Dips

There are many acceptable ways to formulate good queso, but to make this specific queso the Qdoba way, you must start with the correct ingredients—and most copycat recipes seem to miss the mark. A few recipes get one of the peppers and two of the cheeses right, but nearly every recipe out there is a big mess that I will now save you from.

Quesos can be made with various cheeses, including queso fresco, asadero, and Muenster, but this particular queso includes a cheese you probably didn’t expect: Swiss. That cheese is slow to melt, so we’ll shred it, along with the Jack. And you won't need to gum up the queso with flour or cornstarch by making a roux because the white American cheese in the mix contains either sodium citrate or sodium phosphate—additives that help the cheese melt smoothly and stay that way. 

The authors of recipes that include tomatoes in this dish haven’t looked closely. Those are actually red bell peppers, which are roasted, peeled, and seeded along with the poblano and jalapeños before being diced and added to the cheese sauce. The sauce cooks on low heat, without bubbling, ensuring it remains smooth and creamy.

When it’s done, your queso may appear thin in the pan, but it will thicken as it cools to a perfect consistency for dipping tortilla chips or as a topping for tacos and burrito bowls.

My Qdoba 3-Cheese Queso copycat recipe was our #2 most popular in 2021. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Panda Express Chow Mein (#1), Panda Express Fried Rice (#3), Outback Baked Potato Soup (#4), Chipotle Carne Asada (#5).

Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.

Social media shredded Chipotle’s first queso dip which debuted in 2017, calling it “gritty,” “bland,” “watered-down,” and “a crime against cheese.” Chipotle was in desperate need of a re-do.

In early 2020, after months and months of test-marketing an improved cheesy dip recipe in Dallas, Detroit, and San Diego, the Mexican chain introduced Queso Blanco to the entire U.S., and this time the reviews were much better.

Chipotle claims their new formula contains exactly 13 ingredients, including 2 kinds of cheese and 3 different chile peppers. With cornstarch as the thickening agent, the preparation starts by making a white sauce with milk and cream. When the cheese is fully melted and smooth, the veggies go in, and in about 10 minutes it’s ready to serve.

Use my Chipotle Queso Blanco copycat recipe as a dip with tortilla chips or as a topping on your copycat Chipotle carne asada or carnitas tacos and barbacoa burritos. Find all my Chipotle recipes here. 

For years, I’ve been hearing about a delicious seafood dipping sauce at Japanese steakhouses called "shrimp sauce" or "yum yum sauce." Research revealed many independent Japanese steakhouses with "the best sauce," but it was the name of an 11-unit chain called Kobe Ichiban in Central Florida that came up most often.

When I next found myself in Orlando, Florida presenting some cooking demos at a home show, I dropped in on Kobe Ichiban for dinner and there it was: the light orange creamy dipping "yummy" sauce that everyone was raving about. It was sweet and sour and salty and creamy, and it tasted amazing on the shrimp—as well as on everything else.

I poured some into some small plastic storage bags I had with me (always come prepared!), then popped them into a cooler for the long trip back to Las Vegas. Back in the underground lab, I developed my Kobe shrimp yum yum sauce recipe below. Now, you can enjoy this much-requested delicious dipping sauce anytime.

Find more of my copycat recipes for famous sauces here.  

The Italian town of Alba, where Pietro Ferrero built his pastry shop, was known for high yields of hazelnuts, a crucial ingredient in the creation of the first chocolate-hazelnut spread Pietro sold in 1951 under the name Supercrema. After Pietro passed away, his son Michele took over the company, and in 1963, Michele reformulated the hazelnut spread with more chocolate and changed the name to Nutella. Today, more than 25 percent of the world’s hazelnuts are used to make the famous spread.

A jar of Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread contains only seven ingredients, and every one of them is crucial for either flavor or form. The hazelnuts become hazelnut butter. The cocoa, milk, sugar, vanilla, and oil become milk chocolate syrup. And lecithin, a natural ingredient, is the emulsifier that holds it all together. Our home hack of Nutella looks and tastes like the real one, but thanks to Hershey, we can make our version with just six ingredients. Hershey’s ubiquitous chocolate syrup doesn’t have lecithin in it, but it does contain xanthan gum, an emulsifier made from sugar, that works great for our hack.

The big secret to a good batch of fake Nutella is getting the hazelnuts pureed into a smooth nut butter. Your homemade Nutella hack will only be as smooth as your hazelnuts are, and you’ll need a blender to do that. Once the hazelnuts become nut butter, mix them with the other ingredients in a bowl, and you’ll produce a little more knockoff Nutella than what comes in a 13-ounce jar.

In April 2020, restaurant chains in the U.S. closed their dining rooms due to the Covid-19 pandemic and needed a way to stay connected with their customers. Chipotle’s solution was to have corporate chef Chad Brauze “reveal” the chain’s secret recipe for the guacamole on the corporate Instagram account, which was picked up by the news and then re-posted on the Today Show website.

Chains have shared versions of their secret recipes on news shows in the past, but I’m usually skeptical of the recipes since I’ve rarely found that any of those formulas are the actual restaurant versions. More often than not, one or more ingredients are eliminated or substituted so that your final product is close but not exact. And that's precisely what Chipotle did.

Chef Chad's Instagram cooking video from his home kitchen is a good guacamole recipe, but it’s not Chipotle’s guacamole recipe. The formula includes most of the ingredients you would need for a perfect hack—but it’s missing one: lemon juice. According to Chipotle’s website and cooks at the restaurant, Chipotle adds lemon juice in addition to lime juice to its famous guacamole.

With this information and a heaping sample of the authentic guac, I tweaked Chef Chad’s formula to make my Chipotle Guacamole copycat recipe more like the real one, which is made fresh several times a day at the restaurant. Even with the additional acid (lemon juice) in the mix to preserve the color, this guacamole is best if eaten within several hours of making it while it’s still bright green.

This recipe was our #3 most popular of 2023. Check out the other most popular unlocked recipes of the year: Church's Chicken Original and Spicy Fried Chicken (#1), IKEA Swedish Meatballs (#2), Subway Cookies (#4), IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast (#5).

Check out this list of our most popular recipes of all-time.

Citrus juices, sweet white corn, and roasted jalapeno pepper combine for this slightly spicy sweet-and-sour salsa, which has become a popular topper at the chain for those not looking for something with a lot of heat.

For my Chipotle Roasted Chili-Corn Salsa copycat recipe, I started by piercing a jalapeno with a skewer and lightly blackened it over my stovetop gas flame (if you don’t have a gas stove, you can also roast it in your oven). I diced the pepper, then combined it with white corn, red onion, cilantro, salt, and citrus juices and let it rest for a half hour.

After a taste test and several more batches to adjust ratios, I finally had a salsa that was indistinguishable from the real thing and could now be used on all sorts of deserving home creations, just like the corn salsa you get at the famous Mexican chain.

Find more of my Chipotle copycat recipes here.

One of two new sauces McDonald’s debuted in late 2023 is inspired by the famous Washington D.C.-area sauce originally offered at chicken wing restaurants and Chinese takeout joints in the 1960s. The sweet, sour, and spicy mambo sauce—also called mumbo sauce—is used as a dip for all kinds of finger foods including fried chicken, chicken wings, chicken nuggets, French fries, and eggrolls.

But McDonald’s only offered the sauce in small blister packs, which were available for about a month. So, if we want to bring back the great flavor of the limited-time-only sauce we'll need a handy home hack. Fortunately, I got my mitts on enough of the sauce before it went away to whip up this exclusive knockoff.

My McDonald's Mambo Sauce copycat recipe is super easy, requires only common ingredients, and will make 1½ cups of the versatile stuff you can use for dipping anything that needs to be perked up.

You might also like my clones for McDonald's sweet and spicy jam, hot mustard, sweet and sour, honey mustard, and Szechuan dipping sauces. Find all my McDonald's copycat recipes here.

Taco Bell has two green sauces mentioned on its website. One is a green chili sauce, which isn’t served at any Taco Bell I’ve been to. The other is a green tomatillo sauce, the most popular of the two, which can be ordered on any Taco Bell item or will be provided a la carte for you to pour on as you see fit. The tomatillo sauce, with its mild heat and bright tomatillo flavor, is the one we’re hacking here.

It appears that Taco Bell uses canned peppers and tomatillos for their recipe, which is great because canned ingredients are ready to use, they add additional flavors and the acidity we need, and they simplify the recipe. Fresh produce would certainly require much more wrangling.

My Taco Bell Green Tomatillo sauce recipe is easy. Just pop everything into a blender in the order prescribed and blend away, but don’t blend so much that the seeds get pulverized. You want a sauce that isn’t completely pureed, with visible small pieces of peppers and seeds. You’ll end up with 1½ cups of the tasty green stuff to use on tacos, burritos, salads, eggs, and more.

Be sure to warm up the sauce a little before you use it (they keep it in a warmer at Taco Bell). The flavor of the real thing is fairly mild, so if you want your version hotter than that, just add more jalapeños to the blender.

Get the recipe in my book "Top Secret Recipes Unleashed" only on Amazon here.

Even though Arby's has diversified its menu over the years with toasted subs and deli-style sandwiches on sliced whole wheat bread, it's the thinly-sliced roast beef piled high on hamburger buns that originally made this chain famous. Since roast beef and horseradish go so beautifully together, Arby's created this delicious mayo-based horseradish sauce as a spread for the roast beef sandwiches. It also happens to be great on your homemade sandwiches too, but it just isn't cool to hoard handfuls of those blister packs to take home with you. So, with the help of my Arby's Horsey Sauce recipe, you can clone as much sauce as you want. First step: get out the blender. You'll need it to purée the horseradish into the mix so that the sauce is smooth and creamy like the real deal.

You might also like my Arby's BBQ sauce recipe.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

One of the tastiest dipping sauces that you can choose with your order of Chicken McNuggets is this sweet-and-sour creamy Dijon mustard. No longer shall you find it necessary to beg for extra packets of this sauce with your next box of cluck chunks. Now, with just four ingredients, you can from this day forward mix up the stuff at home anytime you want to use it as a spread on savory sandwiches (great with ham!) or as a dipping sauce for your own home-cooked nuggets or chicken strips.

Check out my recipes for McDonald's hot mustard, sweet and sour, sweet chili, and Szechuan sauces. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Re-create the popular bean dip at home in minutes with a food processor: just pour in all the ingredients and fire it up. With my Fritos Hot Bean Dip copycat recipe below, you can duplicate the taste of the popular dip without any added fat. If you check out the label of the real thing, you'll see that there's hydrogenated oil in there. We avoid this trans fat without sacrificing flavor in this home clone that's a healthier choice for dipping. Bring on the chips!

Try more amazing copycat recipes for famous dips here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

When you sit down for Italian-style grub at one of the more than 168 nationwide Carrabba's restaurants, you're first served a small plate with a little pile of herbs and spices in the middle to which the waiter adds olive oil. Now you're set up to dip your sliced bread in the freshly flavored oil. 

For my Carrabba's Bread Dipping Blend copycat recipe, you'll need a coffee bean grinder or a small food processor to finely chop the ingredients, but you've got one of those right?

You might also like my recipe for Carrabba's Spicy Sausage Lentil Soup. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Whip out the food processor and fire up the grill because you'll need these essential tools to clone one of the best restaurant salsas in the business. The key to re-creating the flavor of Chevys salsa is to fire roast the tomatoes and the jalapeños, and to add a little mesquite-flavored liquid smoke. The restaurant chain uses a mesquite grill, so follow the steps in my Chevys Fresh Salsa copycat recipe below to get the same smoky flavor as the popular restaurant version.

Chevys uses chipotle peppers, which are smoked red jalapeños. But unless you grow your own jalapeños, it may be difficult to find the riper red variety in your local supermarket. If you can't find the red ones, the green jalapeño peppers will work fine. Adjust the number of jalapeños you use based on the size of the peppers that are available: if you have big jalapeños, you need only 6, and you'll need around 10 if your peppers are small.

Check out my recipes for Chevy's flan, chili con queso, and more here.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–2 tablespoons
Total servings–16
Calories per serving–10
Fat per serving–0g

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

Menu Description: "Our appetizing cheese dip with seasoned beef. Served with warm tostada chips."

Take your chips for a dip in this chili queso that comes to your table in a small cast iron skillet along with a big bowl of tortilla chips. A popular recipe that's been circulating calls for combining Velveeta with Hormel no-bean chili. Sure, it's a good start, but there's more to Chili's spicy cheese dip than that. Try my Chili's Skillet Queso copycat recipe below that includes a few other key ingredients. After about 20 minutes you'll have a great taste alike dip for picnic, party, or game time.

Now, what's for dinner? Check out my other Chili's copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.
 

Menu Description: "A creamy hot dip of artichokes, spinach and Parmesan with pasta chips."

Just about every aspect of the Olive Garden restaurants was developed from consumer research conducted in a corporate think tank by the General Mills Corporation. Restaurant-goers were questioned about preferences, such as the type of food to be served, the appearance and atmosphere of the restaurant, even the color of the candleholders on each table. The large tables and the comfy chairs on rollers that you see at the Olive Garden restaurants came out of those vigorous research sessions.

I'm not sure if this dish came from those sessions, but according to servers at the Olive Garden, the Hot Artichoke-Spinach Dip is one of the most requested appetizers on the menu. The restaurant serves the dip with chips made from fried pasta, but you can serve your homemade Olive Garden hot artichoke dip with just about any type of crackers, chips, or toasted Italian bread, like bruschetta.

Try my Olive Garden Hot Artichoke Dip copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite Olive Garden recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "A creamy, cheesy blend of artichoke hearts, spinach, onions, Parmesan and a hint of bacon."

Just about every casual restaurant chain has its own version of artichoke and spinach dip, and it's usually one of the top most popular picks from the appetizer menu. Red Robin is no exception, and offers a version of the popular dip that is one of the best of the bunch. The basics of Red Robin's spinach artichoke dip are similar to other formulas, but they mix it up with a little bacon for a hint of smokiness. I like that. I also like that you can easily steam the artichoke hearts, spinach and onion used here in your microwave oven. Combine the tender veggies with the cheese and other ingredients in a saucepan until thick and creamy, then serve it up with your choice of tortilla chips, sliced pita bread, pita chips, bagel chips or crackers.

Try my Red Robin Creamy Artichoke & Spinach dip copycat recipe below, and click here to see if I've cloned more of your favorites from Red Robin.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 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 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.

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.

I’ve yet to taste a better habanero salsa at a quick-service Mexican chain than the one made daily at Qdoba Mexican Eats. Yes, it is very spicy, but the simple combo of fire-roasted habanero, tomatillo, and garlic is not as fiery as you might expect from a salsa that includes so much habanero in it.

And that’s exactly what makes Qdoba Fiery Habanero Salsa so good. Because the habanero peppers are roasted, and the seeds are removed, you can enjoy the complex flavor of the habanero without your taste buds being numbed by the heat. A good salsa should enhance your food, not upstage it.

For my Qdoba habanero salsa copycat recipe, you can roast the peppers in your oven or by holding them over the high flame of a gas stove with a skewer until the skins have charred to black. Resting the blackened peppers in a covered container for a few minutes will help to steam the skins, and they will wash off easily under cold water. 

How about using this salsa to spice up some Qdoba Grilled Chicken Adobo? Get my recipe here. 

This is my go-to salsa at Chipotle, so it was only a matter of time before I tackled a copycat home hack of the famous secret recipe. And now that I can make it at home with just seven ingredients and about 20 minutes of prep, this salsa replaces several grocery store brands I was previously loyal to.

The process for my Chipotle Tomatillo-Red Chili Salsa copycat recipe is simple: roast tomatillos, red Fresno peppers, and garlic under your broiler for a few minutes, then purée everything in a blender with vinegar and seasoning. The trick is not to over-blend the mixture. Once the tomatillos are added, purée the mixture until no chunks of tomatillo are visible, but stop blending when you can still see tomatillo seeds in the sauce.

Add this great-tasting salsa to anything that needs a hit of hotness—tacos, burritos, salads, and bowls. Just know it's a hack of Chipotle’s spiciest salsa, so be ready for the boom.

You could also use this great salsa on Chipotle's famous barbacoa, carnitas, carne asada, or pollo asado. Find all of those recipes and more here.

The most famous recipe from Terry Ho’s Hibachi Express chain of fast casual Japanese restaurants located in Georgia and Alabama is the secret orange sauce served alongside every meal. In 2012, Terry bottled his famous Yum Yum sauce, claiming on the label that it’s “the best sauce ever” and is “good on everything.”

I chose to hack the kicked-up spicier version of the sauce since it had more character than the milder original version, but if this version is too hot for your taste, reduce or eliminate the cayenne pepper and pepper sauce.

Use my Terry Ho's Spicy Yum Yum Sauce recipe below to easily make the sauce at home. Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl, and then let it rest in your refrigerator. After about 30 minutes, you’ll have a cup of the delicious creamy stuff to use on shrimp, chicken, steak, or whatever you want.

Find more of my copycat recipes for famous sauces here.  

Here's a clone for the dollop of sweet, creamy goodness that comes alongside your fish entrée at the world's largest seafood chain. My Red Lobster Tartar Sauce copycat recipe produces you a quick and tasty sauce that has the look and flavor of the real thing—and it's only five ingredients! Use the sauce to dress up your next home-cooked fish platter or as a spread on fish sandwiches and fish tacos.

Find more of my Red Lobster copycat recipes here, like Cheddar Bay Biscuits and Parrot Bay coconut shrimp.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

This top secret clone of the cheesy appetizer from this 107-unit Mexican food chain is perfect to whip out for your festive fiestas. My Chevys Chili Con Queso recipe will make enough of the spicy cheese concoction for plenty of party time double-dipping. The Anaheim chili has a mild spiciness, so we'll toss a jalapeño in there for extra kick. If you can't find an Anaheim pepper, use any mild green chilies that are available, as long as you get about 1/2 cup of diced pepper in the mix.

Find more famous dip recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Texan David Pace had been selling 58 different varieties of jam, jellies, and sauces from the back of his liquor store in the 1940s when he came up with a recipe for a thick and spicy tomato-based sauce he dubbed "Picante." When sales of David's new sauce took off, he concentrated all his efforts on marketing his all-natural, preservative-free product, and designed the sauces famous hourglass-shaped jar (to keep it from tipping over). Now America's number one Mexican hot sauce brand, Pace Foods, makes it known that it still uses only fresh jalapeno peppers in the sauces, rather than the brined, less flavorful jalapenos—like those canned nacho slices. Each year all the fresh jalapenos used by the company weigh in at around 30 million pounds, and the nation gobbles up around 120 million pounds of the spicy sauces. 

Below you'll find my simple Pace Picante Sauce recipe that makes a kitchen copy of the medium heat-level Pace Picante Sauce, which was the first variety David created. The mild and hot versions were added in 1981, and you'll find clones for those at the bottom of the recipe in Tidbits.

Take a look at all the other famous sauces you can make at home here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.