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You may not know that the delicious "pizzas" you get from the world's largest Mexican food chain have 36 grams of fat. If you like Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza as much as I do, you'll be happy to know that you can make a home version with only 10 grams of fat, and fewer calories, too.
The secret fat savings come from baking, rather than frying, the flour tortillas. You'll also say "adios" to much of the fat by using reduced-fat Cheddar and Jack cheeses. I picked reduced-fat for these, because the fat-free stuff does not melt well when the pizza is baked.
Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 pizza
Total servings–4
Calories per serving–427 (Original–570)
Fat per serving–10g (Original–36g)
Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.
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- 1/2 pound lean ground beef (7% fat)
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon dried minced onion
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
- Pinch garlic powder
- Pinch onion powder
- 1/4 cup water
- 8 6-inch fat-free flour tortillas
- Vegetable oil nonstick cooking spray
- 1 1/3 cups fat-free refried beans
- 2/3 cups mild Picante salsa
- 1/2 cup reduced-fat shredded Cheddar cheese
- 1/2 cup reduced-fat shredded Monterey Jack cheese
- 1 medium tomato, diced
- 1/4 cup chopped green onions
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a medium bowl combine the lean ground beef with the flour, salt, minced onion, paprika, chili powder, garlic powder, and onion powder. Use your hands to thoroughly incorporate everything into the ground beef.
3. Preheat a skillet over medium/low heat and add the ground beef mixture to the pan along with the water. Brown the beef mixture for 5 to 6 minutes, using a wooden spoon or spatula to break up the meat as it cooks.
4. Spray both sides of each tortilla with a light coating of oil cooking spray. Place the tortillas onto baking sheets and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the tortillas are crispy and golden brown. Turn them over halfway through the cooking time, and pop any air bubbles if the tortillas begin to inflate. Keep the oven hot.
5. Heat up the refried beans in a small saucepan over medium/low heat, or in the microwave for 2 to 3 minutes, or until hot. Assemble each pizza by first spreading about 1/3 cup of refried beans on the face of a tortilla.
7. Spread one-quarter of the meat over the beans.
8. Place on another tortilla, sandwiching the meat and beans between the two tortillas.
9. Coat the top tortilla with about two tablespoons of salsa.
10. Mix the two cheeses together and sprinkle about 1/2 cup over the top of the pizza.
11. Put a heaping tablespoon of diced tomato on next.
12. Garnish the pizza with green onion. Repeat the process with the remaining ingredients.
13. Bake the pizzas on a baking sheet for 8 to 12 minutes or until the cheese on top is melted.
14. Cut each pizza into quarters and serve hot.
Makes 4 pizzas.
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Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur. -
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Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur. -
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Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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Cheesecake Factory Key Lime Cheesecake
Read moreJust 15 minutes after the very first Cheesecake Factory opened in Beverly Hills back in 1978, the lines began forming. These guys know how to make a dang good cheesecake!
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Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur. -
Taco Bell Fire Border Sauce
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Make those famous Taco Bell tacos, Chalupas, and more here.
Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.
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T.G.I. Friday's Parmesan-Crusted Sicilian Quesadilla
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Italy meets Mexico in this new hit appetizer that combines a cheese-filled tortilla with ingredients you wouldn't usually find inside a quesadilla, including T.G.I. Friday's bruschetta marinara. Parmesan cheese is crusted on the outside of the tortilla, and the balsamic glaze drizzle is the perfect finishing touch. This is an awesome party dish appetizer, since my T.G.I. Friday's Parmesan-Crusted Sicilian Quesadilla recipe makes 4 quesadillas that can each be sliced into as many as 8 pieces.
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur. -
Outback Steakhouse Seared Pepper Ahi Tuna
Read moreFor years, Outback Steakhouse's Seared Pepper Ahi, with herb crust and secret ginger soy dipping sauce, has been a top appetizer pick at the nationwide steakhouse chain. Part of the dish’s appeal is the quick turnaround time since the fish is seared, then chilled earlier in the day. When an order comes in, the seared fillet is sliced and arranged on a bed of mixed greens drizzled with wasabi and ginger soy sauce, with extra on the side for dipping, and it’s ready for service.
For my Outback Steakhouse Seared Pepper Ahi copycat recipe, find the thickest frozen ahi tuna steak you can. Ahi is one of the safest fish to eat raw, but almost all sushi restaurants in the U.S. will freeze their fish first to cleanse it of any unwanted nasties, so frozen is best. You'll want to trim your fillet to around 2” x 3” before it’s completely defrosted and still somewhat firm if you want uniform slices after it's seared.
Just as in the restaurant, you can sear your fish earlier in the day, then chill the unsliced fillet. When you’re ready to eat, the dish is prepped in the short time it takes to slice the chilled ahi and plate it.
Find copycat recipes for more of your favorite Outback dishes here.
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Domino's Loaded Tots
Read moreDomino’s oven-baked starter, which debuted in early 2023, reveals a great way to transform a boring bag of potato tots into a dish with pizzazz. The pizza chain’s new Loaded Tots are built with a delicious pile of crispy potato tots, topped with cheese, a secret sauce, and other good stuff that I probably should have been stacking on potato tots years ago.
For my Domino’s Loaded Tots recipe, I picked the two bestsellers of the three versions offered at Domino’s for you to clone: Philly Cheesesteak and Cheddar Bacon. The Philly Cheesesteak version includes onion, green pepper, steak, and Alfredo sauce, and the Bacon Cheddar is topped with crispy crumbled bacon and garlic Parmesan sauce. Which one will you be making?
Once you decide, simply arrange a couple of dozen cooked tots on a baking sheet and smother them with the mozzarella/cheddar cheese blend, a few toppings, and the secret sauce hack, then bake for just 8 minutes until it’s melty and magnificent.
Find more of my Domino's copycat recipes here.
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Chipotle Chicken Al Pastor
Read moreA dish traditionally made with pork is redesigned for chicken in this Mexican chain’s limited-time-only sweet-and-spicy variation. All the key ingredients for good al pastor are here: pineapple, lime, achiote, and morita chipotle peppers, which come together to make a bright orange sauce used here for basting marinated chicken thighs.
The TV commercial for Chipotle’s new offering claims the morita peppers are seared and shows wild flames dancing around a pan filled with fresh green and red peppers. That is perhaps not an accurate depiction of the preparation process considering that morita peppers are made by smoking red jalapeños, not green ones. And smoked jalapeños do not look like fresh jalapeños, so I'm not sure what's going on there.
Regardless of the confusing clues in the TV ad, to make my Chipotle Chicken Al Pastor recipe, you'll want to find dry morita peppers, then remove the seeds and toast the peppers in your oven before making the secret sauce. Baste the sauce on your chicken just before it's done cooking, then chop it up and use it to make delicious tacos, burritos, salads, and bowls.
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Subway Cookies
Read moreThe chewy, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies sold at Subway are baked daily at the sandwich shop with frozen dough pucks provided by Otis Spunkmeyer. So, I guess you could say that this copycat recipe for several of Subway’s most popular cookies is also a clone of several of Otis Spunkmeyer’s most popular cookies.
Perhaps the biggest secret revealed here is the butter/oil blend. Most cookie recipes call for just softened butter as the fat component, but that can add too much butter flavor. According to the ingredients list for these cookies, they contain a blend of oil and butter, which worked best as a 2-to-1 ratio of butter to oil after baking through a number of test batches. This fat blend helped improve the texture with crispier edges and a chewier middle, and the butter flavor was perfectly muted. Also, just one egg is added here—most cookie recipes like this add two—to make the cookies less cakey.
Below you'll find my Subway cookies copycat recipes for Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and White Chip Macadamia Nut. I'll show you how to form the dough into pucks that can be frozen and either baked right away or saved for several weeks so that you can serve a batch of freshly baked cookies in just 20 minutes, with minimal effort, whenever you like.
Check out more of my cool Subway hacks here.
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Dickey's Barbecue Pit Original BBQ Sauce
Read moreDiving deep into good Texas-style barbecue brisket, burnt ends, ribs, chicken, and spicy jalapeño beans doesn’t require a trip to Texas if you've got a Dickey's nearby.
World War II veteran Travis Dickey founded the restaurant in 1941 in Dallas, Texas, then his sons Roland and T.D. took over the business in 1967. Since then, the company has become the king of Texas barbecue. There are now over 550 locations in 44 states, making Dickey’s the biggest barbecue chain in the country.
And no barbecue chain gets that big without great barbecue and great sauce. Indeed, Dickey’s original bottled sauce is unique. It’s sweet, smoky, slightly spicy, and has a nice Worcestershire sauce undertone that sets it apart from other slathers. Thankfully, I've finally figured out how to hack the secret formula and it's easy! Now you can use my Dickey's barbecue sauce recipe here to re-create that signature flavor for all of your grilled and smoked masterpieces, and it'll only take about 20 minutes.
If you're a fan of Dickey’s Original Barbecue sauce, you’ll love this hack.
And while you're poking around, check out some of my other famous copycat sauce recipes here.
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Del Taco Tamales
Read moreThis 600-unit Mexican fast food chain celebrates the holidays each year with delicious little $2 corn husk-wrapped pork tamales made from a traditional recipe for authentic south-of-the-border taste. The only problem is when the holidays go away, so do these tasty tamales. And that's why we bust out this Top Secret Recipe.
Making authentic tamales is not difficult, but it does take time. The pork requires a braise for several hours to get it fork-tender, and the wrapped tamales will take around 2 hours to steam until they're done.
My Del Taco tamale recipe is inspired by traditional tamale recipes that include a braising sauce for the pork made from rehydrated guajillo peppers. To coax out more flavor, I chose to first toast the peppers before adding them to the liquid. And rather than using lard in the masa dough, I found a combination of vegetable shortening and butter to be a more flavorful alternative.
Steam all 24 of tamales until they are fully cooked, and store those you can’t eat in your freezer for several weeks. Steam the frozen tamales for 20 to 30 minutes, and they’ll taste as good as fresh.
How about a cold margarita to wash down those tamales? Find your favorite famous drink recipes here.
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Wendy's Seasoned Potatoes
Read moreReviewers of Wendy’s tasty seasoned potatoes point out that the skin-on slices stay crispy even when cool. That tells us the breading is most likely made with a non-wheat flour blend, an assumption confirmed by the website ingredients list for the potatoes where nary a gram of wheat flour is included. Yep, these seasoned potatoes are gluten-free.
Wendy’s uses a blend of food starches plus rice flour for the breading on their version, but my tests confirmed that cornstarch is all you’ll need for a great clone of Wendy's seasoned potatoes. The secret process starts by coating the potato slices with the dry breading mix, which contains salt. The salt in the blend will draw water out of the potatoes, magically transforming the dry breading into a wet batter in about 20 minutes.
When all the breading is wet, the potatoes go into the oil for partial frying. After resting a bit, they get dropped in again until golden brown and crispy. And, thanks to the cornstarch, these potatoes will stay crispy, even when they’re completely cool. Pretty cool right? Give my Wendy's seasoned potatoes copycat recipe a try.
This recipe was our #3 most popular in 2022. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Traditional Meatballs (#1), Chipotle Pollo Asado (#2), Cheesecake Factory Spicy Cashew Chicken (#4), McDonald's Chicken McNuggets (#5).
Find copycat recipes for more of your favorite Wendy's dishes here.
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Domino's Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes
Read moreA traditional “molten” cake or “lava” cake is baked at a high temperature for a short time so that the outside of the cake is fully cooked, but the batter at the center stays unset and gooey. Domino’s lava cakes are different with pure fudge topping hidden in the middle rather than cake batter. The little dessert is delicious, with a crunchy exterior and two forms of chocolate in one bite, but it presents some challenges, such as how to fully enclose soft fudge in the center of a small cake without holes, and how to keep the fudge from disappearing into the cake batter as it bakes.
Since there are no holes or seams detected on the cakes, the filling needs to be loaded into the cakes before baking. I thought about freezing the fudge in disk shapes and then concealing those into the middle of a muffin cup of cake batter, but the fudge doesn’t freeze solid in a home freezer. It just gets really cold and really sticky, and it's much too messy to work with.
Going back to the drawing board, I found the clue I needed on Domino's website. The list of ingredients for the lava cakes includes “cake crumbs” and “cookie crumbs” along with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, vanilla, and cocoa. This suggests that crumbs of pre-baked cake and cookies could be combined with the other ingredients to make firmer cake “dough” rather than runny cake batter. The soft fudge could then be spooned onto the bottom of the uncooked mini cakes, topped with more dough, and baked.
After baking the little cakes with this new technique there is no detectable seam, and the fudge inside gets warm and gooey and oozes out when you eat it, just like the real thing. Serve these up with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side and watch the fun when everyone takes a bite.
My Domino's chocolate lava crunch cake recipe makes 12 cakes, and I'm adding a bunch of step photos so yours will come out perfect. You can chill any leftovers for serving later with the reheating instructions I'm including at the end.
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Church's Chicken Original and Spicy Fried Chicken
Read moreOn the list of inspirational American food success stories is the small fried chicken restaurant George W. Church opened across the street from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas in 1952. In the years since Church's Chicken exploded into a monster chicken chain with over 1000 restaurants in 35 countries.
The truth is, no chain would grow that big without good food. George's special homestyle fried chicken formula was his secret recipe to success, and as far as I can tell, nobody has properly hacked it. Until now.
The ingredient list for this crispy chicken is smaller than what you might find in “The Colonel’s” kitchen, which is good because you won’t have to go out and buy 11 herbs and spices. Much of the flavoring in this chicken recipe develops during the brining process, which also has the added benefit of keeping the chicken moist and juicy inside. I discovered that Church’s marinates their chicken for 12 hours, so I worked backward and designed a brine that would do its job in exactly half a day.
For my Church's Fried Chicken copycat recipe, you'll need to plan ahead to give your chicken time to marinate. But that's a good thing—your patience will be rewarded with the down-home taste of delicious fried chicken, just like what grandma used to make.
And here's some more good news: this hack includes two recipes! I've created a Church's copycat recipe for the original recipe fried chicken, along with instructions for duplicating the spicy version if you're in the mood to pump up your jam.
Now, how about some side dishes?
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Starbucks Almond Croissant
Read moreThe plain butter croissant at Starbucks is perfectly golden brown, flakey, buttery, and delicious, and if you add almond filling and top it off with a pile of sliced almonds you have one of the chain’s most popular pastries.
Making croissants takes time and patience since the dough must be rested, and rolled, and folded a number of times to create dozens of buttery layers that good croissants flaunt. The dough behaves best when the process is stretched out over three days, with two overnight rests in the refrigerator to relax and ferment. Patience will be rewarded since the long rests develop better flavor and the dough becomes easier to work, although it is possible to make a batch of Starbucks Almond Croissants in one day over a stretch of about 7½ hours if you really want to.
The dough for traditional croissants is made by enclosing a flat block of butter in the dough, then rolling it out and folding it over several times. This laminating process will create paper-thin chewy layers inside and golden brown flakiness on the outside.
As for the filling and topping, I found that they could be easily hacked with pudding mix and ground almonds. A little cornstarch is used to thicken the filling so that it doesn’t melt into the croissant dough or squirt out as the croissant bakes.
Doesn't a warm gingerbread latte or macchiato sound awesome right about now? Find all my Starbucks copycat recipes here.
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McDonald's Bacon, Egg & Cheese McGriddles
Read moreIt was the creator of Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza who came up with the idea to cook bits of maple syrup into small pancakes for a new sweet-and-savory breakfast sandwich offering from the world’s #1 fast food chain. Tom Ryan’s idea became a reality in 2003 when the McGriddles—with maple-flavored griddle cake buns—debuted on McDonald’s breakfast menu, and the sandwich is still selling like hotcakes today.
To make four homemade McGriddles, you’ll first need to produce eight perfectly round griddle cakes that are infused with sweet maple bits. Recipes that instruct you to make hard candy from maple syrup for this hack will fail to tell you that the shattered shards of hard candy don't completely melt when the griddle cakes are cooked, resulting in a distinct crunch not found in the real McDonald’s product. Also, breaking the hard maple candy into small, uniform chunks is both difficult and messy. My solution was to make a flavorful maple gummy puck that could be neatly petite diced and sprinkled into the batter as it cooks.
Just be sure to use maple flavoring rather than maple extract for the maple gummy. Maple flavoring has a more intense flavor than the extract, and the dark brown caramel coloring will make your maple bits look like pancake syrup. You’ll also need one or two 3½-inch rings to make griddle cakes that are the perfect size for your clones.
My McDonald's McGriddles copycat recipe duplicates the bacon version of the sandwich, but you can replace the bacon with a patty made from breakfast sausage for the sausage version, or just go with egg and cheese.
Get more of my McDonald's copycat recipes here.
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Chipotle Carne Asada
Read moreChipotle’s popular limited offering is a good example of how straightforward and flavorful carne asada can be. It’s not overly mysterious since Chipotle is transparent about the ingredients used for the restaurant's entire menu—53 ingredients in all—but identifying those is only the beginning of the process. There was still plenty of work to do in establishing ratios and settling on an ideal preparation method.
Carne asada is almost always made with flank steak or skirt steak. A server at Chipotle told me they use skirt steak, which is surprising since that is the tougher of the two cuts. Perhaps she was wrong about that? Flank steak also has a better flavor than skirt steak, so I'm recommending flank here. Just be sure not to marinate it for more than 2 days or the acid in the marinade may toughen your steak and you certainly don't want that.
After you grill it, slice the meat across the grain and use it in burritos, tacos, bowls, or as a Southwest-style salad topper.
My Chipotle carne asada recipe was our #5 most popular in 2021. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Panda Express Chow Mein (#1), Qdoba 3-Cheese Queso (#2), Panda Express Fried Rice (#3), Outback Baked Potato Soup (#4).
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Taco Bell Shredded Chicken Soft Taco
Read moreIn November 2020, Taco Bell said “adios” to several classic items from their menu including Mexican Pizza—one of my long-time favorites—and anything with shredded chicken in it, including the chicken soft taco. But teary goodbyes from fans of the tasty spiced chicken can be avoided if we have a good (and easy) recipe to craft a duplicate at home. Since the fast Mexican chain announced the changes several months in advance, I had time to work up a good hack before the tacos were gone forever.
After cooking the chicken several ways, I settled on poaching the fillets in chicken broth, which kept them moist and added great umami flavor. When the chicken cooled, I shredded it, and added it to a sauce seasoned with spices and lime juice, and flavored with Knorr tomato chicken bouillon.
As the sauce thickens it will reduce and infuse the chicken with flavor, just like the original Taco Bell shredded chicken, then it’s ready for you to use on tacos, burritos, salads, or whatever. And don't forget the hot sauce!
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KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) Secret Recipe Fries
Read moreIn the Summer of 2020, to the dismay of many fans, KFC stopped selling the famous potato wedges that had been on the menu for decades and replaced them with battered French fries.
Like the wedges, these fries are coated with a flavorful batter, but the seasoning used on the fries is a different blend than what was used on the wedges. Are these new fries better than the classic wedges? That depends. Some may prefer the rare treat of fast food skin-on wedges, while others may prefer the crispiness of these new fries. Some don’t care and just want a clone, so here you go.
My recipe for KFC Secret Fries is simplified by using par-fried French fries found in the freezer section of your store. After coating the fries with this clone of the seasoned breading, spray them with water, then fry them for 3 to 4 minutes. That’s it. Be sure to have a clean squirt bottle filled with water to transform the breading into a thin batter giving your finished product the same crispy coating as the original.
KFC’s new fries are coated with a blend that includes onion, celery, and carrot powder. It’s easy to find onion powder in most supermarkets, but I had to go online to find celery and carrot juice powders. The blend of vegetable powders adds great flavor, but if you want to omit the celery and carrot powders and just use onion powder, the recipe will still make delicious copycat fries.
Click here for my KFC Original Chicken recipe or search for your favorites here.
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California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) Butter Cake
Read moreImagine a giant soft sugar cookie with sweetened cream cheese on top and served warm as if it just came out of the oven, and you have California Pizza Kitchen's Butter Cake, a delectable dessert described on the menu with five simple words: “Trust us…just try it.”
This dessert is an easy one to prep in the restaurant since the cakes are made ahead of time and chilled until ordered. Once an order comes in the cake is zapped for a minute in the microwave, then topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and surrounded by dollops of whipped cream. I've designed my CPK Butter Cake recipe below the same way, so you can make your cakes in advance and then chill them until dessert time. Or, you can serve the cakes right after they come out of the oven. Either way works.
The construction is an easy one—you’ll need four 4-inch cake pans, ramekins, or anything you can bake in that is 4 inches across. To make the batter I used a stand mixer with the paddle attachment and it worked great, but a hand-held granny mixer also works fine.
You're gonna love this one. Trust me...just try it.
Find more amazing CPK copycat recipes here.
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Qdoba 3-Cheese Queso
Read moreThere are many acceptable ways to formulate good queso, but to make this specific queso the ingredients must be correct, and most copycat recipes seem to get it wrong. A few recipes get one of the peppers and two of the cheeses right, but pretty much every recipe out there is a bit of a mess that I will now save you from.
Quesos can be made with a variety of cheeses that include queso fresco, asadero, and Muenster, but this particular queso includes a cheese you probably didn’t expect: Swiss. That cheese is slow to melt, so we’ll shred it first, along with the Jack. And you won't need to gum up the queso with flour or cornstarch by making a roux because the white American cheese in the mix contains sodium citrate or sodium phosphate—additives that help the cheese melt smoothly and stay that way.
Authors of recipes that call for tomatoes in this dish haven’t looked closely. Those are red bell peppers and they are roasted, peeled, and seeded along with the poblano and jalapeños before they are diced and added to the cheese sauce. The sauce cooks on low heat, never bubbling, so that it stays smooth and creamy.
When done, your queso might seem thin in the pan, but it will thicken as it cools to a perfect consistency for dipping tortilla chips, or as a topping for tacos and burrito bowls.
My Qdoba 3-cheese queso 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).
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Hooters 3 Mile Island Chicken Wings
Read moreIt’s not the hottest sauce at the famous Florida-based chain. That honor goes to the sauce they call “911” with heat so hot it overwhelms the flavor. This thick red sauce is the second fieriest choice on the menu, and it delivers both big heat you can handle and great flavor you can taste.
Now you can make your own version of this super spicy secret sauce at home by cooking a combination of cayenne pepper sauce, jalapeño, Tabasco, and a couple of other ingredients until thick.
When your homemade Hooters wings are a crispy golden brown, toss them in the beautifully thickened sauce, and serve up your pile of wings with a stack of napkins and cold drinks on deck to help put out the fire.
Try my Hooters 3-Mile Island chicken wings recipe below, and try more of my Hooters copycat recipes here.
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Chipotle Carnitas
Read moreBraised and shredded pork shoulder is a staple of Mexican cuisine that Chipotle prepares with a simple blend of flavors, and a surprising ingredient you may not have expected: juniper berries. Once you track those down (they’re easy to find online), the berries are combined with thyme and bay leaves in a braising liquid that will transform your own pork roast into an easily shreddable thing of beauty in under 3 hours. Then you can use your Chipotle carnitas clone on tacos, in burritos, or in a bowl over rice and beans just like they do in the restaurant.
When picking your pork roast, try to find one without too much fat. If your roast has a thick cap of fat on it, trim off the excess. You want some fat in your braising liquid, but if the cap of fat is too thick, it may not fully render down and you’ll get chunks of fat in the shred.
It’s often assumed that the pork butt is from the rear end of the pig, even though cuts from the back region already have a name: ham. The pork butt, also known as a Boston butt, is cut from the other end, the upper shoulder of the pig. It’s called a “butt” because in pre-Revolutionary War New England the roasts were stored and transported in barrels called “butts”, and the confusing name stuck.
This recipe was our #5 most popular in 2020. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce (#1), Olive Garden Lasagna Classico (#2), King's Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls (#3), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4).
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Texas Roadhouse Rolls
Read moreI never thought dinner rolls were something I could get excited about until I got my hand into the breadbasket at Texas Roadhouse. The rolls are fresh out of the oven and they hit the table when you do, so there’s no waiting to tear into a magnificently gooey sweet roll topped with soft cinnamon butter. The first bite you take will make you think of a fresh cinnamon roll, and then you can’t stop eating it. And when the first roll’s gone, you are powerless to resist grabbing for just one more. But it’s never just one more. It’s two or three more, plus a few extra to take home for tomorrow.
Discovering the secret to making rolls at home that taste as good as Texas Roadhouse Rolls involved making numerous batches of dough, each one sweeter than the last (sweetened with sugar, not honey—I checked), until a very sticky batch, proofed for 2 hours, produced exactly what I was looking for. You can make the dough with a stand mixer or a handheld one, the only difference being that you must knead the dough by hand without a stand mixer. When working with the dough add a little bit of flour at a time to keep it from sticking, and just know that the dough will be less sticky and more workable after the first rise.
Roll the dough out and measure it as specified here, and after a final proofing and a quick bake—plus a generous brushing of butter on the tops—you will produce dinner rolls that look and taste just like the best rolls I’ve had at any famous American dinner chain.
This recipe was our #1 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes for the year: KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken (#2), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (#4), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

For over 30 years I've been deconstructing America's most iconic brand-name foods to make the best original copycat recipes for you to use at home. Welcome to my lab.
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