THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
THE MOST TRUSTED COPYCAT RECIPES
Joe's Stone Crab Garlic Creamed Spinach copycat recipe by Todd Wilbur

Joe's Stone Crab Garlic Creamed Spinach

Score: 4.87 (votes: 15)
Reviews: 15
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Creamy garlic spinach the Joe's Stone Crab way is a simple preparation. Two boxes of frozen, chopped spinach and a few other ingredients are all you'll need to re-create this awesome dish. The ground nutmeg is the secret addition that sets this creamed spinach apart from other chains.

Try my Joe's Stone Crab creamed spinach recipe below, and click here for more of my recipes from Joe's Stone Crab.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

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  • 1 tablespoon minced garlic
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Reviews
Anonymous
Feb 21, 2007, 22:00
I WAS looking for the Boston Market recipe, but when I couldn't find it, I figured I'd give this one a try--OMG! It's SO good & SO easy. Thanks!
Sindee
Dec 5, 2006, 22:00
Oh my God, so awesomely delicious. My nieces, who hate spinach, beg me to make this. We make extra and use it in omeletes. It also freezes well and tastes just as great when thawed and reheated. It was the biggest hit of our Thanksgiving table.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
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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. 

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

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

    Read more
  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 5)
    Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce

    Getting a table at the 123-year-old original Rao’s restaurant in New York City is next to impossible. The tables are “owned” by regulars who schedule their meals months in advance, so every table is full every night, and that’s the way it’s been for the last 38 years. The only way an outsider would get to taste the restaurant’s fresh marinara sauce is to be invited by a regular.

    If that isn’t in the stars for you, you could buy a bottle of the sauce at your local market (if they even have it). It won't be fresh, and it's likely to be the most expensive sauce in the store, but it still has that great Rao's taste. An even better solution is to copy the sauce for yourself using my easy Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce copycat recipe.

    The current co-owner of Rao’s, Frank Pellegrino Jr., told Bon Appetit in 2015 that the famous marinara sauce was created by his grandmother many years ago, and the sauce you buy in stores is the same recipe served in his restaurants. The ingredients are common, but correctly choosing the main ingredient—tomatoes—is important. Try to find San Marzano-style whole canned tomatoes, preferably from Italy. They are a little more expensive than typical canned tomatoes, but they will give you some great sauce.

    After 30 minutes of cooking, you’ll end up with about the same amount of sauce as in a large jar of the real thing. Your version will likely be just a little bit brighter and better than the bottled stuff, thanks to the fresh ingredients. But now you can eat it anytime you want, with no reservations, at a table you own.

    This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Olive Garden Lasagna Classico (#2), King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (#3), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).

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

    You might also like my recipes for Rao's Bolognese sauce and Rao's Meatballs here.

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  • Score: 4.50 (votes: 2)
    Rao's Traditional Meatballs

    Tweaking a classic recipe with a few special prep tricks leaked to me by a server was the key to developing this spot-on hack for the famous meatballs from the iconic 125-year-old Italian dining room. With just two locations in the U.S. (Los Angeles and New York), sinking your fork into a fresh meatball at the restaurant requires quite a trip for most people, but my Rao's Traditional Meatballs recipe, refined through multiple batches, will make you a meatball master in your own kitchen, producing ten 5½-ounce meatballs that look and taste like the real thing.

    Fortunately, I could squeeze in a reservation at the Las Vegas Rao’s location a few weeks before it closed its doors forever at Caesar’s Palace in late November 2021. While there, I made sure to ask my server for any information about the recipe, and was informed about the secret two-step process described in this hack to create giant meatballs that are cooked through, but so moist that they practically crumble when cut with a fork.

    Rao’s has shared a meatball recipe in the past, but don’t be fooled. That recipe produces decent meatballs, but they are not the same as what’s served in the restaurant. If you want to make meatballs that taste like the classic original, use my Rao's meatballs recipe below.

    And when they're done, top the meatballs with your favorite marinara or use my hack here to re-create Rao’s famous sauce.

    This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2022. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Chipotle Pollo Asado (#2), Wendy's Seasoned Potatoes (#3), Cheesecake Factory Spicy Cashew Chicken (#4), McDonald's Chicken McNuggets (#5).

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

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Cheesecake Factory Chicken Marsala and Mushrooms

    Menu Description: “Chicken breast sautéed with fresh mushrooms in a rich Marsala wine sauce. Served over bow tie pasta.”            

    Unlike the creamy Marsala sauce served at many restaurant chains (as with Olive Garden’s Stuffed Chicken Marsala), the sauce served at The Cheesecake Factory is rich and dark with an unctuous concentration of flavor seemingly created by a thorough reduction.

    For my Cheesecake Factory Chicken Marsala and Mushrooms copycat recipe, you'll reduce lightly seasoned marsala wine and chicken broth to less than one-quarter of its original volume. Once reduced, your cloned sauce is strained to remove the herbs, then butter and lemon are added, along with a browning sauce such as Kitchen Bouquet to match the deep color of the original.

    Browned mushrooms are added to the sauce, then it's all spooned over sautéed chicken cutlets arranged on a huge bed of farfalle pasta. Hope you're hungry, because this recipe makes two huge Cheesecake Factory-size servings. If it's too much for two of you, the dish can easily be portioned into three or four more modest servings.

    Find more of your favorite dishes from Cheesecake Factory hacked here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Qdoba 3-Cheese Queso

    There are many acceptable ways to formulate good queso, but to make this specific queso the Qdoba way, the ingredients must be correct – and most copycat recipes seem to get it wrong. A few recipes get one of the peppers and two of the cheeses right, but pretty much every recipe out there is a bit of a mess that I will now save you from.

    Quesos can be made with a variety of cheeses that include 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 first, 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. 

    Authors of recipes that call for tomatoes in this dish haven’t looked closely. Those are red bell peppers and they are roasted, peeled, and seeded along with the poblano and jalapeños before they are diced and added to the cheese sauce. The sauce cooks on low heat, never bubbling, so that it stays smooth and creamy.

    When done, your queso might seem 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.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 5)
    Maggiano's Beef Tenderloin Medallions

    For many years this entrée has been a top menu choice at Maggiano's, the 54-unit Italian chain from Brinker, the same company that operates Chili’s Grill & Bar. The $30 restaurant dish consists of three 2½-ounce tenderloin steaks, swimming in a fantastic balsamic cream sauce with sliced portabello mushrooms—but a home version is only six easy steps away, and it won't hit you in the wallet as hard as the pricey original.

    Cracking this dish required a perfect hack of the balsamic cream sauce, and that came quickly after obtaining some very reliable information from my incredibly helpful server/informant at a Las Vegas Maggiano’s. Let’s call him Skippy.

    According to Skippy, the balsamic cream sauce is as simple as mixing a sweet balsamic glaze with the chain’s creamy Alfredo sauce. So, I first got a sample of Maggiano’s Alfredo sauce and figured out how to replicate it. Once that was done, I measured increments of balsamic glaze into the Alfredo sauce until the color and flavor matched the original. The rest of the recipe was easy.

    My recipe will make two servings and includes preparation for the tenderloins and sauce. If you’d like to complete the dish the way it’s served at the restaurant (as in the photo), add some garlic mashed potatoes on the side, using my hack for Olive Garden Garlic Mashed Potatoes.   

    Try my Maggiano's Beef Tenderloin Medallions copycat recipe below, find more of my Maggiano's copycat recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    Chipotle Guacamole

    In April 2020, restaurant chains in the U.S. closed their dining rooms due to the Covid-19 epidemic 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 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.

    Read more
  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Cheesecake Factory Chicken Piccata

    Menu Description: “Sautéed chicken breast with lemon sauce, mushrooms, and capers. Served with angel hair pasta.”

    A great chicken piccata doesn’t have to be complicated, and this fantastic take on the lemony dish from the Cheesecake Factory is a perfect example.

    Since the sauce is the key to the great taste of this entrée, I made sure to get a sample on the side for later analysis when I requested my to-go order from the restaurant. While waiting, I asked the server what was in the sauce and she listed some obvious ingredients—lemon, wine, butter, cream—and then she mentioned garlic and shallots. When I got home, I rinsed the sauce through a mesh strainer to discover how much garlic and shallot were in the sauce, but there was no physical evidence of either solid ingredient left behind in the strainer.

    I made a batch of the sauce without garlic and shallot, and it tasted flat. So on the next batch, I added the garlic and shallot back in, then strained out the solid ingredients after they contributed their goodness to the sauce. The result was noticeably better.

    After adding mushrooms and capers to the new lemon sauce, I spooned it over sautéed chicken cutlets and was rewarded with a fantastic homemade version of this amazing dish, which you can now copy at home using my Cheesecake Factory Chicken Piccata recipe below.

    Check out more of my copycat Cheesecake Factory recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Outback Steakhouse Baked Potato Soup

    Menu Description: “Creamy potato soup topped with melted cheese, bacon, and green onions.”

    It’s not called baked potato soup because the potatoes in it are baked. It’s called baked potato soup because it’s topped with shredded cheese, bacon, and green onion, and it tastes like a loaded baked potato. Other hacky hacks for this recipe miss that point and add over an hour to the preparation process by preheating an oven and baking the potatoes, all while hungry stomachs are growling on the sidelines. My version skips that part by adding the raw potatoes directly into the pot with the other ingredients, where they cook in 20 minutes, and the soup is ready to eat in less time than other recipes take just to get the potatoes done.

    Also, other clones add way too much flour to thicken the soup—¾ cup! Sure, flour is good at thickening, but it doesn’t add any flavor, so I found a better way. For my Outback Baked Potato Soup copycat recipe, I ended up using just a little flour to make the roux, then later thickening the soup mostly with dehydrated potato flakes, which are used to make quick mashed potatoes. The flakes not only do a great job of thickening the soup, but they also add more delicious potato flavor to the pot, just like the original soup.

    Top your finished soup with shredded cheese, crumbled bacon, and green onion, and every spoonful will taste like a fully decked-out baked potato.

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

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

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Olive Garden Stuffed Chicken Marsala

    Menu Description: “Creamy marsala wine sauce with mushrooms over grilled chicken breasts, stuffed with Italian cheeses and sundried tomatoes. Served with garlic mashed potatoes.”

    My Olive Garden Stuffed Chicken Marsala copycat recipe includes a marsala sauce that even marsala sauce haters will like. My wife is one of those haters, but when she tried this sauce, her eyes lit up, and she begged for more. That’s great, now I won’t have to eat alone.

    Not only is Olive Garden's delicious marsala sauce hacked here (and it’s easy to make), you’ll also get the copycat recipe for the chain's awesome Italian cheese stuffing that goes between the two pan-cooked chicken fillets. Build it, sauce it, serve it. The presentation is awesome, and the flavor will soothe your soul.

    Try this dish paired with my recent clone of Olive Garden’s Garlic Mashed Potatoes for the complete Olive Garden Stuffed Chicken Marsala experience.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Panera Bread Baked Potato Soup

    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, I use the same or similar ingredients to those listed on the company’s website in my Panera Bread Potato Soup copycat recipe, so you can make the closest replica at home.

    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 Baked Potato soup, and at a mere fraction of the cost.

    Find recipes for more of your favorite Panera Bread dishes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    See's Candies Chocolate Walnut Fudge

    Fudge can be finicky. It's created by combining hot candy syrup with chocolate, which can result in a grainy mess if the chocolate seizes and gets clumpy. This undesirable situation can be avoided by closely monitoring the temperature, but even then your chocolate could still lock up, and your fudge will be ruined. I couldn't let that happen in my recipe re-creation of the famous fudge from the 100-year-old West Coast candy chain. 

    For my See's Chocolate Walnut Fudge copycat recipe, I made over 56 pounds of fudge on my quest to develop a recipe that works every time, even if the chocolate seizes. And in most of my batches, it usually did. So I came up with a secret trick: reserve a little cream for later, then after the hot candy syrup is mixed with the chocolate and the chocolate begins to seize, send the cream to the rescue and the fudge will become smooth, as if by magic. 

    Stir in some walnuts, then pour the fudge into a wax paper-lined pan, and when it cools, you'll have over 3 1/2 pounds of thick fudge that tastes just like the real thing. That's more than $110 worth of fudge if you bought it at the candy store!

    Fans of the cinnamon lollipop will love my See's Cinnamon Lollypop recipe 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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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Maggiano's Famous Rigatoni "D"

    “D” was chef David Di Gregorio’s nickname at the first Maggiano’s, which opened in Chicago, Illinois in 1991, and he’s the guy who developed the best-selling pasta dish on the menu. 

    Maggiano’s Famous Rigatoni “D” is a genuinely great dish that anyone can copy if they use the exclusive top secret techniques revealed here. After many trials and several errors, I finally replicated the amazing creamy marsala sauce by reducing two full bottles of inexpensive marsala wine down to just one-half cup of intensely flavored liquid. The alcohol cooks out, the mushrooms contribute their savory umami goodness, and after about an hour-and-a-half you have the perfect flavoring solution for your cream sauce.     

    The other mushrooms in the dish are served unsliced, so make sure they’re small enough to eat in one bite. Sometimes it’s tough to find 40 small mushrooms, so feel free to use your choice of white (button) or brown (cremini) mushrooms for this recipe. They are the same mushroom species with only minor differences (white mushrooms are a cultivated mutation of the brown ones), so either will work. But, if you have a choice, go with creminis since they tend to have a slightly deeper flavor.

    Try my Maggiano's Rigatoni "D" copycat recipe today, and complete the meal with my Maggiano's Vera's Lemon Cookies recipe here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Cheesecake Factory Orange Chicken

    With delicious versions on the menus at Panda Express, Pei Wei, and P.F. Chang’s, the orange chicken space is certainly competitive (click on the brands for my recipes). That’s why it’s so impressive that The Cheesecake Factory serves up one of the best orange chicken entrées of any chain, including chains that specialize in Chinese food.

    For this easy entrée hack, I’ve included a recipe for breading and frying the chicken yourself, but you may prefer to bake or fry pre-breaded frozen chicken strips or nuggets and toss them in the sauce you make here. The sauce is the big secret in this recipe, and the version I’ve whipped up for you has just the right amount of sweet, sour, and spicy to match the real thing.

    Add some rice and stir-fry vegetables, and you’ll have two large Cheesecake Factory-size entrées with this hack, or you can split it into four more modest portions.   

    Try my Cheesecake Factory Orange Chicken copycat recipe below, and check here for some great dessert ideas.

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  • Not rated yet
    McDonald's Chicken McNuggets

    When dippable tempura-battered chicken chunks made their debut at select McDonald’s restaurants in 1981, America couldn’t get enough…literally. Supply chain issues prevented the burger chain from meeting high demand in all markets for many months, and it wasn’t until two years after the McNuggets were first introduced that they were finally available at every McDonald’s in the country.

    The famous finger food was invented by McDonald’s first executive chef, Rene Arend, who discovered that reconstituted chicken blended with flavor enhancers, enrobed with tempura batter, and deep-fried until golden brown, made a simple, portable snack. The chicken was formed into four “B” shapes designed for dipping—the bell, the bow-tie, the ball, and the boot—and served along with child-friendly dipping sauces such as ranch and barbecue, so the breakout finger food product became a huge winner with kids.

    To make a home version that looks and tastes like McNuggets I dissected a real one and discovered that the chicken in the middle is coated twice: once with dry, seasoned breading, and then once more with wet batter before frying. The chicken in McNuggets is puréed not ground, and the best way to prepare it is with a food processor. “Ground” chicken in grocery stores is often puréed, then pushed through a die to look more appealing in the package, similar to how ground beef is presented. For my Chicken McNugget recipe below, it's best to use a home food processor, but if you don’t have one, ground chicken from your butcher will work.

    If I had to identify a secret ingredient in this hack it would be Knorr chicken bouillon powder. It contains many of the same ingredients found in real Chicken McNuggets, so once you get that crucial flavoring component, you’re well on your way to an amazing knockoff of an iconic American food.

    This recipe was our #5 most popular in 2022. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Traditional Meatballs (#1), Chipotle Pollo Asado (#2), Wendy's Seasoned Potatoes (#3), Cheesecake Factory Spicy Cashew Chicken (#4).

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

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Applebee's Spinach & Artichoke Dip

    When I saw a recent Mashed.com poll where most people picked the spinach and artichoke dip as their favorite appetizer on the Applebee’s menu, I realized I hadn’t yet cracked the recipe, and immediately got to work.

    I've hacked a lot of spinach and artichoke dips over the years, but no other dip features so many different types of Italian cheese. Thankfully, many grocery stores have bags of pre-blended shredded Italian cheese that work great for our Applebee's Spinach & Artichoke Dip copycat recipe. With that cheese blend, plus additional Asiago and Parmesan, we can produce a spot-on match to Applebee's ultra-popular dip.

    And there’s no need to defrost the frozen spinach ahead of time—that will be taken care of when it steams in your microwave. Add the cooked spinach to the cheese and other ingredients in a saucepan along with the trimmed artichoke hearts, and when it’s hot, sprinkle on some more Parm, brown it under your broiler, and bust out the chips.

    Check out my recipe for Applebee's Chicken Wonton Tacos and more here

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Panda Express Fried Rice

    A popular staple of any Chinese chain is fried rice, so it better be good, and the version served at Panda Express most certainly is. Here's my easy Panda Express Fried Rice recipe for when you need a stress-free, low-cost side for your entrées. But I do suggest that you cook the white rice several hours or even a day or two before you plan to make the finished dish. I found that the cooked rice called for in this recipe works best when it's cold. 

    As for a shortcut, bagged frozen peas and carrots will save you from the hassle of petite-dicing carrots since the carrots in those bags are the perfect size to produce an identical clone. And they're already cooked. 

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

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

    Read more
  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 6)
    Olive Garden Lasagna Classico

    Crafting an Olive Garden’s signature Lasagna Classico recipe became the perfect opportunity to create a beautiful multi-layered lasagna hack recipe that uses up the whole box of lasagna noodles and fills the baking pan all the way to the top. This Top Secret Recipe makes a lasagna that tips the scale at nearly 10 pounds and will feed hungry mouths for days, with every delicious layer copied directly from the carefully dissected Olive Garden original.

    I found a few credible bits of intel in a video of an Olive Garden chef demonstrating what he claims is the real formula on a midday news show, but the recipe was abbreviated for TV and the chef left out some crucial information. One ingredient he conspicuously left out of the recipe is the secret layer of Cheddar cheese located near the middle of the stack. I wasn’t expecting to find Cheddar in lasagna, but when I carefully separated the layers from several servings of the original dish, there was the golden melted cheesy goodness in every slice.

    This clone recipe will make enough for 8 big portions, but if you make slightly smaller slices this is easily enough food to fill twelve lasagna-loving bellies. If you like lasagna, you're going to love this version.

    This recipe was our #2 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce (#1), King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (#3), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).

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

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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: 3)
    Jason's Deli Irish Potato Soup

    Traditional Irish potato soup—a simple formula made with potatoes, onions, stock, and cream—gets an upgrade with cheddar cheese, carrots, green onions, and sour cream in Jason’s Deli's delicious take on the classic recipe. These improvements make a great soup that's still easy to make, but it also may be the best-tasting potato soup I’ve ever hacked.

    The secret to this soup recipe is that it starts life as a cheddar cheese sauce, which may worry you if you’ve ever made cheese sauce that wound up “grainy." But that won’t happen here if you're sure to use mild or medium cheddar cheese. Older (sharper) cheddar contains less water and doesn’t melt as well as younger cheese, so the first important step is to choose your cheddar wisely.    

    Also, shred your own cheese. Pre-shredded cheese won’t melt as well, since shredded cheese is usually drier and often dusted with cornstarch to keep the shreds from clumping. For my Jason's Deli Irish Potato Soup recipe below, I highly recommend that you shred your own cheese to get the best results. 

    After an hour or so of simmering, you’ll have eight beautiful bowls of soup, all topped with cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon before serving, just like the real thing.  

    Find more amazing copycat soup recipes here.

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  • Not rated yet
    P.F. Chang's Crispy Honey Chicken

    I'm not sure why it took me so long to clone this dish, considering that it was my daughter's favorite thing to eat at P.F. Chang's when she was a kid. I recently tackled it and created a spot-on copy of the chain's signature sweet-and-sour honey sauce, and in the process found some new intel that improved on my earlier version of the chain's crispy chicken which I had already hacked for a different P.F. Chang's recipe. The dish came together beautifully on the plate, and it cleared the final taste test by earning an enthusiastic thumbs-up from my now-grown little girl.

    Since P.F. Chang’s sells a version of this dish in the freezer aisle of my local grocery store, I was able to improve my chicken batter formula by extracting some good info from the ingredients listed on the product box. Based on this new information, I added more cornstarch to the batter along with corn flour and egg whites for a much better, crispier coating.

    The sauce in my P.F. Chang's Crispy Honey Chicken copycat recipe is sweetened with honey and sugar, soured by wine and rice vinegar, and thickened with cornstarch and gelatin powder to create a flavorful finishing glaze that sticks to the crispy chicken like the real thing. In the restaurant, the chicken is served over a bed of fried maifun rice sticks so I’ve included prep notes for that in the Tidbits, but you may prefer to forego that step and serve the chicken over or alongside cooked white or brown rice.

    Check out more of my P.F. Chang's clone recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Church's Chicken Original and Spicy Fried Chicken

    On the list of inspirational American food success stories is the small fried chicken restaurant George W. Church opened across the street from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas in 1952. In the years since Church's Chicken exploded into a monster chicken chain with over 1000 restaurants in 35 countries.

    The truth is, no chain would grow that big without good food. George's special homestyle fried chicken formula was his secret recipe to success, and as far as I can tell, nobody has properly hacked it. Until now. 

    The ingredient list for this crispy chicken is smaller than what you might find in “The Colonel’s” kitchen, which is good because you won’t have to go out and buy 11 herbs and spices. Much of the flavoring in this chicken recipe develops during the brining process, which also has the added benefit of keeping the chicken moist and juicy inside. I discovered that Church’s marinates their chicken for 12 hours, so I worked backward and designed a brine that would do its job in exactly half a day.

    For my Church's Fried Chicken copycat recipe, you'll need to plan ahead to give your chicken time to marinate. But that's a good thing—your patience will be rewarded with the down-home taste of delicious fried chicken, just like what grandma used to make.

    And here's some more good news: this hack includes two recipes! I've created a Church's copycat recipe for the original recipe fried chicken, along with instructions for duplicating the spicy version if you're in the mood to pump up your jam.

    This recipe was my #1 most popular of 2023. Check out the other most popular unlocked recipes of the year: IKEA Swedish Meatballs (#2), Chipotle Guacamole (#3), Subway Cookies (#4), IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast (#5).

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

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    Fleming's Prime Steakhouse Fleming's Au Gratin Potatoes (and Bonefish Grill)

    Menu Description: “Our house specialty with cream, jalapenos and cheddar cheese.”

    These slightly spicy au gratin potatoes are cooked at a low heat several hours in advance of the dinner house’s evening opening. When an order for the signature side comes into the kitchen a generous serving of the potatoes is portioned out, topped with grated sharp cheddar cheese, and baked again at a high temperature until browned. The real trick to this Fleming's potato au gratin recipe is to slice the potatoes very thin—1/16 of an inch to be exact—and the only way to do that is with a slicer, such as a mandoline. The rest of the prep involves making a basic béchamel sauce using cream, and then carefully layering the sauce and sliced potatoes in the baking dish. The potatoes are baked for 2 hours and then chilled in the restaurant, so this can be a great make-ahead dish for entertaining. You can also serve the potatoes immediately by topping them with cheese, cranking up the oven, and heading straight into the second baking step.

    Update 10/17/23: Recently, I set out to snag a sample of the au gratin potatoes from Bonefish Grill to clone it, but discovered that the dish had been taken off the menu. However, the friendly wait staff informed me that the au gratin potatoes at Fleming's and Bonefish Grill are the same recipe, created by the parent company that owns both chains. So, this recipe is a hack for the great side served at each of the restaurants.  

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Outback Steakhouse Spicy Jammin' Meatloaf

    You may never use traditional meatloaf toppings again once you taste how Outback Steakhouse kicks up its ground steak meatloaf entrée. Ketchup and barbecue sauce seem like mundane toppers after you taste these clones of the chain’s amazing Fresno chili jam and creamy peppercorn sauce—one sweet, the other savory—that take your meatloaf to the next level.

    The Fresno chili jam presented the biggest hacking challenge of the two sauces. I had to work through several batches to find the perfect ratio of red bell peppers to Fresno chilies to tone the heat down to an edible level. Also, I was not expecting tomato juice. My first batches left that ingredient out until I returned to Outback, where my helpful server provided valuable intel.

    At the restaurant, this meatloaf is pre-baked and chilled. When an order comes in, a couple of slices are seared in a sauté pan or on a flat grill until browned and hot, then they’re topped with the two warmed sauces and served. You can use the same trick in my Outback Spicy Jammin' Meatloaf recipe below: make the meatloaf in advance of the meal, then just slice what you need and sear it before serving.

    Find copycat recipes for more of your favorite Outback dishes here

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  • Not rated yet
    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)
    Marie Callender's Double Cream Blueberry Pie

    Vanilla custard and whipped cream make up the delicious “double cream” that tops this ultra-popular blueberry pie from the West Coast chain that is most famous for its homestyle pies. Finally, I got the chance to give this great dessert the hack it deserves—from what I've seen, no other "copycat" recipe even comes close.

    For my Marie Callender’s Double Cream Blueberry Pie recipe, it was important that the custard be creamy but not too runny, so in addition to cornstarch, I’ve included just enough gelatin in the mix to stabilize the filling, but not so much that it becomes rubbery. The blueberry filling, made with frozen blueberries, needs only cornstarch to thicken it because there is also apple in the filling which contributes pectin, a natural thickening gel. Just be sure to dice your apple very small before cooking it so that the pieces will soften and work well with the frozen blueberries.

    There’s no need to make the crust from scratch when you can use an unbaked 9-inch pie shell in the frozen food aisle—preferably the one made by Marie Callender’s—but any brand will do.

    Then, to finish your pie, the gelatin steps up again, stabilizing the whipped cream topping so that it holds its shape for as long as it takes to eat the whole pie. Which probably won't be long at all.

    Try more of my Marie Callender's copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 2)
    IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast

    IHOP upped its French toast game in 2022 with the introduction of a new recipe that suggests your French toast is only as good as the bread you start with, and IHOP’s new Thick ‘N Fluffy French Toast starts with thick specialty artisan bread, rather than the more commonly used Texas toast white bread.

    For my IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast recipe, you can use any thick-sliced bread from your bakery, but there are two national brands that work well: Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted Thick-Sliced White Bread and Sara Lee Artisano. Either of those will do, but of the two, Nature’s Own is shaped more like IHOP’s version.

    Adding vanilla and a little cinnamon to the easy batter will set these waffles apart from most others, and in no time, you’ll have 6 beautiful slices of French toast for a total of 3 servings. Dust them with a little powdered sugar, add some butter and maple syrup on the side, and it’s like you just opened a mini IHOP in your house.

    This recipe was my #5 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), Chipotle Guacamole (#3), Subway Cookies (#4).

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

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  • Score: 4.67 (votes: 6)
    Panda Express Chow Mein

    I got lucky on the day I picked up a box of chow mein from this huge Chinese chain because they had just run out. This meant that I could watch from the sidelines as they whipped up a fresh batch in a giant wok over a high flame in the completely visible kitchen, and I was able to take plenty of mental notes. The whole dish took just a few minutes for the enthusiastic chef to prepare, and before I knew it I was out the door with a huge box of hot chow mein ready for hacking. 

    Just like the real Panda Express Chow Mein, the beauty in this re-creation is its simplicity. There are only seven ingredients, and the prep work is low-impact. I used dry chow mein noodles (also called Chinese stir fry noodles) which are easy to find and cheap, and dark soy sauce to get that great caramel color. And if you don’t have a wok for this, a large skillet with sloped sides for tossing will work just fine.

    This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2021. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Qdoba 3-Cheese Queso (#2), 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.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 3)
    Portillo's Chocolate Cake

    I can confirm that the secret recipe for Portillo’s Chocolate Cake is as simple as adding a cup of mayonnaise, a cup of water, and three eggs to a box of chocolate cake mix and baking it in two 9-inch pans at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. The frosting on the cake is the kind you find in the baking aisle in tubs for $2. That's it.

    The recipe I've described would cost around $6 to make at home, and yet you'll pay $75 to have a frozen version of the real Portillo's cake delivered to your house. I know this because I did it. It was the easiest way to confirm my suspicions about the recipe. And sure enough, the cake packaging listed ingredients one would find in just about every box of grocery store cake mix: diglycerides, dicalcium phosphate, and propylene glycol. 

    Perhaps you prefer not to pay $75 for a cake you can make at home for 6 bucks. I get that. Maybe you also want chocolate cake that's not made with boxed cake mix because it’s, well, boxed cake mix. Same here. So, I wondered if I could make a similarly moist mayonnaise chocolate cake just like Portillo's, but this time from scratch, with wholesome ingredients in both the cake and the icing. Thankfully, after baking over a dozen different cakes I finally came up with a recipe that tastes like Portillo's Chocolate Cake but without the hard-to-spell additives found in the real thing.

    And if mayonnaise sounds like an unusual ingredient for a cake, fear not. Practically everything in it benefits your cake batter. The blend of eggs and fat helps keep the cake fluffy and moist, salt and sugar add flavor, as do the vinegar and lemon juice which also assist with the leavening process to produce a tall cake with a light crumb. You could say mayonnaise is the perfect ingredient.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Pei Wei Wei Better Orange Chicken

    This 220-unit downscaled version of P.F. Chang’s China Bistro targets the lunch crowd with a smaller menu that features bento boxes, bowls, and small plates. Obviously, a clone is needed for this one, stat.

    The name “Wei Better Orange Chicken” is a competitive callout to Panda Express's signature orange chicken, which is made with pre-breaded and frozen chicken. Pei Wei claims its orange chicken is prepared each day from scratch with chicken that is never frozen, so we’ll craft our clone the same way. But rather than assemble the dish in a wok over a high-flame fast stove like they do at the restaurant, we’ll prepare the sauce and chicken separately, then toss them with fresh orange wedges just before serving.

    By the way, Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken goes very well with white or brown rice, so don’t forget to make some.

    This recipe was our #4 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce (#1), Olive Garden Lasagna Classico (#2), King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (#3), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).

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

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  • Score: 4.00 (votes: 2)
    KFC Chicken Pot Pie (Improved)

    KFC's Chicken Pot Pie is a classic. It's packed with lots of shredded white and dark meat chicken, potatoes, peas, and carrots; all of it swimming in a delicious creamy gravy and topped with a tantalizing flakey crust. It seems more like homemade food than fast food. And now it can be made at home better than ever before with this improved hack of my original recipe (found here). The crust now has a better flavor (more butter!), and the gravy tastes closer to the original with the addition of more spices.

    You can make my KFC Chicken Pot Pie copycat recipe using ramekins or small oven-safe baking dishes, or get some recyclable aluminum pot pie pans you can find in many supermarkets. Those pans are the perfect size for four single servings, and they make cleanup easy after the feast.

    Find more of my KFC copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 4.50 (votes: 4)
    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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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 11)
    Joe's Stone Crab Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes

    Joseph Weiss was living in New York with his wife and son when his doctor told him he would need a change of climate to help his asthma. He journeyed to Miami, Florida in 1913 and discovered he was able to breathe again. He quickly moved his family down South and opened his first restaurant, a little lunch counter. 

    Joe's restaurant business exploded in 1921 when he discovered how to cook and serve the stone crabs caught off the coast. Joe boiled the meaty claws and served them chilled with a secret mustard dipping sauce. Today only one pincer is removed from each stone crab, then the crab is tossed back into the ocean where it will regenerate the missing claw in about 2 years. The stone crabs, in addition to several other signature items, made Joe's a Miami hotspot, and these days Joe's restaurants can be found in Chicago and Las Vegas. 

    Here is my take on Joe's amazing giant crab cakes, which are made from lump crab meat. You can use my Joe's Stone Crab jumbo lump crab cakes recipe below and serve as them an appetizer or entrée like they do at the restaurant. Of course, you can't clone a Joe's crab dish without cloning the secret mustard sauce, so that recipe is here too.

    Try more of my clone recipes of other popular dishes from Joe's Stone Crab here.

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 4.91 (votes: 11)
    HoneyBaked Ham Glaze

    By sneaking around to the back of a HoneyBaked Ham store, I witnessed the glazing process through an open door. The hams are delivered to each of the 300 HoneyBaked outlets already smoked, but without the glaze. It is only when the ham gets to your local HoneyBaked store that a special machine thin-slices the tender meat in a spiral fashion around the bone. Then, one at a time, each ham is then coated with the glaze—a blend that is similar to what might be used to make pumpkin pie. This sweet coating is then caramelized with a blowtorch by hand until the glaze bubbles and melts, turning golden brown. If needed, more of the coating is added to the HoneyBaked Glazed Ham, and the blowtorch is fired up until the glaze is just right. It's this careful process that turns the same size ham that costs 20 dollars in a supermarket into one that customers gladly shell out 3 to 4 times as much to share during the holiday season.

    For my HoneyBaked Ham glaze copycat recipe, we will re-create the glaze that you can apply to a smoked/cooked bone-in ham of your choice. Look for a ham that is pre-sliced. Otherwise, you'll have to slice it yourself with a sharp knife, then the glaze will be applied. To get the coating just right, you must use a blowtorch. Get the kind that is used for crème brûlée from almost any kitchen supply store. They're usually pretty cheap. And don't worry—I didn't leave out an ingredient. No honey is necessary to re-create this flavorful glaze.

    Now, what's for dessert?

    Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Ruth's Chris Steak House Potatoes Au Gratin

    Menu Description: "In cream sauce, topped with melted sharp cheddar."

    There are many ways to order potatoes from the Ruth's Chris menu including steak fries, julienne fries, shoestring fries, cottage fries, Lyonnaise, baked and au gratin.

    Here's a traditional, classic recipe for the delicious side dish inspired by the Ruth's Chris creation. You may use less of the cream and milk mixture in your version depending on the size baking dish you use and the size of your potatoes. Stop adding the creamy mixture in your version when it is level with the sliced potatoes in the baking dish. Be sure to use a casserole dish that has a lid for the first stage of baking.

    Try my Ruth's Chris Au Gratin Potatoes recipe below, and click here for more of my copycat recipes from Ruth's Chris Steak House.

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur. 

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 9)
    Ruth's Chris Steak House Creamed Spinach

    "Ruth's Chris Steak House" is such a difficult name to spit out that a restaurant critic suggested it be used as a sobriety test. Surely anyone who could say the name three times fast couldn't possibly be intoxicated. But the hard-to-say name has worked well for the steakhouse chain—it's memorable. The name came from the first restaurant that Ruth purchased in 1965 called Chris Steak House. When she opened a second restaurant with that same name, the previous owner, Chris Matulich, tried to sue her. She won the case, but to avoid future lawsuits, she put her name in front of the original and it became the tongue twister we know today.

    The delicious creamed spinach served at this famous steakhouse inspired this recipe that has just a hint of cayenne pepper in it for that Louisiana zing. My Ruth's Chris creamed spinach recipe requires a package of frozen spinach to make it convenient, but you can use the same amount of fresh spinach if you prefer.

    Now that you've chosen the veggies, finish off the meal with my copycat recipes for Ruth's Chris Petite Filet and Au Gratin Potatoes.

    Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Score: 4.94 (votes: 35)
    Auntie Anne's Pretzels

    The first Auntie Anne's pretzel store opened in 1988 in the heart of pretzel country—a Pennsylvanian Amish farmers' market. Over 500 stores later, Auntie Anne's is one of the most requested secret clone recipes around, especially on the internet. 

    Many of the copycat Auntie Anne's soft pretzel recipes passed around the Web require bread flour, and some use honey as a sweetener. But by studying the Auntie Anne's home pretzel-making kit in my secret underground laboratory, I've created a better Auntie Anne's copycat recipe with a superior way to re-create the delicious mall treats at home. For the best quality dough, you just need all-purpose flour. And powdered sugar works great to perfectly sweeten the dough. Now you just have to decide if you want to make the more traditional salted pretzels, or the sweet cinnamon sugar-coated kind. Decisions, decisions.

    Find more of my copycat recipes for famous muffins, bagels, and rolls here

    Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

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  • Not rated yet
    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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  • 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: 1)
    Red Lobster Walt's Favorite Shrimp

    Many identify Red Lobster as the restaurant that serves free cheesy Cheddar Bay Biscuits with every meal, but the chain has another claim to fame as the first chain to make popcorn shrimp a thing.

    Introduced in 1974, Walt’s Favorite Shrimp is butterflied, breaded, and lightly fried, making the crustaceans a simple-to-eat finger food. But there’s more to my Red Lobster Walt’s Favorite Shrimp copycat recipe than simply breading and frying a pound of large shrimp. First, we’ll need to add flavor to the shrimp with a brine. And instead of using a salt brine, I found that a brine of concentrated chicken bouillon worked wonders for flavoring the shrimp all the way through.

    After brining the shrimp give them three coats of flour and one with breadcrumbs, then it takes just a minute or so until they’re golden brown and crispy, and ready to serve with a side of cocktail sauce.

    Find more of my Red Lobster 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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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 4)
    Subway Cookies

    The chewy, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies sold at Subway are baked daily at the sandwich shop with frozen dough pucks provided by Otis Spunkmeyer. So, I guess you could say that this copycat recipe for several of Subway’s most popular cookies is also a clone of several of Otis Spunkmeyer’s most popular cookies.

    Perhaps the biggest secret revealed here is the butter/oil blend. Most cookie recipes call for just softened butter as the fat component, but that can add too much butter flavor. According to the ingredients list for these cookies, they contain a blend of oil and butter, which worked best as a 2-to-1 ratio of butter to oil after baking through a number of test batches. This fat blend helped improve the texture with crispier edges and a chewier middle, and the butter flavor was perfectly muted. Also, just one egg is added here—most cookie recipes like this add two—to make the cookies less cakey.

    Below you'll find my Subway cookies copycat recipes for Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and White Chip Macadamia Nut. I'll show you how to form the dough into pucks that can be frozen and either baked right away or saved for several weeks so that you can serve a batch of freshly baked cookies in just 20 minutes, with minimal effort, whenever you like.

    This recipe was my #4 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), Chipotle Guacamole (#3), IHOP Thick 'N Fluffy French Toast (#5).

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

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 5)
    Chipotle Pollo Asado

    In 2022, for the first time in its 29-year history, Chipotle debuted a new style of grilled chicken, and it became an instant hit. At least it was at the Chipotle near me, where the Pollo Asado was ordered more than any other protein, according to servers there. But the new flavor is for a limited-time-only, and when it’s gone, my exclusive Chipotle Pollo Asado recipe may be the only way to satisfy your deep desire.

    It appears that Chipotle’s new chicken is marinated in a vacuum meat tumbler similar to the way the Mexican chicken chain El Pollo Loco does it. I sure wish I had one of those awesome tumblers because they speed up and improve the marinating process, producing moist chicken packed with flavor all the way through. But those tumblers are expensive and bulky, and I have absolutely zero space left in my kitchen to store one. So, an overnight marinade, along with a bit of patience, must suffice. 

    The next day, grill your marinated chicken, chop it up, toss it with the secret citrusy sauce hacked here, add some fresh cilantro and lime juice, then use it as you see fit on burritos, tacos, salads, and bowls.

    Try my Chipotle Pollo Asado recipe below and find more of my Chipotle recipes here

    This recipe was our #2 most popular in 2022. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Traditional Meatballs (#1), Wendy's Seasoned Potatoes (#3), Cheesecake Factory Spicy Cashew Chicken (#4), McDonald's Chicken McNuggets (#5).

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

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  • Not rated yet
    Carrabba's Cannoli Cake for Two

    Cannoli lovers flip out when they taste this three-deck homemade vanilla cake, built with delicious layers of creamy ricotta cheese cannoli filling. Serve up a giant slice on a plate drizzled with chocolate sauce, and sprinkle it with chopped pistachios for the ultimate cannoli/cake mash-up.

    The ricotta filling here comes from my original Carrabba’s Cannoli recipe. It's a recipe that could come in handy if you’re looking to make the optional garnish of a mini cannoli for the top of the cake. The only difference will be that you’re making small cannoli, so if you opt for this extra step, you’ll need to use mini cannoli tubes to make the shells or buy pre-made mini cannoli shells.

    The vanilla cake recipe here is my original creation, and it will make enough batter to fill 3 (9-inch) pans, which are best cooked at the same time. If you don’t have that many pans, use what you have and cook the cakes in stages, cooling the pan(s) between batches.

    When shopping for ricotta, you want smooth whole milk ricotta. If your ricotta is too grainy, don't worry. You can smooth out the filling to make it more like the real thing by pureeing it in a food processor or blender until it's smooth.

    Try my exclusive Carrabba's Cannoli Cake for Two recipe below, and find more of my Carrabba's copycat recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    P.F. Chang's Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts

    Use my recipe for P.F. Chang’s incredible Kung Pao sauce and toss it with fried Brussels sprouts, peanuts, and Thai chilies and you get one of this Chinese bistro’s most popular new starters. And now, with this exclusive Top Secret Recipe, you'll have possibly one of your new favorite ways to serve Brussels sprouts. 

    You’ll get a half cup of the secret kung pao sauce—that will be enough to sauce 1 pound of Brussels sprouts in 2 separate batches.

    Oven baking, like other "hackers" recommend, will not give you the crispy texture of the original. These must be deep-fried. Even though you’ll be frying 8 ounces of Brussels sprouts at a time, you’ll want a wide-mouthed pan like a large saucepot, Dutch oven, or a deep fryer so that you don’t crowd the Brussels sprouts. Also, they will spatter for about 30 seconds when they first hit the oil, so a lid or a spatter guard will definitely come in handy.

    Once the oil is hot and the sauce is made, it takes just 5 minutes to get this delish dish on your table. Try my P.F. Chang's Kung Pao Brussels Sprouts copycat recipe below and find more P.F. Chang's recipes here.

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  • Score: 5.00 (votes: 1)
    Chipotle Carne Asada

    Chipotle’s popular limited offering is a good example of how straightforward and flavorful carne asada can be. It’s not overly mysterious since Chipotle is transparent about the ingredients used for the restaurant's entire menu—53 ingredients in all—but identifying those is only the beginning of the process. There was still plenty of work to do in establishing ratios and settling on an ideal preparation method.

    Carne asada is almost always made with flank steak or skirt steak. A server at Chipotle told me they use skirt steak, which is surprising since that is the tougher of the two cuts. Perhaps she was wrong about that? Flank steak also has a better flavor than skirt steak, so I'm recommending flank here. Just be sure not to marinate it for more than 2 days or the acid in the marinade may toughen your steak and you certainly don't want that.

    After you grill it, slice the meat across the grain and use it in burritos, tacos, bowls, or as a Southwest-style salad topper.

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

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

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  • Not rated yet
    Ferrara Butterfinger

    Break open a milk chocolate-coated Butterfinger candy bar and you’ll see flakey layers of candy inside, and it may not seem possible to duplicate that mysterious peanuty center at home without some sort of special equipment. But considering that candy bars as old as this usually start as a hand-made recipe, I figured there must be a way to craft a Butterfinger clone in your own kitchen from scratch.

    Ownership of Butterfinger has changed hands a few times since Otto Schnering invented it in 1923 for his Illinois candy company, Curtiss. Standard Brands bought Curtiss in 1964, and then Nabisco merged with Standard Brands in 1981. Nestle purchased Butterfinger from Nabisco in 1990, then later sold it to Italian candy company Ferrara in 2018. Ferrara claims to have “improved” the formula in 2019 by removing preservatives, adding more cocoa to the chocolate, using better peanuts, plus a few other tweaks. And this is where the controversy starts. Posts on Butterfinger’s social media pages complain that the new Ferrara formula is not as good as the Nestle version, that it leaves a bad aftertaste, and that they should immediately bring back the old recipe.

    The new label has fewer ingredients than the old label, but one omission that stood out was the removal of corn flakes. Corn flakes had been used in the Butterfinger recipe since the ‘50s, and that’s the Butterfinger most of us grew up on. Is a lack of corn flakes the reason why some Butterfinger fans don’t like the new recipe? I’m not sure if that’s all there is to it, but for this hack, I decided to go old-school and put the corn flakes back in the bar. The corn flakes need to be crushed before adding them to the candy, and you can easily do that by putting them in a small plastic bag and whacking on it with a rolling pin.

    For the flakiness of the candy, we’ll use a laminating technique that creates layers in the bar, similar to laminating dough. But unlike dough where you can take your time, you’ll have to work quickly here to make as many layers as possible before it cools, which will be just a couple of minutes. Peanut butter is first spread over the candy, then it’s folded with a silicone spatula, flattened, and folded again, and again. When the candy begins to harden, it’s trimmed into bars, cooled, and dipped into milk chocolate.

    Try my Butterfinger copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite candy recipes 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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