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Chick-fil-A becomes the first fast food chain to feature pimento cheese—a traditional Southern spread made with cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, and pimentos—on a sandwich. The chain’s Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich features a regular or spicy crispy chicken breast fillet­ stacked on sliced jalapeños, then drizzled with honey and topped with a healthy portion of their exclusive pimento cheese formula.

For the chicken fillet, I was able to use my previous Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich copycat recipe, but the chain’s excellent pimento cheese spread is a new creation that needed to be hacked from scratch. Rinsing the real spread through a strainer revealed some hidden secrets, including tiny bits of green pepper, which I copied by adding a small amount of minced jalapeño.

The chicken requires four hours to brine, and that’s a good time to make the pimento cheese so it can rest for a bit to improve its color and flavor. The recipe included here is for the original chicken fillet, but if you prefer the kicked-up spicy version of the sandwich, I’ve got the tweak for that variation down in the Tidbits.

Try my Chick-fil-A Honey Pepper Pimento Chicken Sandwich copycat recipe below, and find more of my Chick-fil-A copycat recipes here.

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 copycat 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.

Menu Description: “Tender pieces of chicken. Snow peas, shiitake mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a Thai coconut-curry sauce with cashews and pineapple. Served with white rice.”

Sautéed white meat chicken comes swimming in the chain’s magical coconut-lime curry sauce, served alongside a bed of rice, with stir-fried vegetables, and topped with pineapple relish, cashews, and toasted coconut. The Cheesecake Factory captures great Thai flavors in this striking entrée from the restaurant chain’s specialty menu selection. Now, you can use my Cheesecake Factory Thai-Coconut Lime Chicken copycat recipe that I’ve sleuthed out down to every delicious detail to re-create the dish at home.

The star of the show is the mouthwatering coconut-lime curry sauce that brings together the traditional Thai combination of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy flavors. The sauce brings in sour from lime and tamarind, sweet from honey, salt from fish sauce, and spicy heat from red pepper flakes. And if the sauce is cooked minimally after the parsley is added, the leafy herb will stay bright green for a beautiful and tasty dish that perfectly mirrors the original Cheesecake Factory Thai Coconut-Lime Chicken.

Check out more of my copycat Cheesecake Factory recipes here.

Sweetened cream cheese and spiced plum jam are nestled in the center of this flakey seasonal pastry from the famous coffeehouse chain, and you can make a home copy of Starbucks Sugar Plum Danish using these delicious secrets.   

As with croissants, the dough is rolled and folded several times with a block of butter in the middle to create dozens of flakey layers. I found that this yeast dough tastes better and is easier to work with if the process is spread out over three days, but you can complete a perfectly fine batch of these in just one day if you want to bang it out.

The dough made here will fit perfectly into the six cups of a jumbo-size muffin pan to make Danishes that are not as wide and a bit taller than the real ones, but they’ll still taste the same. Get plum jam for the filling, add a few spices to it for seasonal flair, and spoon it over the sweetened cheese. After an hour of proofing, bake your Danishes in a hot oven until they’re golden brown.

Try my Starbucks Sugar Plum Cheese Danish copycat recipe and try more of my Starbucks recipes here. 

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.

Source: Hack That Dish by Todd Wilbur.

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.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unleashed by Todd Wilbur.

It’s about time I hacked one of Starbucks all-time bestselling baked snacks. For my recipe, I settled on a blend of both baking powder and baking soda for a good crumb and dark crust that perfectly resembles the original. And I decided it best to go big on the dark brown sugar, not only for flavor but also because the extra molasses in the darker brown sugar triggers a helpful leavening boost from the baking soda. It’s also important to know that an accurate clone must have both walnuts and pecans in the mix, because that’s what’s really in it, according to the official Starbucks website ingredients info. All other copycats I saw got it wrong when it came to the nut blend, so if you want a true knock-off, try my Starbucks Banana Bread copycat recipe below.

I've cloned a ton of drinks and treats from Starbucks. See if I hacked your favorite here.      

Panera Bread’s product information pages refer to a long proofing time when describing the sour characteristic of the chain’s phenomenal bagels, but there is no mention of how long. After several weeks of trying different approaches to proofing these cinnamon bit–filled bagels, I decided the best solution was to form the bagels and proof them overnight in the cold. The next day the bagels came out of the refrigerator not much bigger, but after sitting for several hours at room temperature they more than doubled in size and had a light sourdough flavor like the original Panera Bread bagels.

The cinnamon drops that go into the bagel were also tricky. I needed to come up with a way to make bits of cinnamon/sugar that were crunchy, but not so hard as to break a tooth. I found the best way was to make oven-cooked cinnamon candy bound with cornstarch and milk and tenderized with oil. This sugar mixture is baked in a loaf pan until no longer bubbling, then cooled and shattered into tiny pieces. When the candy is broken up, much of it gets pulverized into dust, which you separate from the crumbs with a sieve. The crumbs are the cinnamon drops used in the bagel, and the cinnamon/sugar powder is used to dust the tops of the bagels just before baking.

I also found that kettling (boiling the bagels) with just a tablespoon of sugar in the water produced a browner bagel than kettling with no sugar, so that’s the technique I’m sharing here in my Panera Bread Cinnamon Crunch Bagel copycat recipe. Some techniques call for malt in the water, but sugar works just fine and makes the perfectly shiny, blistered crust you see in the photo.

Panera Bread has amazing soups too! See if I hacked your favorite here. 

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

Thanks to Panera Bread's policy of completely transparent ingredients, I discovered a surprising ingredient or two (wow, cabbage!), and was able to craft the best Panera Bread Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup copycat recipe you’ll find.

Click here for more of my Panera Bread copycat recipes. 

Anyone who loves Olive Garden is probably also a big fan of the bottomless basket of warm, garlicky breadsticks served before each meal at the huge Italian casual chain. My guess is that the breadsticks are proofed, and then sent to each restaurant where they are baked until golden brown, brushed with butter and sprinkled with garlic salt. Getting the bread just right for a great Olive Garden breadstick hack was tricky—I tried several different amounts of yeast in all-purpose flour, but then settled on bread flour to give these breadsticks the same chewy bite as the originals. The two-stage rising process is also a crucial step in this much requested Olive Garden breadstick copycat recipe.

Complete the bottomless experience with my Olive Garden Italian salad dressing recipe.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Oven-baked smoked mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan and Romano cheese. Served with Tuscan bread."

Olive Garden's take on the Italian melted cheese dip includes smoked mozzarella combined with grated Parmesan, Romano, and provolone cheese, and lots of thyme. When you make my Olive Garden Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta copycat recipe below, be sure to slice the waxy rind off the smoked mozzarella before you grate it. That part does not taste good. After slowly melting the mozzarella, Parmesan, and Romano in a small saucepan with half-and-half, pour the creamy mixture into a shallow dish, top it with a slice of provolone, and pop it under the broiler until light brown. Serve your hot fondue with baguette slices, bagel chips, or crackers.

Find more mouthwatering copycat recipes from Olive Garden here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.
 

Menu Description: "Citrus cake soaked in a sweet cream, topped with lemon mousse and finished off with our fresh Italian whipped cream and caramel."

When creating this delicious dessert, chefs at Romano's must have been thinking about Tres Leches Cake that is popular throughout Latin America. The traditional Mexican recipe describes a dense vanilla cake soaked with three types of milk: whole milk, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk. This creates a very moist and rich dessert that is an excellent finish to pretty much any meal. Romano's twist on the traditional favorite is the addition of citrus juices to the cake, a creamier soaking liquid, and a tangy lemon topping. 

I first tried re-creating the cake with boxed mixes, but they all produce cakes that are much too light and moist, and inevitably turn to mush when soaked in the sweet liquid. The final solution is a scratch cake recipe yielding denser, yet still moist citrus cake, that holds up to the eventual drenching. You will want to eat this dessert within a day or two of the soaking, or it may start to fall apart. Store any leftovers in the fridge.

Try my Romano's Lemon Passion Cake recipe below, and check out my popular recipe for Romano's Macaroni Grill Penne Rustica here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Each holiday season, Starbucks brings out one of its most beloved desserts: a soft triangle of white chocolate and cranberry cake covered with delicious creamy lemon frosting and dried cranberries. But when the holidays are over, the Bliss Bars go back into hiding until next season. That's when we bust out our Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bar copycat recipe.

The cake is flavored with bits of crystallized ginger that you can find in most markets near the herbs and spices. Be sure to finely mince the chunks of ginger before adding them, since ginger has a strong flavor, and you don't want anyone biting into a whole chunk. For the white chocolate, one 4-ounce bar of Ghirardelli white chocolate will give you the perfect amount of chunks after you chop it up. If you can't find that brand, any brand of white chocolate will do, or you can use 4 ounces of white chocolate chips. My cranberry bliss bar recipe below will make a total of 16 cake bars, at a fraction of the cost of the original.

For a demonstration of this classic clone recipe, check out this video.

Check out my other copycat recipes for more Starbucks favorites here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Fire-roasted chicken breast topped with mushrooms, prosciutto and our Florio Marsala wine sauce."

To create my Carrabba's Chicken Marsala recipe, I ordered the dish to go, with the sauce on the side, so that I could separately analyze each component. After some trial and error in the underground lab, I found that re-creating the secret sauce from scratch is easy enough with a couple small cans of sliced mushrooms, a bit of prosciutto, some Marsala wine, shallots, garlic and a few other good things. 

Cooking the chicken requires a very hot grill. The restaurant chain grills chicken breasts over a blazing real wood fire, so crank your grill up high enough to get the flames nipping at your cluckers (not a euphemism). If your grill has a lid, keep it open, so you can watch for nasty flare-ups.

Click here for more of your favorite dishes from Carrabba's.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

The real thing found in the deli section of your market is used on crackers, as a dip for raw vegetables, or even as a spread on sandwiches, burgers, and wraps. Now I've come up with an easy way to duplicate Rondele using a 12-ounce tub of whipped cream cheese—so you'll happily get three times the amount of the 4-ounce original! Just be sure when mixing your version that you don't over mix, or you will destroy the fluffiness of the whipped cheese. The Italian seasoning included here is a dried herb blend (usually marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano, and basil) found near the other bottled herbs and spices in your market. I used McCormick brand for this Rondele garlic & herbs cheese spread clone recipe, but any brand should work fine. Since the herbs are dried, the flavor is more subtle than it would be with fresh herbs, even after the dried bits soak up moisture from the cheese. And that's just want we want for a good clone.

Find more of your favorite famous dip recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

In the 1970's, food conglomerate General Mills expanded its growing restaurant business. A research team was organized to study the market, and to conduct interviews with potential customers on what they want in a restaurant. Seven years later, in 1982, the first Olive Garden restaurant opened its doors in Orlando, Florida. Today it is the number one Italian restaurant chain in the country with over 470 stores.

One of the all-time favorites at Olive Garden is the Italian salad dressing served on the bottomless house salad that comes with every meal. The dressing was so popular that the chain sells the dressing by the bottle "to go." You won't need to buy a bottle, though. With my Olive Garden Italian salad dressing copycat recipe, you can make your own version that tastes just like the original, and it's way cheaper.

The secret to thickening this dressing is to use dry pectin, a natural ingredient often used to thicken jams and jellies. Pectin can be found in most stores in the aisle with baking and cooking supplies, or near the canning items.

Complete the experience with bottomless Olive Garden Breadsticks. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "A pound of steak, chicken or combination on a sizzling skillet. Peppers available w/Fajitas upon request."

Chili's is perhaps the restaurant most responsible for introducing the famous finger food known as fajitas to the mass market. Company CEO Norman Brinker discovered the dish at a small restaurant on a visit to San Antonio, Texas. When Chili's put the item on its menu in the early eighties, sales immediately jumped a whopping 25 percent. One company spokesperson told Spirit magazine, "I remember walking into one of the restaurants after we added them to the menu, and all I could see were whisps of steam coming up from the tables. That revolutionized Chili's."

Today, Chili's serves more than 2 million pounds of fajitas a year. If all the flour tortillas served with those fajitas were laid end-to-end, they'd stretch from New York to New Zealand.

Today just about every American knows what fajitas are—the Southwestern-style grilled chicken, beef, or seafood, served sizzling on a cast iron skillet. And everyone has their own method of arranging the meat and onions and peppers in a soft tortilla with gobs of pico de gallo, cheese, guacamole, lettuce, sour cream, and salsa. The tough part is trying to roll the thing up and take a bite ever so gracefully without squeezing half of the filling out the backside of the tortilla. My Chili's Fajitas copycat recipe is guaranteed to be as delicious and messy as the original.

Try more awesome Chili's copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 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.

Order an entree from America's largest seafood restaurant chain and you'll get a basket of some of the planet's tastiest garlic-cheese biscuits served up on the side. For many years, the Cheddar Bay Biscuits recipe has been the most-searched-for clone recipe on the Internet, according to Red Lobster. As a result, several versions are floating around, including one that was at one time printed right on the box of Bisquick baking mix.

The problem with making biscuits using Bisquick is that if you follow the directions from the box you don't end up with a very fluffy or flakey finished product, since most of the fat in the recipe comes from the shortening that's included in the mix. On its own, room temperature shortening does a poor job creating the light, airy texture you want from good biscuits, and it contributes little in the way of flavor. So, we'll invite some cold butter along on the trip -- with grated Cheddar cheese and a little garlic powder. Now you'll be well on your way to delicious Cheddar Bay. Wherever that is.

Complete the Red Lobster experience and make favorite entrées and side dishes here.

Source: "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2" by Todd Wilbur.

In the early 90's Boston Chicken was rockin' it. The home meal replacement chain's stock was soaring and the lines were filled with hungry customers waiting to sink their teeth into a serving of the chain's delicious rotisserie chicken. The chain was so successful with chicken, the company quickly decided it was time to introduce other entrée selections, the first of which was a delicious barbecue sauce-covered ground sirloin meatloaf. 

Offering the other entrées presented the company with a dilemma: what to do about the name. The bigwigs decided it was time to change the name to Boston Market, to reflect a wider menu. That meant replacing signs on hundreds of units and retooling the marketing campaigns. That name change, plus rapid expansion of the chain and growth of other similar home-style meal concepts, sent the company into a tailspin. By 1988, Boston Market's goose was cooked, and the company filed for bankruptcy. Soon McDonald's stepped in to purchase the company, with the idea of closing many of the stores for good, and slapping Golden Arches on the rest. But that plan was scrapped when, after selling many of the under-performing Boston Markets, the chain began to fly once again.  Within a year of the acquisition Boston Market was profitable, and those meals with the home-cooked taste are still being served at over 700 Boston Market restaurants across the country.

Use my Boston Market Meatloaf copycat recipe below to copy the flavor of that first non-chicken dish, a delicious barbecue sauce-covered ground sirloin meatloaf. You might also like to try my Boston Market side-dish recipes here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

I made several discoveries on episode 2 of my CMT Show "Top Secret Recipe" that helped me improve significantly on the recipe for my first clone of Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls that I first hacked many years ago in my book "More Top Secret Recipes". After interviewing the creator of the Cinnabon roll, Jerilyn Brusseau (aka "Cinnamom"), at her home in Seattle and visiting Cinnabon headquarters in Atlanta, I was able to sleuth out some important clues that make this the closest Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll copycat recipe you'll find. I learned about the unique gooey properties of a specific cinnamon found in Indonesia called Korintje cinnamon, which Cinnabon calls "Makara") and how to give the rolls their signature golden color (buttermilk and baking soda). I also discovered that the dough must rise in your refrigerator for at least 5 hours, and that adding some xanthan gum to the filling will keep the filling from leaking down into the pan as the rolls bake.

Cinnabon master chefs allowed me to step into the development kitchen at Cinnabon headquarters for an up-close demonstration of the rolling and slicing techniques, so the instructions I have laid out for here come straight from the inside, and will give you beautiful rolls that look and taste just like those you get at the mall. In fact, if you follow these instructions carefully, being sure to weigh the ingredients rather than measuring by volume, everyone will be shocked that the delicious finished product came out of your very own kitchen. 

Try my recipe for Cinnabon CinnaStix here. 

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

In the 50s and 60s, Steve Henson and his wife, Gayle, shared their 120-acre Hidden Valley Ranch with University of California at Santa Barbara students and other festive partiers for rousing weekend shindigs. The dozens of guests were served steak dinners and delicious salads topped with Steve's special blend of herbs, spices, mayonnaise, and buttermilk. As word got out about the fabulous dressing, more guests were showing up at the ranch and walking home with complimentary take-home jars filled with the stuff. 

Eventually, Steve figured he could make a little extra cash by packaging the dressing as a dry mix and selling it through the mail. At first, he was filling envelopes himself, but eventually, Steve had to hire twelve more people to help with the packaging. Soon Steve had a multi-million dollar business with a product he was giving away for free. 

Reverse-engineering Steve's special blend of herbs, spices, mayonnaise, and buttermilk was fairly simple. I could guess all the ingredients by taste. From there, I played around with amounts until I came up with the perfect Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing copycat recipe. Soon, you'll be throwing fabulous parties and "wow"-ing your friends with take-home jars of amazing Ranch dressing.

Find all of your favorite salad dressing copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Chicken pot pie, reformulated as soup, is now a popular dish on several chain menus, but Jason’s Deli has a standout recipe. It includes everything you’d expect in a chicken pot pie, including carrots, peas, celery, onion, and potatoes in a flavorful sauce. The crust, which is made from a square of frozen puff pastry, looks beautiful, tastes great, and is quick and easy to prepare.

For my Jason’s Deli Chicken Pot Pie Soup copycat recipe, I was able to get a server to recite the ingredients list to me from her screen at checkout, so this hack should come closer than any other copycat out there. I found that a combination of flour and cornstarch worked great for thickening the soup, and a couple of teaspoons of chicken Better Than Bouillon perfected the flavor.

Use serving bowls that are at least 5 inches across so the puff pastry fits nicely on top of the soup. (4x4-inch pastries measure 5 inches from corner to corner). If you don’t have bowls this big, just be sure to make your puff pastry crusts a bit smaller.

Find more amazing copycat soup recipes here.

James Dunn and Edward Parsons combined parts of their surnames to name the restaurant they opened at the original Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles, California, in 1938. The eatery served a variety of diner foods, including sandwiches, burgers, and pies, but it’s the huge buttery pancakes that made the restaurant so iconic. Many who have tried these say they’re the best pancakes they’ve ever tasted. And yet, nobody has cracked the secret of the 88-year-old recipe. Until now.

There are enough rumors about the recipe to drive a food hacker crazy. Some suggest the batter takes hours to make, while others say the dry ingredients are pre-mixed in secret and cooks simply add buttermilk. Some claims suggest the recipe requires a special flour, while others say it’s just all-purpose flour. When I asked a server about the recipe, she claimed she couldn’t offer any information, or she would get fired and I would go to jail. Yes, she really said that.

But according to my tests with several batches, the recipe requires two major tweaks to an ordinary pancake recipe to make these “legendary.” For my Du-Par’s Legendary Buttermilk Hotcakes copycat recipe, I increased the number of eggs typically used in pancake batter to re-create the custardy texture of the original. The second big secret is butter. The most notable step that makes Du-Par’s pancakes special is the clarified butter generously ladled over the top before serving.

The steps are simple, the recipe is easy, and the pancakes are incredible. This is one you need to try.  

Find more cool breakfast copycat recipes here.

This new pasta dish introduced as a limited-time entrée at the 200-unit chain is so popular that it's still at the top of the "pasta" section on the menu as I post this. Just one taste makes it clear why this pasta is in such high demand: it’s fantastic, with big chunks of fork-tender short rib tossed with umpteen slices of toasted garlic in a creamy tomato sauce. And if this tasty dish eventually disappears from the menu, now you have a blueprint to re-create a perfect version at home.

My home clone of California Pizza Kitchen Braised Short Rib Ragu begins by braising short ribs until they fall off the bone. Then, you’ll combine the tender chunks of beef with thinly sliced garlic and an easy-to-make tomato sauce that includes some of the flavorful short rib braising liquid.

To finish your servings, you'll add pappardelle pasta to the pan and toss until coated. Sprinkle each of the four plates with freshly minced Italian parsley, and prepared to receive your well-deserved “wows.” 

I've cloned a ton of dishes from California Pizza Kitchen. See if I hacked your favorites here.

After hacking the recipes for Costco’s other popular muffins, including the Blueberry Muffins, Almond Poppyseed Muffins, and Lemon Raspberry Muffins, I would be remiss not to satisfy my fellow chocoholics by cracking the formula for the big box chain’s delicious Triple Chocolate Muffins. And I decided that these need to be really big. Much to the chagrin of many customers, Costco recently reduced the size of all their muffins, so for this recipe, these muffins have been re-created in their former “jumbo” size.

My Costco Triple Chocolate Muffins copycat recipe is simple, requiring basic ingredients, including chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, and Dutch-process cocoa (the dark one), for a rich, dark chocolate flavor. You’ll need a jumbo muffin pan to make these like the big muffins Costco used to sell, but you can also use a standard muffin pan to make smaller muffins if that’s all you’ve got.

Find more favorite famous bread recipes here. 

The nautical-themed store that Joe Columbe opened in Pasadena, California, in 1967, took its name from the well-known Los Angeles bar, Trader Vic’s. And if you look closely around the store, there’s a good chance you’ll spot the plastic lobster they hide there every day.

The chain has gained popularity for its branded products, which began with granola in 1972. One of its most popular items is this hot dip, a seasonal product available after the summer Hatch chile season. If you want to knockoff this delicious dip today, and Hatch chilies aren’t available where you are, don’t worry. Anaheim peppers are similar and can be found year-round. 

For my Trader Joe’s Roasted Hatch Chile and Jalapeño Dip copycat recipe, you’ll roast some garlic and peppers, then combine them with cream cheese, sour cream, shredded cheddar, and spices. Heat it in your oven for 15 minutes, then bust out the chips or crackers for a big serving of the popular dip, which is more than twice the size of the original.

Find more of your favorite dip copycat recipes here.

Chipotle’s new sauce, inspired by a traditional Argentinian recipe, is made to enhance several of the chain’s dishes, especially the carne asada. The Mexican restaurant modifies the classic sauce, which typically includes parsley, garlic, oil, vinegar, oregano, peppers, and salt. Instead of parsley, Chipotle uses cilantro and adds lemon juice, lime juice, and smoked paprika to the mix.

My Chipotle’s Red Chimichurri Sauce copycat recipe is simple. After roasting the minced garlic, mix it with all the other ingredients in a small bowl... and wait. Yes, patience is a virtue when it comes to this sauce. Let your chimichurri sit for at least an hour, and you'll be rewarded with a flavorful sauce that elevates dishes like burrito bowls, grilled salmon, chicken, steak, and many other dishes that need a boost of great flavor.

Find more of my Chipotle copycat recipes here.

The best part of a cinnamon roll is the center, so Wendy’s and Cinnabon have teamed up to create a monkey bread-style cinnamon pastry where each bite is like eating the gooey center of the roll. I thought this would be a great hack for home cooks wanting a cool cinnamon roll twist that uses about half the ingredients of a typical cinnamon roll recipe.

My Wendy’s Cinnabon Pull-Apart copycat recipe starts similarly to a traditional cinnamon roll recipe, but for this version, you’ll slice the dough into small strips, fold them into mini cinnamon rolls, and tuck them into the cups of a jumbo muffin pan. After baking, each pull-apart is generously coated with the creamy cream cheese icing I’ve also replicated here for you.

I tweaked my earlier hack of Cinnabon Rolls to improve flavor and streamlined the process for quicker preparation. Unlike the restaurant version, these are big—this copycat hack is about twice the size of the original Wendy’s pastry. But so far, nobody has complained about the heftier serving.

Try my Wendy's Cinnabon Pull-Apart copycat recipe below, and find more of my Wendy's copycat recipes here.

Fans of the Chili Cheese Burrito, AKA Chilito, were thrilled when the chain brought back the discontinued item for a limited time in late summer 2025. Devoted Chilito lovers, who have mourned the loss of their favorite Taco Bell treat for nearly 30 years, experienced an immediate flavor flashback after taking a bite of the soft flour tortilla filled with chili and cheese. However, not everyone was pleased with the reboot.

While many customers were happy to see the product return, most noticed that shrinkflation was clearly evident in this particular item. And I get it. I ordered six burritos at my local Taco Bell, and they were all underfilled, looking nothing like the fully stuffed Chili Cheese Burrito on the Taco Bell website, which apparently was made before tariffs and rising beef prices reduced the fill volume. The burritos are on a value menu, but I was still surprised to find that my $4 burritos contained just two tablespoons of chili!

For my Taco Bell Chili Cheese Burrito copycat recipe, I was determined to make my version more like the Taco Bell photo and Chilito you remember. I created a chili recipe similar to the chili sauce you'd get on a hot dog, using plenty of thickening ingredients. I found it best to combine cornstarch, oat flour, and all-purpose flour with lots of liquid to allow for a 2-hour simmer. This extended cooking time tenderizes the beef like the original and creates a thick sauce that should mostly stay in your tortilla.

After simmering, you’ll end up with about four cups of chili, enough for eight glorious burritos, all stuffed full of chili just like the iconic menu item from your delicious memories.

Find more of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

As you have probably figured out by the name, this moist spiced loaf of gingerbread was once available at Starbucks during the holiday season, but has since been retired to the land of dead foods. Thankfully, I was able to work up this sweet copycat recipe before the pastry went away forever, so you can create a spot-on home version for the holidays, or anytime you want. 

The secret ingredient to my Starbucks Holiday Gingerbread copycat recipe is applesauce in the batter, which helps make the loaf moist and flavorful. Ground ginger and bits of candied ginger add the perfect ginger flavor to the loaf, and orange flavors come in from the zest, orange extract, and candied orange peel on top. With such an overwhelming aroma coming out of your oven as this bakes, the toughest step is waiting for the loaf to cool before frosting it so that you can dig into a slice.

Check out my other copycat recipes for more Starbucks favorites here.

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

After the success of the chain's Strawberry Cheesecake in a Jar, Red Lobster introduced the Pumpkin Pie in a Jar for the 2013 fall holidays. The dessert, which the menu describes as "layered pumpkin and cream cheese mousse with a graham-cracker crust, topped with sugared pecans," quickly became a hit with customers and the online cooking blog community. I found a few interesting recipes posted online, but none got it all right, so I thought it was time to break down my own Pumpkin Pie in a Jar to find out exactly what's going on in there. 

After getting the dessert back to the lab and separating all the components, I hacked each layer, one at a time, so that I could now present you with this, my Red Lobster Pumpkin Pie in a Jar copycat recipe. 

You'll have to make several parts for this recipe, but they are each pretty easy, and you can make them several hours or even a day ahead of when you plan to serve this. Once you've got all the parts whipped up, it's just a matter of layering everything into 6-ounce canning jars (or drinking glasses if you don't have jars) for an impressive dessert or holiday meal finisher.

Find more Red Lobster recipes here.

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

Before, during, or after a shopping trip at Nordstrom, you may have indulged in a hot bowl of this signature soup from the department store's restaurants and cafés that many say is the best tomato basil soup they've ever had. It's creamy, and it's slightly sweet with the perfect balance of basil in the mix. 

Now you can make a clone version yourself at home with very little effort using canned tomatoes, dried basil, and fresh carrots and onions. I've even included the hacked recipe here for the crispy Parmesan toasts that are served on the side. If you're a fan of great tomato soup, you've gotta try this one.

Try my Nordstrom Roma Tomato Basil Soup copycat recipe below, and find more of my soup copycat recipes here.

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

Cheddar cheese fondue may be the most popular cheese fondue selection at this forty-year-old niche chain, but I've always been a fan of the more traditional Swiss cheese version. Emmentaler and Gruyère cheeses are the stars here, melted into a very dry wine such as Chablis – the cheaper, the better. An inexpensive Chablis will not upstage the flavorful cheeses, and that's exactly what you want. It's a great dish to serve for a small get-together, maybe paired up with a nice white wine to drink. I'm all for that.

You'll need a double boiler-style ceramic fondue pot (the kind for cheese and chocolate fondue, not broth) to prepare this very easy recipe that makes a great appetizer for a cheese-loving group of four to six.

Try my Melting Pot Traditional Swiss Cheese Fondue copycat recipe below, and try my Melting Pot Cheddar Cheese Fondue recipe here. 

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

My Girl Scout Samoas/Caramel DeLites copycat recipe isn't quick, but it's fun.The process involves baking shortbread cookies, coating them with caramel, sprinkling freshly toasted coconut onto the caramel, dipping the bottom of the cookies into chocolate, and then adding a chocolate drizzle over the top.

It takes time to make each one, but the technique I'm revealing here produces a delicious copycat version of Girl Scout Cookies Samoas that will satisfy anyone who loves the snack, which are the #2 most popular of the brand (Thin Mints are #1, and here's my version). This is the perfect recipe to make when you can recruit some joyous and enthusiastic kitchen helpers.

Click here for more of your favorite Girl Scout Cookies. 

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

When choosing which baklava to clone from the top Greek chains, I conducted a taste test, and The Great Greek’s version came out on top. The chain's pastry had a satisfying crunch, two layers of spiced walnuts, and was soaked with just enough honey syrup so each bite was perfectly sweet. I also discovered a clever trick to ensure all the walnuts are soaked in the sweet syrup.

For my Great Greek Baklava copycat recipe, I started by making the honey syrup, flavored with a cinnamon stick and orange peel. I then finely chopped the walnuts in a food processor and mixed them with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and clove. Next, I layered and buttered my sheets of phyllo dough in a baking pan. After placing the final sheet on top, with the walnut mixture in the middle, I sliced through the phyllo with a sharp knife and baked the baklava for just over an hour until it was golden brown.

Right after the baklava came out of the oven, I poured honey syrup over the slices and around the edges of the dessert. I also drizzled some syrup into X-shaped cuts I made in the middle of each piece. This trick helped the syrup reach the top layer of walnuts in the middle for a better bite.

After about 6 hours, the syrup soaked into the phyllo, and the baklava was ready to serve. I added a little extra syrup to each slice of my home version before serving, and sprinkled it with almonds for a finished product that resembled the Greek chain’s famous dessert in every way.

Find more of your favorite dessert copycat recipes here.

Chicken Parmigiana is one of the most popular choices at any Italian restaurant, just like meatballs, so it makes sense to combine the two dishes for this appetizer that filled me up as much as any entrée. The dish at the restaurant comes with five meatballs, and this recipe makes ten meatballs, giving you enough for two appetizer-sized servings.

The first step in making my Olive Garden Meatballs Parmigiana copycat recipe was to figure out the best way to replicate the chain’s meatballs. According to the chain’s nutrition info, only ground beef, and no pork, is used in the meatballs. After trying several batches, I found a great match using ground beef with 20% fat. Any less fat, and the meatballs turned out too tough.

I already hacked the chain’s marinara sauce for the chain’s Chicken Parmesan, which I spooned into a serving dish, then added the meatballs, cheese, and breadcrumbs. After baking until the cheese was melted, I had a delicious match to the restaurant's original that just needed a little sprinkle of parsley before serving.

Find more of my Olive Garden Copycat Recipes here.

The pile of buttery, toasted ciabatta garlic bread topped with melted mozzarella would be satisfying enough on its own, but this dish becomes even better when drizzled with truffle oil and crowned with a scoop of homemade ricotta cheese.

For my version of North Italia’s White Truffle Garlic Bread, I knew store-bought ricotta wouldn't match the smooth and creamy texture of the fresh stuff from the restaurant. The only solution was to make my own ricotta, which turned out to be a simple process using just four ingredients. After one taste of my homemade ricotta, I knew it was the way to go.

The process involves heating whole milk to 185 degrees, then adding an acid to coagulate the proteins that form the cheese. You’ll strain the cheese using a cheesecloth to separate it from the whey, then mix in a little heavy cream to give it a creamy texture like the restaurant version. The restaurant adds minced white truffle to the ricotta, which you can find online, or you can just use white truffle oil.

Chill the ricotta cheese until it’s cool, then use an ice cream scoop to place it on top of your broiled garlic bread. Drizzle truffle oil over everything and finish with fluffy microplaned cheese.  

The Dubai chocolate bar was created by Sarah Hamouda, a British-Egyptian engineer living in Dubai, who conceived of the bars while pregnant in 2021. However, Sarah didn’t discover the right mix of sweetened pistachio paste, tahini, and shredded phyllo dough to fill the milk chocolate bar until 2023. Soon after the bars were perfected in 2024, a social media campaign on Instagram and TikTok went viral, transforming the Dubai chocolate bars into a worldwide sensation.

Noticing the trend, Shake Shack locations in the Middle East introduced this milkshake version of the candy bar in February 2025. The shake was so popular there that Shake Shack brought it to U.S. outlets for a limited run in the summer, where it received rave reviews. Before it disappeared, I snagged several of the shakes and stashed all but one in my freezer. That one went into my belly, and it was worth every calorie.

To make this shake, Shake Shack uses their famous custard as a base. For my Shake Shack Dubai Chocolate Pistachio Shake copycat recipe, you can either use my hack of the chain’s custard (here) or choose a good store-bought vanilla ice cream (such as Häagen-Dazs). You’ll add pistachio paste, which is easily found online, along with toasted, shredded phyllo dough called kataifi.

The most ingenious part of this recipe is the Magic Shell chocolate sauce that coats the inside of the plastic cup before you add the shake. When you squeeze the cup, the chocolate cracks into the frozen shake, recreating the experience of eating the famous chocolate bar. Use a clear 18-ounce plastic cup (like Solo) for the best re-creation of the original shake.

Try my recipe for the Shake Shack Burger here.

Dairy stand owners Abraham and Mahala Stouffer opened their first Stouffer’s restaurant in Cleveland in 1924, and by 1990, the Stouffer’s name was on 68 restaurants and 40 hotels. But by 1992, the company's frozen food business, which started in the '50s, was so successful that Stouffer's sold off its hospitality segment to focus on the brand's booming frozen food empire. 

It’s not clear when the company’s spaghetti and meatballs were first sold in freezer sections, but many of Stouffer’s first products were inspired by meals served at the chain’s restaurants, including the popular macaroni and cheese (cloned here), Salisbury steak, corn soufflé, and stuffed peppers.

For my Stouffer’s Spaghetti and Meatballs copycat recipe, I started with the meatballs by first defrosting a frozen serving of the dish, then separating the sauce from the six ½-ounce balls of meat. Using the ingredients list as a guide, I made several batches of tiny meatballs with a combination of beef and pork, along with breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, seasoning, and a little beaten egg to hold everything together, until I achieved a good match. Once I had enough meatballs for six servings of the dish, it was time to move on to the sauce.

The sauce came together nicely after sautéing some onions and garlic in oil, then adding tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and seasonings. After simmering the sauce for 30 minutes, I placed six meatballs on a small pile of cooked spaghetti, then poured the sauce over everything, creating a perfect match to the 12 5/8-ounce single-serving of the famous frozen entrée.

If you're still hungry, check out my copycat recipes for other famous entrées here.

In this creative twist on traditional French toast, sliced sourdough bread is dipped in vanilla custard, then layered with cheesecake filling, and baked until lightly browned. It's sliced and served warm, with fresh berries and strawberry syrup on the side. If you’re a fan of French toast and bread pudding, you’ll really love this.

For their French toast, Cracker Barrel uses soft sourdough from Bay’s Southern Bread, a Nashville-based bakery. And that’s the only place you can buy it. So, for my hack of the Cracker Barrel Fresh Berry French Toast Bake, I found a thick-sliced sourdough bread from Nature’s Own. That bread isn’t quite as soft as Bay’s Southern Bread, but it still works great. If you want your French toast even softer, you can use Nature’s Own thick-sliced brioche bread, as long as you don’t mind giving up the tangy sourdough flavor of the original.

If you aren't serving all six slices at once, leftovers can be stored for several days, and reheated in a microwave for 1 to 1½ minutes on high.

Find more of my Cracker Barrel copycat recipes here.

This limited-time-only offering from the country’s biggest Chinese chain debuted in 2025 from May through July in just five markets: Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, and Las Vegas. Fortunately, Vegas is my home, so this excellent new dish literally came to my doorstep. Thank you, Uber Eats.

This sauceless entrée uses the chain’s breaded chicken bites, along with chopped white onion, green bell pepper, and dried chilies. At the restaurant, I ordered a large box to go, which triggered the preparation of a new batch in the open kitchen for me to observe. I watched as the cook measured the same amount of onion as pepper, and about half that volume of dried chilies, so I used the same ratio for my clone. I used a slightly tweaked version of my previous Panda Express breading hack, except this time I was sure to use both white and dark meat chicken like the chain does.

For the chili crisp, I found that Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp or Momofuku Chili Crunch were closest to what Panda Express uses. Both are easy to find online.

After tossing the chili crisp with everything in the wok, the dish is served with a drizzle of hot honey on top. You can use real Mike’s Hot Honey, or you can whip up a batch with my hack here that combines honey with scotch bonnet pepper juice and vinegar for a cost-effective home clone.

Try my Panda Express Chili Crisp Chicken copycat recipe below, and find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here.

During a trip to Brazil in 2004, Mike Kurtz sampled pizza topped with chile-infused honey for the first time and fell in love with the flavor. He enjoyed the distinct sweet-and-spicy taste so much that he began developing his own version of hot honey when he returned to Brooklyn, New York. He experimented with various formulas using different types of chile peppers until he perfected his hot honey recipe, which he bottled for personal use and to share with friends.

In 2010, while working at Paulie Gee’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn, Mike brought his hot honey and generously drizzled it over the pizza. Customers loved it and asked to buy bottles of the honey for home use, so Mike sold his hot honey by the bottle from the pizzeria. Eventually, word spread about Mike’s Hot Honey, and when Whole Foods became interested in his product, Mike realized its huge potential. Since then, sales have steadily increased each year for the condiment, and in 2025, the brand’s revenue is projected to reach $60 million. 

Like Mike, I also experimented with various types of red peppers for my Mike’s Hot Honey copycat recipe, and Scotch Bonnet peppers worked the best. These chilies have a Scoville rating similar to that of the Brazilian peppers Mike uses, so the heat level of this hack should be very close to the real thing.

After removing the stems and seeds from the peppers, simply purée them in a blender and then mix the concentrated pepper juice with honey and vinegar. This will yield about ½ cup of homemade hot honey for you to use as you see fit.

Find more of my copycat recipes for condiments here.

Hot honey is currently trending, and Chipotle Mexican Grill has responded to the demand with Chipotle Honey Chicken, a new limited-time item featuring a sweet and spicy sauce that's receiving rave reviews. Creating a TSR copycat hack of this new item was an obvious next mission choice.

My version of the dish starts with the same chipotle marinade as the chain’s Pollo Asado chicken. After marinating the chicken for four hours, I grilled it, chopped it, and mixed it with a copy of the chain’s new chipotle honey sauce. The real recipe includes a mysterious new seasoning blend that's sprinkled over the chicken just before it comes off the grill. When I was at the restaurant a key ingredient in the formula was revealed when a cook told me he smelled cinnamon each time he sprinkled the seasoning on the chicken.

I couldn't obtain a sample of that secret seasoning, so, using his tip, I added cinnamon to my sauce, made with red and green peppers, seasoning, lime juice, sugar, and honey. It tasted great, with a flavor that matched the original. Once the chopped grilled chicken was mixed with the new sweet sauce I had a spot-on copy of Chipotle’s new hit chicken to use on burritos, soft tacos, bowls, and salads.

Try my Chipotle Honey Chicken copycat recipe below, and find more of my Chipotle copycat recipes here.

Ramping up the heat, Taco Bell introduced a new creamy hot sauce in 2024 to top the chain’s successful slow-roasted Cantina Chicken (check out my Taco Bell Cantina Chicken clone). The new menu rollout, dubbed Caliente Cantina, was created by adding the red pepper sauce to several of the chain’s Cantina Chicken items. However, these few items are the only way to get the special sauce, and it doesn’t come in blister packs that you can grab to take home. So, if you want the great taste of this new sauce on your homemade taco and burrito creations, you’ll need to clone it. Fortunately, it’s easy.

The TV ads specify that the bright orange sauce is made with red jalapeño peppers, but the ripe red ones can be hard to find unless you grow them yourself. To address that issue, I created my copycat batch of Taco Bell Caliente Sauce using red Fresno peppers. These peppers are commonly found in grocery stores in their ripe red form, and Fresno peppers have a similar Scoville rating to jalapeños, so the heat of your cloned sauce should be close to the heat of the original.

The first step is to make a purée from the peppers. When you mix the puree with the other ingredients, your sauce is nearly ready. Let the sauce rest in your refrigerator for a bit so that the flavors will improve and the sauce will thicken, and it’s ready to use on anything that needs a burst of citrusy heat.

Find more of your favorite Taco Bell sauce recipes here. 

Taco Bell boldly goes where it’s never gone before with the introduction of the chain’s new chicken nuggets. To make nuggets that stand out from the offerings at other fast food feeders, Taco Bell’s version is made with sliced chicken breast marinated in jalapeño buttermilk and breaded with crumbled corn tortilla chips. The nuggets taste great on their own, but add one of the chain’s new dipping sauces, and you’ve got an undisputed flavor bomb.

For my Taco Bell Crispy Chicken Nuggets copycat recipe, I created a brine with buttermilk, chicken broth and diced jalapeño, and I let the chicken chunks have a nice soak. For the breading, I grabbed a rolling pin and wacked on a ziptop bag full of Tostitos Cantina thin corn tortilla chips until I had a bag of crumbs that combined perfectly with the other breading ingredients.

As for the dipping sauce, I cloned the chain’s ranch sauce with attitude, since it appears to be the most popular pick. I created my Taco Bell’s Fire Ranch Sauce copycat recipe using Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing as the base, just like the original, then mixed in several other ingredients, including sriracha and cayenne pepper, and allowed it to sit until needed. After the flavors had a chance to mingle, I had a half cup of delicious spicy ranch dipping sauce that made these tasty nuggets unforgettable.

Check out all of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

The main ingredients in most burritos and burrito bowls at Chipotle are the flavorful adobo-marinated chicken and beef, which, according to servers, are marinated overnight in a secret adobo sauce.

For my Chipotle Adobo-Marinated Chicken and Beef copycat recipe, recreating the flavors of the adobo marinade is key, but it's also important to use the right chicken and beef cuts. Chipotle only uses dark meat chicken, so use skinless thigh fillets if you're making chicken. If you choose beef, get a pound and a half of New York strip steaks.

Chipotle uses toasted cumin seeds to create a more flavorful ground cumin for this recipe, so I included that technique in the first step (you can also use bottled ground cumin if you prefer). You'll need a coffee/spice grinder or mortar and pestle to grind the toasted cumin seeds–you'll recognize they're ready when your kitchen fills with a toasty aroma. Start this recipe a day ahead to give your chicken or steak 16 to 24 hours to soak in the marinade.

Try my Chipotle Adobo Grilled Chicken and Steak copycat recipe below, and find all your other favorite Chipotle copycat recipes here.

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

With over 1,400 units and counting, Chipotle Mexican Grill is one of the top ten fastest growing chains in the country and the biggest Mexican food chain behind Taco Bell. But unlike the typical fast-food model, servers at Chipotle build you a custom burrito or bowl with your choice of the meats, sides, and sauces on display in front of you. 

With my Chipotle Black Beans copycat recipe, you can enjoy a great side of mildly spicy black beans at home anytime. And you can use my other Chipotle copycat recipes to build your own homemade Chipotle burrito or bowl.

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

The huge muffins sold at Costco’s bakeries had been one of my longtime favorite picks from the big box store, partly because they were so deliciously big. But in late 2024, the chain altered its portion size to the chagrin of many muffin fans, and now the store’s famous jumbo muffins are not so jumbo. Today, Costco’s muffins are roughly half their former size. The muffins still taste great, but if you prefer the original massive muffins in all their supersized splendor, you’ll need to take matters into your own hands.

My previous hacks for Costco Blueberry Muffins and Costco Almond Poppyseed Muffins each produce giant muffins, so I designed this recipe the same way. To make my Costco Lemon Raspberry Muffins copycat recipe, you’ll need a jumbo, or Texas-size, muffin pan that will re-create the bigness of the store’s original version. If you don’t have one of those pans, you can still make regular-sized muffins using this recipe and a standard 12-cup muffin pan.

Find more favorite famous bread recipes here.