medium and hot—for your wing-devouring pleasure.

    Find more of my Hooters copycat recipes here.

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    Olive Garden Chicken Margherita

    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.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Bush's Country Style Baked Beans

    In the Bush’s Beans commercials, Duke, the family golden retriever, wants to sell the secret family recipe, but the Bush family always stops him. The dog is based on the Bush family’s real-life golden retriever, and the campaign, which began in 1995, made Bush’s the big dog of the canned baked beans market practically overnight. Their confidential baked beans formula is considered one of the top 10 biggest recipe secrets in the U.S.

    Bush Brothers & Company had been canning a variety of fruits and vegetables for over 60 years when, in 1969, the company created canned baked beans using a cherished recipe from a family matriarch. Sales jumped from 10 thousand cases in the first year to over 100 thousand cases in 1970. And just one year later sales hit a million cases. Today Bush’s makes over 80 percent of the canned baked beans sold in the U.S., and the secret family recipe remains a top food secret, despite Duke’s attempts. A replica of the original recipe book—without the original recipe in it (drat!)—is on display at the company's visitor center in Chestnut Hill, Tennessee.

    I chose to hack the “Country Style” version of Bush’s Beans because I don’t think the Original flavor has enough, uh, flavor. Country Style is similar to Original, but richer, with more brown sugar. My Bush's Country Style baked beans copycat recipe starts by soaking dry small white beans in a brine overnight. The salt in the water helps to soften the skins, but don’t soak them for more than 14 hours or the skins may begin to fall off. You can skip this step if you've got a fancy Instant Pot using my directions below. 

    My first versions tasted great but lacked the deep brown color of the real Bush’s beans, which include caramel coloring—an ingredient that can be hard to find on its own. I eventually discovered that the “browning” sauce, Kitchen Bouquet, will add the dark caramel color needed to our home version of the beans so that they’ll look just like the real thing.

    This recipe was our #5 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), Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (#4).

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    Cheesecake Factory Pork Belly Sliders

    The delicious Cheesecake Factory Pork Belly Sliders appetizer features four little sandwiches, each packing big flavor. Smoked pork belly is slathered with barbecue sauce, then stacked on soft slider buns with spicy sauce, creamy coleslaw, and crispy fried pickles. Smoked pork belly is the star, so you’ll either smoke some yourself using a smoker or use your grill with the technique described in the Tidbits below. For my Cheesecake Factory Pork Belly Sliders copycat recipe, you'll need around 10 ounces of pork belly to get 6 ounces when smoked, or 1½ ounces per sandwich.       

    The coleslaw is easy, the spicy sauce is easy, the barbecue sauce is premade (bottled), and the fried pickles are a simple exercise in breading and frying that anyone can master. After the pork belly is perfectly smoked and fall-apart tender, stack everything on your favorite toasted soft slider rolls and let the devouring begin.

    Click here for more clone recipes for Cheesecake Factory's famous cheesecakes, appetizers, entrées, soups and more! 

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    Knott's Berry Farm Shortbread Cookies

    It’s been nearly 100 years since Walter and Cordelia Knott first started selling berries, preserves, and pies from their roadside produce stand in Buena Park, California. Walter Knott’s berry stand and farm was a popular stop throughout the 1920s for travelers heading to the Southern California beaches.

    But Walter’s big claim to fame came in 1932 when he cultivated and sold the world’s first boysenberries—a hybrid of raspberry, blackberry, loganberry, and dewberry. This new berry brought so many people to the farm that they added a restaurant, featuring Cordelia’s secret fried chicken recipe, and the Knotts struck gold again.

    The fried chicken was a huge hit, and the restaurant got so crowded the Knotts added rides and attractions to the farm to keep customers occupied while they waited for a table. Over the years the real berry farm transformed into an amusement park called Knott’s Berry Farm—one of my favorites as a kid—which is now ranked as the tenth most visited theme park in North America.

    Knott’s Berry Farm also makes delicious packaged preserves, jams, and other foods, including these fantastic little jam-filled shortbread thumbprint cookies that everyone seems to love. The shortbread dough is piped into closed “c” shapes with a pastry bag onto baking sheets, then a little bit of jam is spooned into the center. For my Knott's Berry Farm Shortbread Cookies recipe below, you’ll need a pastry bag and a 1M open star tip, plus your favorite seedless jam. Once you’ve got all that, the rest is pretty easy.

    Follow this link for more copycat cookies, brownies and treats.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Hooters Daytona Beach Style Wings

    Hooters debuted a new flavor and style of their famous chicken wings in 2013 with the introduction of Daytona Beach Style Wings—naked wings (not breaded) that are fried, sauced, and grilled. The new menu item was a sales success, eclipsing the famous buffalo-style wings the chain had become known for, making it imperative that we have a delicious and accurate Hooters Daytona Beach wings copycat recipe. And now we do.

    To build an identical home version of Hooters Daytona Wings, you’ll first need to make a knockoff of the delicious Daytona sauce to brush over the wings. It’s a combination of barbecue sauce and the same cayenne sauce used to coat traditional buffalo wings, plus a few other important ingredients that make the sauce special—and things you won’t find in other hacks—like Worcestershire sauce and minced jalapeños. The wings are coated, grilled for just a minute on each side, then sauced again for maximum flavor. Stack the napkins close by and get something tall to drink, because these messy wings are guaranteed to deliver a super-spicy kick to your food hole.

    Find more of my Hooters copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Olive Garden Chicken Piccata

    Menu Description: “Grilled chicken topped with a lemon garlic butter sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, and capers.”

    For many years this traditional chicken dish has been a top choice at the nation’s largest Italian restaurant chain, so an Olive Garden Chicken Piccata recipe is long overdue. Brined chicken breast fillets are grilled and topped with a lemon butter sauce made with garlic, sundried tomatoes, and capers in this copycat clone that will fool even the biggest Olive Garden fans.

    Two large chicken breasts get sliced into four fillets here, so you’ll have either four lunch-size portions or two double-sized dinner meals. And if you need even more servings, you can easily double up the recipe.

    In the Tidbits, I’ve added a quick recipe for the optional side of Parmesan-crusted zucchini served with the actual dish if you want to make an even more authentic clone.

    Craving more dishes from Olive Garden? Check out my copycat recipes here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Starbucks Petite Vanilla Bean Scones

    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 my Starbucks Petite Vanilla Bean scones recipe.

    For more of my copycat Starbucks recipes, click here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Panera Bread Vegetarian Summer Corn Chowder

    Panera Bread'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 Panera Bread Vegetarian Summer Corn Chowder recipe 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 would provide 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 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 peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, and other tasty things, no broth is required. Just give your corn chowder some water and a little patience.

    Find more of your favorite Panera Bread recipes here

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    Olive Garden Warm Apple Crostata

    Menu Description: “Northern Spy apples baked in a pastry crust topped with vanilla ice cream and a caramel drizzle.”

    The most important component of a good crostata, or Italian baked tart, is a great crust. When cloning this top Olive Garden dessert, that's where I first focused my efforts, baking dozens of slightly different unfilled sugared crusts. Thankfully, flour is cheap. Once I had an easy, yet still delicious and flakey crust that was as good, if not better, than the real thing, I turned to the filling.

    Olive Garden uses Northern Spy apples in the crostata, which are somewhat tart, firm apples often used in pies. But they are hard to find. If you can’t find Northern Spy apples, the much more common Granny Smith apples work just fine here. As for chopping the apples, I noted that the apple pieces in the real crostata have no uniformity—the apples appear to be sliced, then those slices are coarsely chopped, resulting in a mixture of small and large apple pieces. We'll do the same here.

    After your crostatas have been baked to a golden brown, top each one with a scoop of ice cream and drizzle some caramel sauce over the top for a beautiful dessert no one will have the power to resist. 

    My Olive Garden Warm Apple Crostada copycat recipe makes four crostatas, which is enough for eight people to share. If you have crostatas left over, they can be stored in a covered container for a couple of days, then reheated under a broiler until hot just before serving.

    Want some more of my Olive Garden clone recipes? I've got a bunch right here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Cheesecake Factory Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake

    The Cheesecake Factory’s latest decadent dessert goes extreme with America’s favorite cookie. You’ll find Oreos in the middle of the cheesecake, in the cookie mousse layer, pressed onto the edge, sprinkled on the whipped cream, and even up on top where an Oreo wafer crowns each slice. In fact, I’ve designed my copycat Cheesecake Factory Oreo cheesecake recipe to use every Oreo in a standard size-package—all 36 of them!

    This beautiful cheesecake starts with a chocolate cake layer, topped with a layer of chocolate buttercream icing, followed by a no-bake cheesecake layer, Oreo cookie mousse, and more chocolate icing. It’s a chocolate lover’s—and Oreo lover’s—dream, and not surprisingly, one of Cheesecake Factory’s best sellers.

    When creating your own version of this dessert masterpiece at home, be sure to use a 10-inch springform pan. This is a big cheesecake, so you'll get 12 large slices out of it. The restaurant charges around 56 bucks for a whole cheesecake this big, but thankfully, you can use my Cheesecake Factory Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake copycat recipe for a homemade version will cost you much less than that.

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    Hellmann's - Best Foods Real Ketchup

    Hellmann’s—or Best Foods as the company is known west of the Rockies—recently debuted this new ketchup for customers looking to avoid high fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, and artificial ingredients. The label lists only six ingredients: tomato puree, honey, white wine vinegar, salt, onion powder, and spices. It wasn’t immediately clear what the “spices” referred to until I wiped a wide smear of the ketchup across a white plate, making the blacks specks of fine grind pepper clearly stand out. After that, creating my Best Foods Real Ketchup recipe was just a matter of getting the ratios right.

    If you're a fan of the original Heinz Ketchup, check out my clone recipe here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 7)
    Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

    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 was a mash-up of yeast dough and pie crust and made a perfectly tender deep dish crust, with great flavor that exactly mimicked the original. If you like Uno, you'll love this! 

    Regarding the cheese: be sure your cheese is at room temperature, 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.

    My Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza copycat 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).

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Panda Express Honey Walnut Shrimp

    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. With my Panda Express Honey Walnut Shrimp copycat recipe, you'll swear the dish is straight from the restaurant.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Cheesecake Factory Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

    Menu Description: "Two fresh breakfast favorites are even better together with our buttermilk pancakes swirled with cinnamon-brown sugar."

    This new Cheesecake Factory brunch item packs everything you love about cinnamon rolls into an extra-wide stack of pancakes, including buttery icing on top. To make pancakes that are caramel brown on their faces and super spongy with lots of air pockets, you’ll need a tablespoon of baking soda in the batter. When the alkaline baking soda collides with the acidic buttermilk, the batter will instantly puff up, making pancakes that are extra light and airy, and very dark on their surface, like pretzels.

    My Cheesecake Factory cinnamon roll pancake copycat recipe makes plain buttermilk pancakes until the secret cinnamon filling is swirled over the top of the batter when it's poured into the pan. The combination of brown sugar, powdered sugar, cinnamon, and butter will melt into the pancake, making it look and taste like a sweet, buttery cinnamon roll. Hopefully you have a big griddle or very large skillet to cook these on. The real Cheesecake Factory Cinnamon Roll pancakes are 7 to 8 inches across, so you’ll need a big cooking surface if you want to cook more than one at a time. Or you could just make smaller pancakes.

    Find your favorite cheesecake, appetizers, and entrée recipes from Cheesecake Factory here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Costco (Kirkland) Blueberry Muffins

    Three things make Costco Blueberry Muffins special: they’re huge, they’re moist, and berries are bursting out of the top of each one. Now your home muffins can be just as special using a similar recipe and freshly unlocked tricks from our favorite big-box store.

    Obviously, you get huge muffins by using a huge muffin pan, so you’ll need a jumbo or “Texas-size” muffin pan if you want your muffins the same size as the originals. You can certainly make standard muffins with this batter in a standard-size muffin pan, but in this case, bigger is definitely better.

    To get muffins that are moist like Kirkland's, you’ll need oil. I noticed many muffin recipes use butter, but I found it made the muffins taste more like butter cake or pound cake than true muffins. Looking at the ingredients listed on the package of Kirkland muffins, you won’t find any butter in there. Just oil. For my Costco Blueberry Muffin copycat recipe, some of that oil comes from margarine (for a mild butter flavor and thicker batter), and the rest is vegetable oil.

    As for the blueberries, if you add them straight into the batter the juice frozen on the outside of the berries will streak your batter blue, so be sure to rinse the berries before you add them. And to make your muffins look as irresistible as those at Costco, we’ll use another one of their tasty tricks: press 4 blueberries into the batter in each cup just before the pan goes into the oven so that every baked muffin is sure to have several tantalizing berries popping out of the top.

    Find more favorite famous bread recipes here

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    Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows

    The most popular recipe circulating on the internet and among Food Network chefs who claim it as their own makes decent marshmallows, but the ubiquitous formula won’t pass as a hack for America’s favorite marshmallows, Jet-Puffed. I know this for sure because my eleven-year-old daughter says so, and she’s the House Marshmallow Expert (HME).

    According to our HME, the internet recipe makes marshmallows that are too sweet, and they don't have the right flavor. After testing the sweetness for myself I decided she was right, so I reduced the sugar for my Jet-Puffed Marshmallow copycat recipe. I also adjusted the flavor by adding more vanilla, and after another taste test, my batch of fresh marshmallows got the HME seal of approval.

    But the shape was still wrong.

    One thing you’ll notice about homemade marshmallow recipes is that they all make cubic marshmallows, which are hand-sliced from one sheet of marshmallow that has set up in a square pan. But Jet-Puffed Marshmallows aren’t cubes, they’re cylindrical, and I wanted marshmallows like that. So, borrowing a technique for cornstarch molds used by candy manufacturers, I came up with a way you can make cylindrical marshmallows just like the big boys do. All you need is cornstarch and a muffin pan. You’ll find instructions for cylindrical marshmallows at the bottom of the recipe in the Tidbits if you want to give the more authentic shape a try.

    Regardless of what shape you decide to make, a stand mixer and a candy thermometer will help you turn out the best-ever homemade marshmallows—which, by the way, make fantastic s'mores.

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    Swiss Chalet Dipping Sauce

    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 its most sought-after recipe: 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 36-gram 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 Swiss Chalet dipping sauce recipe, 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.

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    Bahama Breeze Rum Cake

    Nothing finishes a meal in the islands better than traditional rum cake. And the 37-unit island-themed Bahama Breeze chain knows how to do rum cake right with a mini Bundt-style serving, topped with ice cream, and smothered in three delicious sauces. It's no less than pure paradise for your mouth.

    At the restaurant, they bake this single-serving cake in a mini Bundt cake pan, but if you don't have one of those you can use a jumbo muffin pan, or use small cake pans and slice the cake before serving. 

    What makes this rum cake presentation special are the sauces: a rum sauce that soaks into the cake, a vanilla sauce that’s spooned onto the bottom of the plate, and the delicious raisin butterscotch sauce that oozes over the top and down the sides of the ice cream and cake. Of course, all these amazing sauces are hacked here for your food-cloning pleasure, and they're a breeze to make.

    Combine all the flavors in one bite, and you'll experience one of the best rum cakes you've ever tasted.

    Find more of my copycat Bahama Breeze recipes here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Barney's Beanery Classic Chili

    Barney's Beanery, the self-proclaimed "third oldest restaurant in Los Angeles," has a long history of celebrity patrons dropping by for a hot bowl of chili and a beer or three. John "Barney" Anthony opened the first Barney's Beanery in Berkley, California in 1920, and seven years later relocated the restaurant to its current location on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.

    Barney's soon became a popular watering hole for film stars from the 1920s and '30s, such as Clara Bow, Clark Gable, and John Barrymore. In the '50s and '60s Lou Costello was a regular, and so were Donald O'Connor, Charles Bukowski, and Dennis Hopper. Jim Morrison and his Doors bandmates were frequent customers since the offices of their record label, Elektra, were nearby. Janis Joplin was said to have had a drink there the night she died. The Brat Pack of the '80s—Charlie Sheen, Rob Lowe, John Cusack, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore—would often come in to play pinball and video games. And Quentin Tarantino wrote most of his screenplay for Pulp Fiction while sitting at his favorite booth at Barney's.

    This original chili was a favorite of Peter Falk's character on Columbo, who ate it often at the restaurant on the TV show. But the show wasn't filmed at the actual location. The Barney’s Colombo viewers saw on their TV was a sound-stage replica.

    I found the secret to the flavor in Barney's chili comes from two chili powders that were popular in the West over 100 years ago, around the time Barney's first opened: Gebhardt and Mexene. Chili powders were new at that time, and there were very few on the market, so it's highly likely these ingredients were used in the recipe that made Barney's Beanery famous. Find those two chili powders, and follow my Barney's Beanery classic chili copycat recipe below to properly duplicate this Hollywood classic at home.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Cheddar's Monte Cristo

    Menu Description: "Smoked ham, smoked turkey, two cheeses, battered and fried until golden with raspberry preserves and dusted with powdered sugar."

    When pondering casual chains with the best Monte Cristo sandwiches, two come to mind: Bennigan's and Cheddar's recipes. At each chain the sandwich is built with turkey, ham, and cheese, then it’s battered and fried, dusted with powdered sugar, and served with raspberry preserves for dipping. It probably sounds strange if you've never had one, but Monte Cristo alums know it all tastes pretty darn great together. I hacked Bennigans' version years ago for my cookbook Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2, and recently, on a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, I was able to get my hands on Cheddars' signature version of this famous sandwich.

    I planned for the mission by bringing along a cooler of ice so that I could get a fresh sample safely back home. Once I was back in the lab in Vegas, I subjected the sandwich to a series of tasty tests, burned through several versions of batter, and eventually assembled this new Cheddar's Monte Cristo copycat recipe that I think is even better than my previous Bennigan's hack. The better batter is the big secret here—it's light and crispy and perfectly golden brown, and the sandwich features two kinds of cheese, both white and yellow American. Will this be the best Monte Cristo you've ever had? You’re about to find out.

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    Cheddar's Spiked Strawberry Lemonade

    Here's a refreshing warm weather (or any weather!) cocktail that’s considered one of Cheddar's signature drinks. It's served in a huge 18-ounce schooner glass, but you can use any glass that will hold 18-ounces of liquid goodness. For the strawberries, find them in the freezer section and get the kind that are frozen in sweet syrup, and let them thaw out before you measure. Be sure to include lots of the syrup when you measure the strawberries to help mellow the tart juice from the two lemon wedges.  

    Try my Cheddar's Spiked Strawberry Lemonade copycat recipe below, and check out my Cheddar's Pain Killer recipe here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Cheddar's Santa Fe Spinach Dip

    Spinach dips are a great finger food appetizer and just about every chain has its own version, but Cheddar's has one of the best in the business with a unique, slightly spicy southwestern twist. Just like the original, four different kinds of cheese are used in my Cheddar's Santa Fe Spinach dip recipe: three are blended into the spinach, then mozzarella is melted over the top just before serving.

    And for speed, we’ll use a microwave oven to quickly defrost the box of frozen spinach so that you’ll have a delish copycat Cheddar's Santa Fe spinach dip on the table in just 20 minutes.

    This way to more cool copycats from Cheddar's.

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    Taco Bell Red Sauce

    The famous flavor of Taco Bell’s bean burrito, Burrito Supreme, Enchirito, Grilled Cheese Dipping Taco, and a few other popular menu items has a lot to do with the secret mild red sauce added to each of them. You might also call it “enchilada sauce” since it tastes very similar to the stuff you can buy in cans labeled “enchilada sauce.”

    Whatever you call it, this red sauce is a simple combination of tomato purée, vinegar, and spices, and you can clone it with minimal effort. Follow my easy Taco Bell Red Sauce copycat recipe below, and you’ll get one cup of versatile sauce that you can use to enhance all your homemade south-of-the-border dishes.

    If you're a fan of green sauce, check out my Taco Bell Green Sauce copycat recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed".

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    Sonic Drive-In Sonic Griller with Comeback Sauce

    To give their inside-cooked burgers the taste of a burger just made on a backyard grill, Sonic brushes the beef patties with a special glaze that simulates the smokey flavor. That cooked patty joins up with two slices of American cheese, bacon, sliced tomato, and lettuce on a toasted bun that’s slathered with the chain’s new top secret comeback sauce. It’s a simple, tasty burger that goes down easy and adds bonus points to your day.

    It's also simple to duplicate at home when you get the urge, and when you make my Sonic Drive-In Griller copycat recipe you won’t need to take the extra steps to simulate grilling since you’ll be grilling for real. A much better way to go.

    The comeback sauce, an old Mississippi recipe hacked here for the first time, is the secret sauce that makes this particular burger so special. It’s a perky blend of mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and spices, and it’s ridiculously easy to clone by whisking the ingredients together in a small bowl. My comeback sauce clone will give you more than enough sauce for several burgers or even to use as a dip for chicken fingers.

    Once the sauce is done, build your burger, liberally apply the sauce, and open wide.

    Do you like Sonic? Find more delicious duplicates here.

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    Outback Steakhouse Bestselling Cocktails

    Since cocktails are amongst the biggest moneymakers at most restaurants, chains like Outback are constantly fiddling with creative new drink formulas, hoping one will break out as the next Wallaby Darned, the chain’s most famous bestselling cocktail (cloned here).

    Most of the chain's new drinks are usually quite delicious, but apparently not delicious enough, since the next seasonal batch of new drink recipes will often replace them. But these two cocktails are a couple of standout exceptions that have been on the menu for some time. They’re both fruity and smooth and refreshing and they each feature rum. 

    Use my Aussie Rum Punch recipe here to make a drink just like the original with white rum and Malibu rum, plus mango, cranberry, and lime juices, and finished with a splash of Sprite. The Castaway Cocktail recipe is made with Absolut Mandarin vodka, two kinds of rum, plus pineapple, blood orange, and lemon juices.

    Instead of using flavored syrups as they do in the restaurant, these recipes are made with real fruit juices, so even though they might look different than the drinks at the chain, they’ll taste just as good. And perhaps even a little better.

    See if I cloned more of your Outback Steakhouse favorites here.

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    Legal Sea Foods Signature Crab Cakes

    This 31-unit Boston-based seafood chain got its name from "Legal Cash Market", the grocery store that founder George Berkowitz's father, Harry, opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1904. In 1950 George opened a fish market next door to his dad's store and called it "Legal Sea Foods", and eighteen years later it expanded into a thriving restaurant business. In 1986 NBC's Today named Legal Sea Foods "The Best Seafood Restaurant in America." 

    One of the signature dishes at the chain is Legal's Signature Crab Cakes, which are filled with big chunks of lump crab and served with a top secret mustard dipping sauce. My Legal Sea Foods crab cakes recipe below is simple to prepare, as is the sauce. Get your mouth ready.

    Source: Top Secret Recipes Step-by-Step by Todd Wilbur.

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    El Pollo Loco Shredded Beef Birria

    Birria was invented over 400 years ago when an increasing goat population became a problem for residents of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Their solution: eat them.

    But goat meat can be tough and gamey, so a low and slow braising method was developed to make the meat tender and tasty. A broth flavored with chili peppers and spices was combined with the meat in a covered pot which was then buried in the ground with hot coals. Early the next day, the braised birria is ready to eat, which is why the dish became a traditional Mexican breakfast food.

    But customers at El Pollo Loco birria usually have their birria for lunch and dinner. And, while I lack a formal survey, I am nearly positive that everyone is happy that this version isn’t made with goat meat. Instead, my version of El Pollo Loco Shredded Beef Birria is made by braising a 2 to 3 pound chuck roast in a secret combination of peppers and spices for 3 hours, or until your beef is tender enough to shred with a couple forks.

    Strain the braising sauce left in the pan to make the delicious consommé, then use this shredded beef on tacos, burritos, quesadillas, or whatever sounds good. Add some cilantro and chopped onion to the consommé and serve it on the side for dipping, just like they do at the restaurant chain.

    Pair my El Pollo Shredded Beef Birria copycat recipe below with my copycat recipes for El Pollo Loco avocado salsa, pinto beans, Spanish rice, and bbq black beans.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    IKEA Swedish Meatballs

    I've always known IKEA as a giant global furniture chain, but before researching these tasty little balls of meat, I wasn't aware that IKEA is also one of the world's largest food retailers. And at the very top of the list of the most popular menu items at the stores' cafeteria-style IKEA Restaurant & Bistro, are the Swedish Meatballs, which are consumed at a rate of 150 million each year. 

    The chain's secret Swedish meatballs are moist and delicious and come smothered in a cream sauce, with a side of lingonberry jam. But there's no need to work your way through the giant rat maze of furniture that is the ingenious layout of each store to get to the cafeteria when you can now duplicate them at home with my IKEA Swedish Meatball copycat recipe below, and very little effort.

    The secret is to use ground beef that is 20 percent fat and a food processor to puree all of the ingredients. If you don't have a food processor, a blender works, too. Form the balls with a 1 1/4-inch dough scoop or teaspoon measure, and keep your hands thoroughly moistened to prevent the meat mixture from sticking.

    After you make the meatballs, you'll probably want to make the secret cream sauce that goes over the top, and that recipe is here, too. 

    Now, what's for dessert?

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  • Not rated yet
    Dickey's Barbecue Pit Cabbage Slaw

    Here’s an easy secret recipe for a great coleslaw that’s as good, if not better, than the world-famous cole slaw from KFC (which I hacked here). And making a home copy with this exclusive original secret formula is about as easy as it gets.

    To make my Dickie’s Barbecue Pit coleslaw recipe, you won’t have to mince the cabbage as fine as you would for some of the other clones. For this hack, thin-slice the cabbage first, then give those slices a medium chop and you're good to go. A medium head of cabbage will give you around 8 cups chopped—the perfect amount for this recipe.

    After you mix in the dressing, let the finished slaw sit in your refrigerator for at least an hour so that the flavor develops and improves, and be sure to give it a good stir before you serve it. Your patience will be rewarded.

    For another awesome Dickie's clone, check out my copycat of the chain's original BBQ sauce here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Fudgsicle Original Fudge Bars

    Re-creating this popular frozen ice pop is more than just mixing sugar and cocoa into skim milk and freezing it with a stick in the middle. In addition to the great chocolate taste, a Fudgsicle copycat recipe wouldn't be right if it didn't have the same creamy–and not at all icy–texture of the original.

    So how do we hack that? We'll use a little gelatin in the mix plus some fat-free half-and-half, which contains carrageenan a natural thickener found in the real fudge bars that improves the texture and helps prevent the formation of ice crystals. 

    For my Fudgsicle Fudge Bars copcyat recipe, simply combine the ingredients below in a saucepan over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved, then pour the creamy mixture into an ice pop mold. When the pops are semisolid, add the sticks. A few hours later, you'll have seven or eight perfect fudge pops with the same great taste and mouthfeel as the famous original product.

    Find more of my cool snack copycat recipes here.

    Source: "Top Secret Recipes Step-by-Step" by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Outback Steakhouse Seared Pepper Ahi Tuna

    For years, Outback Steakhouse's Seared Pepper Ahi, with herb crust and secret ginger soy dipping sauce, has been a top appetizer pick at the nationwide steakhouse chain. Part of the dish’s appeal is the quick turnaround time since the fish is seared, then chilled earlier in the day. When an order comes in, the seared fillet is sliced and arranged on a bed of mixed greens drizzled with wasabi and ginger soy sauce, with extra on the side for dipping, and it’s ready for service.

    For my Outback Steakhouse Seared Pepper Ahi copycat recipe, find the thickest frozen ahi tuna steak you can. Ahi is one of the safest fish to eat raw, but almost all sushi restaurants in the U.S. will freeze their fish first to cleanse it of any unwanted nasties, so frozen is best. You'll want to trim your fillet to around 2” x 3” before it’s completely defrosted and still somewhat firm if you want uniform slices after it's seared.  

    Just as in the restaurant, you can sear your fish earlier in the day, then chill the unsliced fillet. When you’re ready to eat, the dish is prepped in the short time it takes to slice the chilled ahi and plate it.

    Find copycat recipes for more of your favorite Outback dishes here

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    Yard House Miguel's Queso Dip

    If the chef who created this creamy queso dip was willing to put his name on it, you figure it’s got to be good queso. For his hit appetizer, Yard House executive chef Miguel Mata blends three cheeses with roasted poblano pepper and a custom red sauce made with guajillo and chipotle peppers. That tasty sauce, hacked here for the first time, gives the queso its special flavor and heat, and this recipe-within-the-recipe will produce enough sauce for several batches of queso dip, or to use any way you want. Yard House serves the killer red sauce on this queso and on their chicken nachos.

    To make my Miguel’s Queso Dip copycat recipe you'll need Velveeta queso blanco, a white cheese that melts easily in your microwave or on the stove. After loading the melted queso blanco into a shallow dish with the poblano and secret red sauce, top it with shredded pepper Jack and cheddar, broil until bubbly, and serve with corn tortilla chips and flour tortillas on the side for dipping.

    This dip might make you thirsty. In that case, you can find some of my famous cocktail recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Domino's Loaded Tots

    Domino’s oven-baked starter, which debuted in early 2023, reveals a great way to transform a boring bag of potato tots into a dish with pizzazz. The pizza chain’s new Loaded Tots are built with a delicious pile of crispy potato tots, topped with cheese, a secret sauce, and other good stuff that I probably should have been stacking on potato tots years ago.

    For my Domino’s Loaded Tots recipe, I picked the two bestsellers of the three versions offered at Domino’s for you to clone: Philly Cheesesteak and Cheddar Bacon. The Philly Cheesesteak version includes onion, green pepper, steak, and Alfredo sauce, and the Bacon Cheddar is topped with crispy crumbled bacon and garlic Parmesan sauce. Which one will you be making?  

    Once you decide, simply arrange a couple of dozen cooked tots on a baking sheet and smother them with the mozzarella/cheddar cheese blend, a few toppings, and the secret sauce hack, then bake for just 8 minutes until it’s melty and magnificent.

    Find more of my Domino's copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Chipotle Chicken Al Pastor

    A dish traditionally made with pork is redesigned for chicken in this Mexican chain’s limited-time-only sweet-and-spicy variation. All the key ingredients for good al pastor are here: pineapple, lime, achiote, and morita chipotle peppers, which come together to make a bright orange sauce used here for basting marinated chicken thighs.

    The TV commercial for Chipotle’s new offering claims the morita peppers are seared and shows wild flames dancing around a pan filled with fresh green and red peppers. That is perhaps not an accurate depiction of the preparation process considering that morita peppers are made by smoking red jalapeños, not green ones. And smoked jalapeños do not look like fresh jalapeños, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

    Regardless of the confusing clues in the TV ad, to make my Chipotle Chicken Al Pastor recipe, you'll want to find dry morita peppers, then remove the seeds and toast the peppers in your oven before making the secret sauce. Baste the sauce on your chicken just before it's done cooking, then chop it up and use it to make delicious tacos, burritos, salads, and bowls.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    McDonald's Hotcakes

    With the invention of the Egg McMuffin in 1971, McDonald’s became the first fast food restaurant to open for breakfast, but only in select locations. The morning sandwich was so successful that in 1977 the chain went national with a full breakfast menu rollout, including scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, and these popular golden-brown hotcakes.

    Many pancake recipes require buttermilk for lift, but since the McDonald's original recipe doesn't use it, you won't need it here for this clone. And you won't miss it. My McDonald’s Hotcakes recipe still makes fluffy pancakes even without buttermilk, since the formula contains plenty of baking powder for a perfect rise and beautiful browning. It's a handy recipe to have on hand when you don't have any buttermilk in the fridge and you don't feel like dashing off to the market.

    Once your batter is mixed, measure ¼ cup into a heated nonstick pan, and in under 3 minutes you’ll have a perfect 4½-inch hotcake—the exact size of the original. This recipe makes 16 hotcakes, and you can freeze the leftovers, then easily reheat a stack for just 1 minute in your microwave whenever you need a quick a.m. belly filler.

    Find more cool breakfast copycat recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    Applebee's Brew Pub Pretzels & Beer Cheese Dip

    The chain’s popular appetizer brings three secret recipes together in one dish: the pretzels, the beer cheese, and the honey Dijon mustard dip. And I’ve got original hacks for all three formulas that will make enough for lots of bellies.

    Bavarian pretzels are traditionally bathed in a lye solution before they’re baked to give them a dark shiny brown skin. Food-grade lye, when cooked, is safe to eat, but it’s not an ingredient usually found at the corner food store. So, to make my Applebee’s Beer Pub Pretzels recipe more convenient, I’m opting for a baking soda bath to darken these pretzels. They don’t have the same shine as lye-bathed pretzels, but if you use enough baking soda, your pretzels will come out beautifully caramel brown, just like the real thing.

    For my Applebee’s Beer Cheese Dip recipe, I had to come up with a good way to melt white cheddar, which can be tricky since it’s hard to find mild (softer) white cheddar. Most white cheddar I found was either sharp or extra sharp, and when I made a sauce using a roux, the finished product came out much too grainy. On my next attempt, I tried a different approach by melting a chunk of Velveeta Queso Blanco in some milk before adding the shredded white cheddar. Thanks to sodium citrate, a cheese melting aid that’s in Velveeta, the sauce came out smooth as silk, and I was thrilled.

    After your pretzels and beer cheese are done, mix up the easy honey Dijon mustard dipping sauce in a small bowl, and you’re ready to serve a gang of pretzel lovers with 12 Bavarian pretzel sticks and plenty of beer cheese and mustard sauce for dipping.

     Check out more of my cool copycat appetizers here

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  • Not rated yet
    Subway Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

    Subway’s most popular freshly baked cookie will remind you of biting into a delicious slice of berry cheesecake. The cookie dough has a little cream cheese in it, and the cookie is embedded with creamy white chocolate chips and flavorful real raspberry baking bits.

    The challenge for making a good clone was re-creating the raspberry bits found in the real cookie using easy steps that anyone could manage. I experimented with raspberry candy bits in the style of Turkish delight, gummies, and fruit rolls, but each of those techniques took much too long. Eventually, I mixed concentrated raspberry purée with white chocolate chips and got meltable real raspberry baking bits that were easy to make and tasted great.

    I’ll show you how to make those raspberry bits here with simple steps and photos, and then you’ll combine those bits with white chocolate chips and other ingredients for a batch of 22 cookies that will come out of your oven crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, just like the real ones at the world’s biggest sandwich shop.

    Try my Subway Raspberry Cheesecake cookie recipe below, and find my recipes for Subway Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and White Chip Macadamia Nut cookies here.

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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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