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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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Hot honey-flavored foods are having a moment right now, and Wingstop joins the party with this new hot-and-sweet wing rub. Rather than creating a hard-to-manage sticky honey sauce, the chicken wing chain wisely developed an easy-to-apply rub packed with the perfect combination of salty, sweet, and spicy flavors.

Hacking the rub was the primary goal of this mission, so when I got my wings I ordered plenty of the seasoning on the side for analysis. But back in the underground lab, my work went slowly. The overwhelming spiciness of the red pepper numbed my tongue, and I continually lost the ability to distinguish flavors to make a decent copy. I was forced to take multiple breaks, many of which included chugging whole milk, until my tastebuds recovered. Despite the slow go, I was eventually able to crack it.

The secret ingredient in my Wingstop Hot Honey Rub Wings copycat recipe is powdered honey, which you’ll have no trouble finding online. That sweet powder, plus several other common ingredients from your spice rack, will make a rub that sticks nicely to fried chicken wings after they’ve been tossed with melted margarine.

This recipe will make a batch of ten wings, like a standard order at Wingstop, with just enough rub left over for another batch of ten.

Find more of my Wingstop copycat recipes here.  

Good chili con carne is hard to find at a casual restaurant chain, so this delicious bowl of red from Outback Steakhouse is a real treat. It’s a straightforward recipe made with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and garlic, but it’s the chunks of tender filet mignon that elevate this secret formula way above the rest.

For my Outback Tasmanian Chili copycat recipe, I began by searing the filet. Next, I removed the beef from the pan and sautéed the vegetables in the same pan, which was now infused with fabulous fond. After a few minutes, I added everything else, including a small can of El Pato hot tomato sauce, which is my secret ingredient for great flavor and the perfect level of spiciness in this clone.

After two hours of simmering, I had a fantastic pot of chili, with enough for six big servings, each topped with a blend of shredded cheese and chopped green onion, just like in the restaurant.

Find more of my Outback Steakhouse copycat recipes here.

When Chili's upgraded its kitchens with new equipment, including a conveyor oven, the chain introduced a line of flatbread pizzas that hit big with customers and won the Menu Masters 2014 New Menu Item Award from Nation's Restaurant News. 

For my California Grilled Chicken Flatbread copycat recipe, you first need to make a couple of 16-inch-long flatbreads from scratch—and don't worry, it's not that hard. The flatbreads are topped with an easy-to-make roasted garlic aioli, pico de gallo, and grilled chicken. Once these components are ready, assemble the flatbreads and bake them for about 10 minutes. There's no need to make the tomato-based sauce from scratch since I found that Ragu traditional pasta sauce closely mimics what Chili's uses to top its flatbreads, and it's one of the most widely available and affordable sauces in stores.

Check out more of my recipes for Chili's famous dishes here.

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

Laura Scudder folded and ironed wax paper to transform it into bags for the potato chips she sold out of a converted gas station in La Habra Heights, California, in the 1920s. This innovation kept her potato chips fresher than any previous storage method and helped potato chips become a mass-market product in America. Not only did Scudder invent potato chip bags, but her company was also the first to print a freshness date on packages.

If you like potato chips, there’s a good chance you like them even better in a dip, especially if it’s this one found on party tables for as long as I can remember. For my Laura Scudder’s Green Onion Dip Mix copycat recipe, I initially planned to use packaged freeze-dried green onions, but I found that drying my own was easy and cheap using the oven. After crushing the dry green onions with some parsley flakes and mixing those with the buttermilk powder I substituted for the whey found in the real thing, along with MSG and a few everyday ingredients, I had a perfect match to the famous mix.

To make the dip, I stirred the mix into one cup of sour cream, just like the original. In 30 minutes, I had a delicious green onion dip that tasted like the classic I grew up with, to serve with ruffled potato chips or a veggie tray.  

Find more of your favorite famous dip recipes here.

In late 2024, the Caramel Apple Empanada made its return to the Taco Bell menu as one of five new items on the chain’s “Decades” menu. The limited-time menu featured popular items from five different decades, including the Green Sauce Burrito from the 1970s, the Meximelt from the 1980s, and this tasty hand pie from the 2000s.

These pies are fried, like McDonald’s Apple Pies used to be, so the dough is crispy. The apple filling is sweetened with caramel, giving this pie an edge over other chains’ apple pies. It’s a good thing I was quick to buy four of these and freeze them, since they disappeared from all Taco Bells in just a few weeks.

For my Taco Bell Caramel Apple Empanada copycat recipe, I developed a dopugh that was easy to work with and could hold up during frying. For the filling, I chose to keep it simple by using canned apple pie filling instead of making it from scratch. In this recipe, you just chop the canned apples, stir in some caramel topping and salt, and it’s ready to be loaded into the dough.

My final step was to decode the secret method for adding a crispy, blistered crust to fried dough. With a bit of shmoozing I was able to obtain an uncooked, frozen empananda from a friendly Taco Bell manager, and I could see that the dough was coated with a cornstarch solution which is applied after freezing. Sure enough, when I coated my empanandas with cornstarch before frying, they came out of the oil with a blistered crust and a light crunch that perfectly mimicked the real thing. 

Find more of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

This version of street corn is made with whole corn cut lengthwise into quarters, so eating it with your hands is like eating pork ribs. The corn is charred over an open flame and dressed with all the toppings you’d expect from a proper street corn appetizer.

The trickiest part of my Cheesecake Factory Street Corn copycat recipe was deciding how to slice the corn lengthwise through the tough cob. Slicing raw corn was much too tricky, so I boiled the corn to soften the cobs. After the corn cooled, I could stand a cob on its end and press a large, sharp knife down quickly through it. Then, for the final cut, I turned the cobs over onto their flat sides before slicing.

After slicing the corn, I brushed it with mayonnaise, tossed it on my barbecue, and grilled it until charred in spots. Then I added more mayonnaise, Tajin, and Cotija cheese and arranged the “ribs” in a nice pile on a plate sprinkled with fresh cilantro. It was a perfect hack.

Find more of my Cheesecake Factory copycat recipes here.

With cayenne and jalapeño peppers, these fried cheese balls bite back. They’re also the number one appetizer on the chain’s menu, so sleuthing out a kitchen copy was a mission I needed to accept. And I’m glad I did, because my Texas Roadhouse Rattlesnake Bites copycat recipe eventually worked out great. The dish is easy to duplicate at home, and, just like the real thing, yours will have just enough heat to wake up your mouth but not ravage it.

After cracking the secret to flavoring the cheese, I worked out the best technique to produce fried cheeseballs that came out of the oil with a golden brown outside and completely melted cheese inside. The timing was crucial. Over-frying the cheese balls caused the cheese to ooze out and burn, while under-frying them prevented it from fully melting in the middle. To fry these bites perfectly, the magic happens at precisely two minutes.

For the best results, use Monterey Jack cheese shredded from a block rather than pre-shredded cheese. Pre-shredded cheese in bags tends to be drier, so it doesn’t melt as well as the cheese you shred by hand. You want the meltiest, creamiest bites possible.

Try my Texas Roadhouse Rolls copycat recipe here.

In March of 2024, Taco Bell introduced Cantina Chicken, a versatile menu item that can be ordered on tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and bowls. The slow-roasted chicken is seasoned with chilies, onion, and garlic and is often paired with the chain’s Avocado Verde Salsa, which I’ve already cloned for you here.

For my Taco Bell Cantina Chicken copycat recipe, I’ve made the process quick and easy by using a cooked rotisserie chicken, which can be found in most supermarkets and big box stores. Once you’ve chopped the chicken into bite-size pieces, combine it with chicken broth and the secret combination of spices below in a large sauté pan over medium heat.

When the liquid has cooked off, you’ll have four cups of chicken, which you can use in your homemade tacos, burritos, bowls, or whatever you’re craving.

Find more of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

In 2024, Taco Bell brought back five iconic menu items as part of the chain’s new “Decades” menu: the Tostada from the 1960s, the Green Sauce Burrito from the 1970s, the Meximelt from the 1980s, the Gordita Supreme from the 1990s, and the Caramel Apple Empanada from the 2000s.

The Meximelt generated the most excitement in my circles, so I jumped at the chance to hop into a culinary time machine and recreate this long-lost classic. It’s a small flour tortilla filled with the chain’s seasoned beef, a melted combination of three cheeses, and fresh pico de gallo. If it weren’t called a Meximelt, you’d call it a soft taco. And you’d love it either way.

I tackled my Taco Bell Meximelt copycat recipe by first duping the mild pico de gallo with a simple combination of tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. And I made sure to dice the tomato and onion super small to match the real thing. Next, I copied the seasoned beef using my previously hacked recipe for the chain’s Chalupa Supreme and determined the ratios for a three-cheese blend of shredded cheddar, Jack, and mozzarella.

I piled everything on a warm 6-inch flour tortilla, took a big bite, and let my mouth take me on a tasty trip back to the era of MTV, yuppies, Blockbuster, and Rubik’s Cubes.

Find more of my Taco Bell copycat recipes here.

In Maggiano’s hit starter, large slices of zucchini are breaded and fried until crispy, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, and served with a bright lemon aioli for dipping. This is the top pick from the appetizer menu, according to servers at the upscale Italian chain, and I had to be sure my hack could satisfy even the most fervid fans of the original.   

The first order of business for my Maggiano’s Zucchini Fritte copycat recipe was to figure out how to replicate the ultra-crispy coating that is a standout feature of the real thing. It’s clear that the zucchini is breaded with panko, but I needed a batter to make the panko stick to the zucchini. My first batter, made with flour, didn’t produce the standout crunchiness of the real thing. So, I called in the cornstarch. Cornstarch batters are notoriously crispy, so I combined cornstarch with the flour for the batter and finally discovered the crunchy breading I was searching for.

After the breading was cracked, I focused on the formula for a dipping sauce made with variations of mayo, sour cream, cream, and lemon juice until I had the ratios right for a perfect match. I brought it all together on a plate, finished it off with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese and freshly minced Italian parsley, and my mouth thought I was at Maggiano’s.

If you like Maggiano's, you'll also love my copycat recipe for Maggiano's Beef Tenderloin Medallions. 

This seasonal pastry is Starbucks’ take on sticky toffee pudding, presented in a convenient, portable, single-serving size. Like the traditional recipe, this mini bundt cake is partially sweetened with date paste and coated with a sticky, sweet glaze. However, this version deviates from tradition with a dusting of a sugar-salt blend and is adorned with Christmas sprinkles to enhance the festive, limited-time-only vibe. 

I relied heavily on the chain’s online ingredients list to create my Starbucks Dark Toffee Bundt copycat recipe. Using that information, I estimated ingredient ratios based on my initial weight of date paste. I determined measurements for the flour, butter, sugar, eggs, brown sugar, and more, knowing that the list is organized by weight. Getting the leavening right took some trial and error, but at the end of the day, with the help of a mini bundt cake pan, I successfully re-created the delicious little cakes in both appearance and taste.

By the way, if you don’t have a mini bundt cake pan, no problem. You can bake these cakes in a large (Texas-size) muffin pan or even a standard muffin pan if that’s all you’ve got. Starbucks uses little trees for the sprinkles, but feel free to top your cakes with whatever you like.

Pair this with your favorite drink from Starbucks. Find more of my copycat recipes here.

Crumbl co-founder Sawyer Hemsley used to beg his mom to bring home his favorite pink sugar cookies, sold at a local Utah hospital by a group called The Pink Ladies. This chewy vanilla cookie, topped with pink almond icing and inspired by Sawyer’s childhood favorite treat, is now among the top three most popular cookies at the national chain, and customers anxiously await its appearance in the featured cookies of the week.

My Crumbl Classic Pink Sugar Cookie copycat recipe begins with a buttery vanilla dough that bakes slowly and is done cooking before you see any browning. The center stays slightly undercooked, ensuring that the cookie, which is served cold, remains chewy in the middle. Keeping the moist center fresh and the soft frosting firm may explain why these cookies are served chilled.

The secret to the flavor of the simple buttercream frosting is just a touch of natural almond extract, and the color comes from four drops of red food coloring. Spread it on with a small frosting knife and place the dozen cookies you make with this secret formula into your refrigerator before serving, just like the real ones.

Try my Crumbl Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunk cookie copycat recipe here.

Of the four enchiladas served at this popular national Mexican chain, the cheese enchilada and chicken tinga enchilada stand out. They are filled with good stuff, and the sauces on top make them special. The cheese enchilada is doused with slow-cooked chili con carne sauce, while the tender chicken tinga enchilada is topped with a flavorful sour cream sauce and Jack cheese. And because I couldn’t decide which enchilada was better, I hacked them both.

For my On the Border Cheese Enchiladas copycat recipe, I’ll show you how to make a great con carne sauce and how to stuff the enchiladas with a blend of perfectly melted cheese. For my On the Border Chicken Tinga Enchiladas hack, I’ll show you how to make moist and flavorful chicken tinga with a grocery store rotisserie chicken and how to copy the great sour cream sauce with just four ingredients.

Using either of these secret recipes, you’ll make ten enchiladas in one 9x13 baking pan, so there should be enough to go around. The hardest step is deciding which to make: chicken or cheese? These enchiladas go great together on one plate and complement each other nicely, so I say, make ‘em both!

Find more of your favorite On the Border copycat recipes here.

Ingredients you don’t find in other popular tortilla soups are likely the reason this has been my most requested menu item to hack from the Mexican cuisine chain. And I’m thrilled to have finally cracked it since this is now the go-to tortilla soup recipe at my house.

You’ll notice some standout ingredients, including zucchini, fresh corn kernels, diced Roma tomato, rice, and a garnish of Monterey Jack cheese and avocado, but the ingredient that brings this soup together is the generous portion of perfectly seasoned chicken tinga. The shredded chicken tenderizes nicely in the soup, and all the elements that make it such a delicious tinga add great flavor and color to the pot.

I spent the first day creating the best chicken tinga recipe I could for my copycat version of On the Border's Chicken Tortilla Soup. I started with uncooked white and dark chicken fillets, but soon found that a supermarket rotisserie chicken worked even better and saved oodles of time. After removing the skin and bones, I used two forks to shred the chicken, and was happy to have exactly four cups of chicken. I made a tinga sauce with chipotle, tomato, onion, garlic, and spices and mixed it with the shredded chicken; then, I constructed the rest of the soup around the tinga.

When your soup is done, you’ll have enough for ten bowls, each garnished with Jack cheese, tortilla strips or chips, cilantro, and a fresh wedge of avocado. And just so you know, the tasty chicken tinga recipe here also makes an excellent filling for tacos, burritos, and enchiladas.

Find more of your favorite On the Border copycat recipes here.

In collaboration with the YouTube talk show Hot Ones, Panda Express launched its spiciest dish yet, featuring a new sauce made with the treacherous Apollo chili pepper. The Apollo pepper was developed by renowned chili breeder Ed Currie, who also cultivated the Carolina Reaper, once rated the world’s hottest chili pepper. With a heat level of approximately 3 million Scoville units, the Apollo pepper is 1.4 times hotter than the Carolina Reaper.

For my Panda Express Blazing Bourbon Chicken copycat recipe, I knew it would be unreasonable to expect you to purchase Hot Ones’ The Last Dab Apollo Hot Sauce, the "secret" source of heat in the original dish. A bottle of that sauce costs around 30 bucks, and you would only need one drop, so my first order of business was to find a much cheaper substitute.

I settled on a ghost pepper sauce, which, at 1 million Scoville units, is one-third as hot as the Apollo. When ghost pepper is blended with other ingredients in a sauce, such as in Melinda’s Ghost Pepper Sauce (which I used for my clone), it becomes diluted, flavorful, and not overwhelming.

That ghost pepper sauce, combined with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, and a hint of bourbon, will create the perfect blend to mix with onion, bell pepper, and crispy chicken for a delicious, fiery, yet not overly spicy, home hack of this tasty, limited-time entrée.

Find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here.

The limited-time-only Banana Pudding Milkshake debuted at Chick-fil-A in 2011 to rave reviews, and then it disappeared for 13 years. In 2024, the chicken chain brought back the specialty milkshake, but once again, it was just for a short time, and we don’t know what’ll happen with it next. Since it sucks not to have control of your milkshake destiny, I came up with this easy hack formula that you can use any time to make a fantastic clone that looks and tastes just like the real thing, right down to the cherry on top.

For my Chick-fil-A Banana Pudding Milkshake copycat recipe, I included the most real banana that I could, then added just enough banana pudding mix to perfect the flavor. 

I also discovered a preparation trick that produced a thicker finished product: place the banana, the blender, and the serving glass in your refrigerator for about an hour before making the shake. When everything is chilled, the ice cream stays thick while it’s blended. 

Once the shake is smooth, stir in Nilla Wafers crumbs, pour it into your chilled glass, then add whipped cream, a cherry, and a straw.

Try more of my Chick-fil-A copycat recipes, like their famous chicken sandwich here. 

In 2021, for a limited time, Chipotle added smoked and sauced brisket to its line of signature meats. The tender brisket is seasoned with a blend of peppers, garlic, cumin, and coriander, then seared and tossed with a smoky barbecue sauce fused with traditional Mexican flavors. It’s a significant departure from the chain’s signature south-of-the-border protein offerings, and when the dish came back to the menu in 2024, it was a food hacking challenge I could not refuse.

For my Chipotle Smoked Brisket copycat recipe, I used the flat end of the brisket, as does the chain, and trimmed away the fat, so the seasoning blend came in direct contact with the meat. I let the seasoning sit on the meat for at least four hours, then I smoked it and mopped it a couple of times with a vinegar blend to help keep it moist and to wake up the flavor. When the brisket hit 165 degrees F, I covered it and let it continue cooking until the internal temperature reached 200 degrees F, and a beautiful dark crust formed. I wrapped the brisket in foil and a thick towel and placed it in a cooler for a couple of hours to rest, and then it was ready to serve.

Because the process took 12 to 14 hours, I found it best to refrigerate the smoked brisket until the next day, when it can be prepped for serving. When everyone's hungry, and you’re ready to serve the brisket, chop it, sear it, season it, and sauce it with this barbecue sauce made from typical barbecue sauce ingredients, plus peppers and cumin to bring out the spirit of Mexico.

And don’t worry if you don’t have a smoker. In the Tidbits below, I’ll tell you how to use your gas or charcoal grill to add beautiful smoke flavoring to your brisket, just like a legit smoker. 

Try more of my Chipotle copycat recipes here.

This queso dip is smooth and creamy, packed with peppers, onions, and tomatoes, just like the original, which is a popular menu choice at the Mexican chain.

One of the biggest challenges in making my On the Border Signature Queso copycat recipe was finding the right cheese product that would melt easily and provide the best flavor. I tried Velveeta first but was put off by its sweetness, so I looked for a better option. It wasn’t until I found Tostitos Nacho Cheese Dip that I was able to create a knockoff that tasted like the real thing, and I was confident my version would satisfy fans of the original.

For this clone, sauté the peppers and onion until they soften, then mix them with the cheese, lime juice, and seasoning and heat the dip until hot. Once the queso comes off the burner, stir in the tomatoes and cilantro, then serve immediately with a big pile of tortilla chips.

Try my other On the Border's copycat recipes here.

This menu replacement for the chain’s Stuffed Chicken Marsala offers a tasty variation on the popular theme. It features breaded chicken tenderloins arranged on fettuccine pasta with wilted spinach and sautéed mushrooms and doused with plenty of delicious creamy marsala sauce.

For my Olive Garden Chicken Marsala Fettuccine copycat recipe, I paid special attention to the mushroom marsala sauce, which I originally hacked for the Stuffed Chicken Marsala and then improved for this hack. The sauce contains mushrooms, and you’ll also need more to sauté later. An 8-ounce tub of mushrooms is the perfect amount for the whole recipe.

Give yourself an hour to brine the chicken for flavor and juiciness, and 30 minutes for the coated chicken to sit in the fridge so that the breading stays put. This recipe makes two huge servings but can easily be split into four more modest portions.

Find all of my Olive Garden copycat recipes here.

This quenching combination of Grey Goose vodka, fresh lemonade, and Chambord raspberry liqueur was invented in 2007 by Grey Goose ambassador and restauranteur Nick Mautone for the vodka sponsorship deal struck with the U.S. Open Tennis Championships. Nick came up with a drink made with the refreshing flavor of raspberry lemonade, and the cocktail stick with three frozen honeydew melon balls resembling tennis balls was his perfectly inspired garnish.

The popularity of the summer concoction at the U.S. Open peaked in 2023 when 460,275 Honey Deuces were sold in commemorative cups for $22 each. Sales of the drink that year reached over $10 million, and at the 2024 tournament, with an upped $23 price tag, sales are expected to be even higher.

I designed my custom version of the Grey Goose Honey Deuce recipe for a 16-ounce glass, so I retooled the recipe shared by Grey Goose, which is measured to fit in a 12-ounce highball glass. Also, their recipe doesn’t mention how to make good lemonade, so I devised an easy formula that will give you 16 ounces of lemonade, which will be enough for four cocktails.

Before making your drinks, use a melon baller to make honeydew melon balls. Pierce three on a cocktail stick for each drink you plan to make and freeze them for about an hour. Now, it's your serve.

Find more of my famous drink copycat recipes here.