per month

($16.75 annually)*
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Includes eight (8) 79¢ recipes of your choice each month!

per month*

Includes eight (8) 79¢ recipes of your choice each month!

Just like the pro chefs use. A secret blend of herbs and spices that will make your homemade steaks taste like they came from a famous steakhouse chain. All-natural. Contains no MSG or preservatives. Great for anyone who likes a truly amazing steak.

Top Secret Steak Rub is created by Food Hacker Todd Wilbur who has spent the last 30 years reverse-engineering popular menu items at the most-loved restaurant chains across America. By identifying the herbs, spices and other ingredients that make great restaurant food taste so good, Todd created this custom Top Secret Steak Rub to help you make restaurant-style steaks at home. All it takes is just a few shakes. Then cook the steaks your favorite way. Our Top Secret Steak Rub is also great on hamburger patties, vegetables, French fries, and popcorn!

Buy up to 5 bottles to ship for one low price!

7-ounce bottle. Money back guarantee. Kosher certified. Gluten-free.

You may also like our Top Secret Chicken Rub, and Top Secret Fish Rub.

This unique blend of five ripe ground chili peppers of varying intensity wakes up practically any dish, adding awesome flavor and perfect—but not overwhelming—heat. The peppers included in the blend range from sweet (bell) to hot (habanero). The sweet hits your tongue first, then the hot creeps in.

Hell Flakes does NOT contain salt, vinegar, MSG or other ingredients found in liquid hot sauces—you get just pure chili flavor!

Hell Flakes is made from 100% natural chili peppers, which are a thermogenic, anti-inflammatory food. Capsaicin in the peppers helps to supercharge your metabolism so that you burn calories even after you've finished eating, and the peppers have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body to help give you relief from aches and pains.

Hell Flakes takes crushed red pepper flakes to the next level with smaller flakes and better flavor. Hell Flakes comes in a long-lasting flip-top shaker bottle to distribute the micro-flakes perfectly over your food. 

Our award-winning Hell Flakes were developed by food hacker Todd Wilbur, host of Top Secret Recipe on CMT-TV, and author of 12 Top Secret Recipes cookbooks.Buy up to 3 bottles to ship for one low price!

1.9-ounce shaker bottle. Money-back guarantee. Kosher certified. Gluten-free.

You may also like Top Secret Steak Rub and Top Secret Chicken Rub.

Exclusive signed copy. Buy the #1 National Bestseller from America's Clone Recipe King, signed by the author, and we'll include a free bottle of our Hell Flakes, a 5-pepper microflake blend to kick up all your grub!

For more than thirty years, Todd Wilbur has been obsessed with recreating America's most iconic brand-name foods at home. In his first cookbook with color photos, the New York Times bestselling author brings you 125 new clone recipes: 75 first-time hacks and 50 overhauled all-time favorites. These recipes are not found individually on the website with the exception of just a few.

Each recipe comes with easy-to-follow step-by-step photos so that even novice cooks can perfectly recreate their favorite famous foods with everyday ingredients. And your homemade versions cost just a fraction of what the restaurants charge! The result of years of careful research, trial-and-error, and a little creative reverse-engineering.

Contents
Applebee's Mozzarella Sticks
Applebee's Oriental Chicken Salad
Applebee's Mexican Rice
Applebee's Fiesta Lime Chicken
Applebee's Maple Butter Blondie
Arby's Curly Fries
Auntie Anne's Pretzels
Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream
Boston Market Meatloaf
Buba Gumps Seafood Hush Pups
Bubba Gump's Shrimp New Orleans
Burger King Stuffed Steakhouse Burger
Cafe Rio Creamy Tomatillo Dressing
Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Barbacoa
Cafe Rio Tres Leches Cake
Capital Grille Creamed Corn with Smoked Bacon
Capital Grille Lobster Mac 'N' Cheese
Capital Grille Classic Creme Brulee
Carrabba's Cozze in Bianco (Steamed Mussels)
Carrabba's Pollo Rosa Maria
Cheesecake Factory Fried Macaroni and Cheese
Cheesecake Factory Stuffed Mushrooms
Cheesecake Factory Mashed Red Potatoes
Cheesecake Factory Chicken Madeira
Cheesecake Factory Louisiana Chicken Pasta
Cheesecake Factory Fresh Strawberry Cheesecake
Cheesecake Factory Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich
Chili's California Grilled Chicken Flatbread
Chili's Chipotle Chicken Flatbread
Chili Grilled Baby Back Ribs
Chili's® Molten Chocolate Cake
Chipotle Mexican Grill Black Beans
Chipotle Mexican Grill Cilantro Lime Brown Rice
Chipotle Mexican Grill Adobo-Marinated Grilled Chicken & Steak
Girl Scout Cookies Trefoils/Shortbread Cookies
Hostess CupCakes
Hostess Twinkie
Houston's Chicago-Style Spinach Dip
IHOP New York Cheesecake Pancakes
IHOP Original Buttermilk Pancakes
IKEA Swedish Meatballs
Jack-in-the-Box Beef Taco
KFC Cole Slaw
KFC Grilled Chicken
KFC Original Recipe Fried Chicken
Legal Sea Foods New England Clam Chowder
Legal Sea Foods Legal's Signature Crab Cakes
Lofthouse Frosted Cookies
Long John Silver's Tartar Sauce
Long John Silver's Battered Fish
Marie Callender's Famous Golden Cornbread
Marie Callender's Banana Cream Pie
Mauna Loa Kona Coffee Glazed Macadamias
McDonald's McCafe Blueberry Pomegranate Smoothie
McDonald's Sweet Chili Chicken McWrap
McDonald's Big Mac
McDonald's McRib Sandwich
McDonald's Baked Apple Pie
The Melting Pot Cheddar Cheese Fondue
The Melting Pot Traditional Swiss Cheese Fondue
Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookies
Nordstrom Roma Tomato Basil Soup
Nuts 4 Nuts Honey Roasted Nuts
Olive Garden Garden Fresh Salad & Salad Dressing
Orange Julius Original Orange Julius
The Original Pancake House Apple Pancake
The Original Pancake House Dutch Baby
The Original Pancake House Sourdough Pancakes
Outback Steakhouse Honey Wheat Bushman Bread
Outback Steakhouse Bloomin' Onion
Outback Steakhouse Kookaburra Wings
Panera Bread Broccoli Cheddar Soup
Panera Bread Asian Sesame Chicken Salad
Panera Bread Fuji Apple Chicken Salad
Panera Bread Spinach & Bacon Baked Egg Soufflé
Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies
P.F. Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps
P.F. Chang's Oolong Chilean Sea Bass
Pinkberry Original Frozen Yogurt
Pinkberry Pomegranate Frozen Yogurt
Raising Cane's Cane's Sauce
Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers
Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits
Red Lobster Pumpkin Pie in a Jar
Roy's Braised Short Ribs of Beef
Roy's Misoyaki "Butterfish"
Roy's Melting Hot Chocolate Soufflé
Rubio's Mild Salsa
Rubio's Red Tomatillo Salsa
Rubio's Grilled Gourmet Taco with Shrimp
Rubio's Original Fish Taco
Ruth's Chris Steak House Barbecued Shrimp
Ruth's Chris Steak House Ruth's Chop Salad
Ruth's Chris Steak House Sweet Potato Casserole
Ruth's Chris Steak House Chris Filet
Sabra Classic Hummus
St. Elmo Steak House Shrimp Cocktail
Starbucks Birthday Cake Cake Pops
Starbucks Holiday Gingerbread
Steak 'n Shake Classic Milk Shakes
Steak 'n Shake Genuine Chili
Steak 'n Shake The Original Double 'n Cheese Steakburger
Taco Bell CrunchWrap Supreme
Taco Bell Mexican Pizza
TGI Friday's Loaded Potato Skins
TGI Friday's Jack Daniel's Sauce
TGI Friday's Dragonfire Salmon
Tony Roma's Baby Back Ribs
Tony Roma's Original Barbecue Sauce
Tony Roma's Carolina Honeys Barbecue Sauce
Waffle House Waffles
Wendy's Chili
Wendy's Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger

Craving more of Todd's recipes? There are 12 cookbooks in all! 

Bojangles’ was founded in 1977 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and today the 750-unit chain is famous throughout the southeastern U.S. for its juicy fried chicken, fluffy buttermilk biscuits, and Cajun dirty rice.

And just like McDonald’s, Bo’s has a special sauce that’s pretty famous too. It’s arguably much better than McDonald’s Big Mac sauce, especially if you like the flavors of horseradish and roasted red bell pepper. The lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and sugar team up for the appropriate sweet-and-sour notes found in any decent special sauce, and the herbs add a nice finish you don’t get with other sandwich sauces. You might also like to know that my Bo's special sauce recipe is made without the high-fructose corn syrup that’s listed as the third ingredient in the real thing.

Mix everything in a bowl and park it in the fridge for a spell so the flavors can mingle, then use the sauce as you see fit on sandwiches made with fried chicken, grilled chicken, and roast beef, or as a dip for chicken fingers and nuggets.

To get their Extra Crispy Chicken so crispy, KFC breads the chicken two times. This double breading gives the chicken its ultra craggy exterior and extra crunch, which is a different texture than the less crispy original recipe fried chicken that’s breaded just once and pressure fried.

As with my KFC Original Fried Chicken recipe, we must first brine the chicken to give it flavor and moisture all the way through, like the real thing, then the chicken is double breaded and deep-fried until golden brown. KFC uses small chickens which cook faster, but small chickens can be hard to find. If your chicken parts are on the large side, they may not cook all the way through in the 12 to 15 minutes of frying I’m specifying here. To be sure your chicken is cooked, start frying with the thickest pieces, like the breasts, then park them in a 300-degree oven while you finish with the smaller pieces. This will keep the chicken warm and crispy, and more importantly, ensure that they are cooked perfectly all the way through.

On my CMT show Top Secret Recipe I chatted with Winston Shelton, a long-time friend of KFC founder Harland Sanders. Winston saw the Colonel's handwritten secret recipe for KFC Original Recipe chicken, and he told me one of the secret ingredients is Tellicherry black pepper. It's a more expensive, better-tasting black pepper that comes from the Malabar coast in India, and you should use it here if you can find it. Winston pulled me aside and whispered this secret to me when he thought we were off-camera, but our microphones and very alert cameramen caught the whole thing, and we aired it.

I first published my KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken recipe in Even More Top Secret Recipes, but recently applied some newly acquired secrets and tips to make this much-improved recipe of one of the most familiar fried chicken recipes in the world. 

My KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken recipe below was our #2 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes of the year: Texas Roadhouse Rolls (#1), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza (#4), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

ON BACKORDER. Ships May 30th.

If you like McDonald's Big Mac Sauce, you'll love Todd Wilbur's McDonald's-inspired special burger sauce.

Created by food hacker Todd Wilbur, host of Top Secret Recipe and best-selling author of 12 Top Secret Recipes cookbooks, this sauce is inspired by the special Big Mac sauce McDonald's uses on their world-famous hamburgers.

Use our Top Secret Burger Sauce on your own burgers, sandwiches and wraps.

Buy up to 4 bottles to ship for one low price! 

10-ounce bottle.

You might also like our Top Secret Burger Spread (like In-N-Out) and our Top Secret Chicken Sandwich Sauce (like Chick-fil-A).

Ingredients: Soybean oil, cucumbers, sugar, water, white distilled vinegar, eggs, salt, mustard seed, corn syrup, onions, natural flavors, spices, Xanthan gum, garlic, turmeric, lemon juice, pimento, soy protein, preservatives, paprika, citric acid, annatto, Autolyzed yeast, sunflower oil.

Nutritional facts: Serving size 1 tbsp. Servings per container 20. Amount per serving: Calories 70, Total Fat 7g, Saturated Fat 1g, Trans Fat 0g, Cholesterol 5mg, Sodium 125mg, Total Carbohydrate 2g, Dietary fiber 0g, Sugars 1g, Protein 0g.

Just like the pro chefs use. If you like restaurant-style rotisserie chicken, you'll go crazy over our Top Secret Chicken Rub. It's a secret blend of spices that will make your homemade chicken taste like it came from a famous rotisserie chicken chain. All natural. Contains no MSG or preservatives. Great for anyone who loves chicken.

Top Secret Chicken Rub is created by Food Hacker Todd Wilbur who has spent the last 30 years reverse-engineering popular menu items at the most-loved restaurant chains across America. By identifying the herbs, spices and other ingredients that make great restaurant food taste so good, Todd created this custom Top Secret Chicken Rub to help you make amazing rotisserie-style chicken at home. All it takes is just a few shakes. Then cook the chicken your favorite way.

Buy up to 5 bottles to ship for one low price!

5.8-ounce bottle. Money back guarantee. Kosher certified. Gluten-free.

You may also like our Top Secret Steak Rub and our Top Secret Fish Rub.

Menu Description: “A deliciously different way to taco. Tangy grilled chicken, sweet Asian chile sauce and dumpling sauce stuffed into crispy wonton shells and topped with a crunchy slaw and cilantro mix.”

Re-creating Applebee's Chicken Wonton Tacos requires cloning four parts; none of which are difficult: Grilled chicken, coleslaw, secret dumpling sauce, and the crispy wonton shell to hold all of it together. For the chicken, we’ll grill a couple of thighs and chop them up. Then we’ll use bottled sweet chili sauce—usually found in your grocery store where Asian foods are parked—to punch up the flavor.

The coleslaw is easy with a dressing that’s only five ingredients. The slaw is best when it has some time to sit and wilt a bit, so plan ahead for the best flavor. You can slice the cabbage yourself, but a coleslaw kit that’s a combo of sliced cabbage and shredded carrots is a big time-saver. Just measure out 4 cups of the cabbage blend and mix it with the minced cilantro and dressing.  

Wonton taco shells are not a thing you can usually find in stores, so we’ll make our own using wonton wrappers and a skillet of hot oil. When the oil is hot, add a wonton wrapper and use tongs to fold it over diagonally as it fries until it’s crispy on both sides. It takes less than a minute to fry each wonton taco shell, and you’ll get better at it as you go. Just be sure to leave plenty of room in the taco for the delicious fillings to come.  

Try my Applebee's Chicken Wonton Tacos recipe below, and find more copycat recipes from Applebee's here. 

Menu Description: “Sweet caramelized onions, fresh mozzarella, Parmesan, slivered scallions, and cracked black pepper.”

Grill a chicken breast, caramelize half an onion, slow-roast a whole head of garlic, and you’ll have the key ingredients for assembling two amazing clones of the chain’s famous sauce-less Roasted Garlic Chicken Pizza.

You won’t miss the pizza sauce on this “white pizza” since the toppings bring bold flavor, and we don't want to upstage that great taste. Your homemade pizzas will just need a light brushing of olive oil to protect the dough.

CPK’s wood-fired stone ovens are cranked up to a rocket-hot 800 degrees Fahrenheit so pizzas bake in just 3 or 4 minutes. It's not likely you have one of those special ovens at home, but it's still possible to bake these copycat pizzas in a conventional oven in around 10 minutes. I recommend a pizza stone to help brown the bottom of your pizzas, but the recipe will even work fine without one.    

Start your pizzas the day before you plan to eat them so that the dough can rise slowly overnight in your refrigerator. This slow, chilled rise produces fermentation that will ultimately give your crust a better texture and taste. 

I'm including lots of step photos so your pizza will come out looking just like the real CPK roasted garlic chicken pizza. If you like this one, click here to see if I cloned your favorite salads and appetizers from CPK.

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. 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 real Outback Baked Potato 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).

If you like Chick-fil-A's sandwich sauce, you'll love this.

Created by food hacker Todd Wilbur, host of Top Secret Recipe and best-selling author of 12 Top Secret Recipes cookbooks, this copycat Chick-fil-A sauce is inspired by the sweet and smoky secret chicken sandwich sauce that is the top pick at the restaurant. 

Use it on chicken, ham and turkey sandwiches, or as a delicious dipping sauce for chicken fingers and nuggets.

Buy up to 4 bottles to ship for one low price!

11-ounce bottle. Money-back guarantee.

You might also like our Top Secret Burger Special Sauce (like McDonald's Big Mac Sauce) and our Top Secret Chicken Tender Sauce (like Zaxby's and that other famous chicken finger sauce).

Ingredients: Soybean oil, sugar, water, vinegars, eggs, tomato paste, mustard seed, salt, corn syrup, lemon juice, natural smoke flavor, preservatives, garlic, Xanthan gum, onions, red chili peppers, citric acid, turmeric, paprika, annatto, spices.

Nutritional Facts: Serving Size 1 tbsp. Servings per Container 21. Amount per Serving: Calories 90, Total Fat 8 g, Cholesterol 10mg, Sodium 75mg, Total Carbohydrate 3g, Dietary Fiber 0g, Sugars 3g, Protein 0g.

If you like Zaxby's Chicken Finger Sauce, and that other really popular chicken tender sauce, you'll love this!

Created by food hacker Todd Wilbur, host of Top Secret Recipe and best-selling author of 12 Top Secret Recipes cookbooks, this sauce is inspired by the delicious secret chicken finger dipping sauce from Zaxby's, and that other famous chicken tender chain who copied them. 

Use it on chicken fingers, fried shrimp and breaded chicken breast sandwiches.

Buy up to 4 bottles to ship for one low price!

10-ounce bottle. Money-back guarantee.

You might also like our Top Secret Burger Special Sauce (like McDonald's Big Mac Sauce) and our Top Secret Chicken Sandwich Sauce (like Chick-fil-A)

Ingredients: Soybean oil, white distilled vinegar, water, tomato concentrate, eggs, high fructose corn syrup, salt, corn syrup, spices, lemon juice, mustard seed, garlic, molasses, onions, paprika, sugar, citric acid, celery seed, Xanthan gum, preservatives, anchovy extract, autolyzed yeast, natural flavors, tamarind extract, caramel color, sunflower oil

Nutrition Facts: Serving Size 1 tbsp. Servings per Container 20. Amount per Serving: Calories 70, Total Fat 7g, Cholesterol 5mg, Sodium 180mg, Total Carbohydrate 1g, Dietary Fiber 0g, Sugars 1g, Protein 0g.

Domino’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.

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

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

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

Check out more of my cool Subway hacks here.

Like the French Silk Pie that took first prize at the 1951 Pillsbury Bake-Off contest, Marie Callender’s Chocolate Satin Pie features a creamy chocolate mouse in an Oreo cookie crust and it's one of the most requested pies on the menu. The pie has become so popular that a frozen version is available in most supermarkets, but I found that version to be smaller and less delicious than the pies you get from the restaurant, so it's the fresh Marie Callender's Chocolate Satin Pie that I'm cloning here with this recipe.

For the chocolate cookie crust, you'll just need to scrape the filling from 24 Oreo cookies, then grind or pound them down to fine crumbs. After adding butter and baking it, the crust is cooled and then loaded up with the smooth chocolate mousse filling, made with real dark chocolate, cream, and eggs, just like the original. After that, just chill until firm.

When the filling has set in your refrigerator, top your taste-alike Marie Callender's Chocolate Satin Pie with homemade whipped cream (that recipe is here too), and some chocolate sprinkles, and no one will ever suspect it’s not the real deal.

Find more of your favorite Marie Callender's recipes here. 

Chick-fil-A’s popular Frosted Lemonade is a delicious, blended combination of lemonade and the chain’s trademarked Icedream soft serve product. Just like Dairy Queen’s famous soft serve, Icedream looks and tastes like ice cream, but it contains considerably less butterfat since it’s made with milk, rather than cream.

For my Chick-fil-A Frosted Lemonade recipe though, cream-less ice cream is not a necessity. Regular ice cream works just fine here, although light ice cream, which is usually made with a milk base (Blue Bell Vanilla Light Ice Cream is one example), also makes a great clone.

Give yourself a little time for the fresh lemonade to chill in your freezer before adding it to your blender with the other ingredients. In a matter of seconds, when all the ice is crushed, you’ll have two frosty 16-ounce drinks that taste just like the real deal, but at a mere fraction of the cost.

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

It’s not a regular menu item at Panda Express, so if the chain’s great SweetFire Chicken Breast isn’t available at a restaurant near you, you can use my Panda Express SweetFire Chicken Breast recipe below to get your fix. 

I've worked up a simple hack here for the sweet-and-spicy sauce that gets poured over the crispy chicken chunks, and I’m also including a breading technique for perfect bite-size portions of crispy chicken. Add some onions, red bell pepper, and pineapple chunks, and you’ve just made a spot-on copy of the popular limited dish.

Find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out more of my copycat Cheesecake Factory recipes here.

Menu Description: “Two crisp pastry shells stuffed with sweet ricotta and chocolate chip filling, topped with pistachios and powdered sugar.”           

For great traditional cannoli, one need not look any further than a nearby Carrabba’s Italian Grill. The cannoli there are exactly what you want cannoli to be: a crunchy shell that isn’t soggy or too thick, packed with sweetened ricotta cheese filling that’s smooth and not grainy. And with that classic crunchy/creamy combination comes a hint of cinnamon lingering in the background to complete the traditional taste of a legit cannoli.

To make my Carrabba's cannoli recipe, you’ll need 8 cannoli tubes to form the shells. After wrapping circles of dough around these 5-inch long metal tubes, they get deep-fried for a few minutes, resulting in shells that are perfectly golden brown.

As for the filling, it needs to be smooth if you want a good clone, so try to find ricotta cheese that isn’t too grainy. We’ll first strain the cheese overnight so that most of the liquid runs off for a thicker filling, but if your cheese is still grainy, run the filling through a food processor until the cheese is smooth before folding in the whipped cream. Now that’s good cannoli.

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

Waiting for a plane in Philadelphia isn’t so bad if your gate is near the airport location of this 20-unit crab house and sports bar chain where weather delay frustrations melt away over a cold beer, a Philly cheesesteak, and a bucket of Chickie’s & Pete’s Famous Crabfries.

Crabfries, despite the name, do not have any crab on them. When the first Chickie’s & Pete’s opened its doors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1977, the restaurant served crab only in the summer. While brainstorming off-season uses for the seafood seasoning, founder Pete Ciarrocchi sprinkled some over crinkle-cut fries, served them with a side of secret cheese dipping sauce, and the most popular dish at his crab house was born.

The beauty of this Chickie’s & Pete’s Crabfries recipe is its simplicity since you’ll need to prepare only two things, and they’re both easy: the secret crab seasoning and the secret cheese sauce. Since the chain’s cheese sauce is also used on their cheesesteak sandwiches, I surmised that a combination of the two easy-melting cheeses most commonly used on Philly cheesesteaks—white American and Cheez Whiz—would make a sauce with the taste and color of the restaurant version. This smooth sauce goes great with the fries, and it also puts the "Philly" into your next homemade cheesesteak.

Once your cheese sauce is done and your seasoning is mixed, cook up a bag of crinkle-cut fries following the directions on the package, toss them with the seasoning, and serve immediately with the warm cheese sauce on the side.

Find more famous french fry recipes from KFC, Taco Bell, and McDonald's here.

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

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

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

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

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

You might also like my #1 recipe of 2021, Panda Express Chow Mein.

Reviewers 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 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).

Brothers Dave and Larry Raymond came up with a top secret recipe for barbecue sauce that was so good they entered it in Chicago’s Rib Fest barbecue competition in the late ‘80s. The fourth time they entered, in 1985, they took home the 2^nd place trophy. By the following year, they were selling bottles of their now-famous sauce in stores, and the brand became a huge success.

The brothers sold their $30-million-a-year sauce business in 2005, and the brand kept growing. By 2008, Sweet Baby Ray’s was America's #2 best-selling barbecue sauce.

Now, with my Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce recipe, you can make 2 cups of a taste-alike sauce with mostly common ingredients plus pineapple juice, celery salt, and tamarind paste to help nail down the familiar award-winning taste.

Try other famous copycat sauce recipes here.

A great buttermilk biscuit isn’t hard to make. This is good news if you're serving hundreds each day as they do at this popular Southern kitchen chain. But a simple recipe such as this one is also a blessing when you need to whip up a modest batch at home for your hungry gang of biscuit fanatics, and it's an added bonus if they taste as good as the famous biscuits from Cracker Barrel. 

The secret to tender, flakey biscuits like you get at the restaurant chain is using a lower-gluten self-rising flour such as White Lily; a staple for Southern biscuit recipes. A bit of shortening in the mix will help tenderize the finished product, as will a light mixing hand. Overmixing the dough may toughen your biscuits, so mix the dough gently and only as much as you have to.

If you don’t use White Lily flour and go with a heavier self-rising flour such as Gold Medal, take note that you may have to add a couple of tablespoons more buttermilk to the dough to loosen it up. Good biscuit dough should be soft, but not sticky.

After making these Cracker Barrel biscuits from scratch, try home versions of Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole, buttermilk pie, meatloaf, and more.

The delicious beignets Cracker Barrel creates with the chain's famous buttermilk biscuit formula are unlike traditional beignets in that they start with such a tangy dough. But once you add all the sweet stuff—cinnamon-sugar, powdered sugar, and butter-nut sauce—the saltiness is offset, resulting in a perfect harmony of great flavor.

The dough here is a tweaked version of my hack for Cracker Barrel's Buttermilk Biscuits, but unlike that dough where we strive for flakiness in the finished product, this dough won't call for a light stirring hand. Instead, you should give this dough a decent beating in the mixing bowl to tighten it up so that it resists oil absorption when deep-fried.

Along with all the steps and step photos for a great copycat of Cracker Barrel biscuit beignets, I’m also including my new hack for a delicious butter-nut dipping sauce that tastes just like what the chain serves, except this one is made with real butter. 

Find more of your favorite Cracker Barrel dishes here. 

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

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

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

Once the oil is hot and the sauce is made, it takes just 5 minutes to get this delish dish on your table.      

Have you decided on an entrée to serve with this? There are a lot more P.F. Chang's copycat recipes here.

Sherwood Johnson survived a case of malaria while serving in World War II, which left him with some residual nerve damage and a new nickname: Shakey. Despite his affliction, Shakey Johnson was still able to bang out toe-tapping Dixieland jazz on the piano night after night in the pizza parlor he opened in Sacramento in 1954, where live jazz accompanied the thin crust pizza and cold pitchers of beer.

Shakey’s became the first franchised pizza restaurant in the U.S., and by 1974 the chain had 500 stores across the U.S. The #1 dish is clearly the made-to-order pizza, but the chain’s trademarked crispy battered potato slices are a close runner-up and a perfect tasty subject to hack.

Recipes that claim complete pancake mix is the secret breading ingredient in Mojo Potatoes fail to observe that pancake mix contains sugar, and there is no noticeable sweetness in the breading of the Mojos. I also decided that dry breading wouldn't work since in my tests the paprika failed to bloom and give the coating a perfect hue like it does when the mixture is wet.

I eventually settled on a simple wet batter made with seasoned salt, flour, and little cornstarch for crunch to best match the flavor, crispiness, and red/orange tint of the real thing from America’s first pizza chain. Use this original technique, and these handy step photos, to make extra crispy potatoes the Shakey's way.

There's your appetizer, now what's for dinner? Find clones for some of your favorite famous entrées here.

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

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

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

You might also like my #1 recipe of 2020, Rao's Homemade Marinara Sauce.

This chain’s not-spicy original chicken sandwich which debuted in 1964 was the first chicken sandwich introduced to America by a fast food chain, and it put Chick-fil-A on the map. By diversifying the menu with new products such as this kicked-up version of the famous sandwich, the chain grew over the years to become the #1 chicken restaurant in the nation, and this sandwich is now one of the most popular picks on the menu board.

The secrets for a good clone of the Chick-fil-A Spicy Deluxe Chicken Sandwich lie in the brine and the breading. I recently obtained some insider intel confirming the long-standing rumor that pickle juice is the brine. I hadn’t called for it in my prior Chick-fil-A clones because the listed ingredients for the sandwich didn’t include it. I’m not sure why that is, but my latest test versions with the pickle juice were noticeably better, so now it’s in there. You should also know that MSG is an important ingredient in both the brine and breading, so don’t leave that out if you want the best clone.

Use this special trick to get three perfect sandwich-size cutlets out of each chicken breast, and then give the chicken a nice 4-hour brine. Your patience will be rewarded with one of the best chicken sandwich hacks to come out of a home kitchen. 

Now, check out my version of Chick-fil-A Mac and Cheese!

Menu Description: “Sauteed seasoned chicken, shrimp, and spaghetti tossed in a creamy sauce with bacon and roasted red peppers.”

Re-creating this top entrée from Olive Garden allowed me to come up with an easy way to assemble a delicious carbonara from scratch. Traditional carbonara sauce in Italy is usually made with guanciale and sometimes pancetta. But in America and other English-speaking countries carbonara is typically made with bacon, as is this one served at Olive Garden, so that’s what we’ll do for our clone.

Many traditional carbonara recipes also call for egg, but Olive Garden makes the carbonara sauce for this dish in a different, and much simpler, way: they combine bits of bacon with their classic alfredo sauce which I cloned long ago. In this tweaked version of that sauce, the bacon flavors the sauce while it simmers resulting in a perfect match.

The red pepper gets roasted in your oven, and the chicken and shrimp are sautéed on the stovetop. Put it all together, and you've got four generous servings of Olive Garden Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara with that fabulous sauce, and an impressive dinner for your hungry carbonara cravers.

Try my Olive Garden Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara recipe below, and find more of your favorite Olive Garden copycat recipes here. 

These flat, crepe-like flapjacks are reminiscent of the hotcakes eaten by miners during the California Gold Rush of 1849, and they're also a signature dish at the Original Pancake House chain. These beauties are thin, slightly chewy, somewhat sweet, and so big they cover your entire plate. And a home hack is one of the easiest things you’ll ever cook. Because morning food shouldn’t be complicated.

Making my Original Pancake House 49'er pancake recipe is a simple matter of mixing up a thin pancake batter and cooking it in a pan coated with clarified butter. Clarified butter has the milk solids removed, so it won’t brown, and I’ll show you how to make it in the first step. The Original Pancake House uses clarified butter, so we should do the same.

Swirl the batter in the butter to the edges of your pan, cook it for a couple of minutes, then flip it over and cook it for another minute. Stack the warm flapjacks on a plate and serve them with soft butter and maple syrup on the side. 

Also, check out my version of the Original Pancake House Apple Pancake for a decadent cinnamon apple-filled delight.

Menu Description: “Sauteed chicken, shrimp, red bell peppers in a spicy Cajun Alfredo sauce, Parmesan-Romano and fettuccine. Served with a warm garlic breadstick.”  

In 1997, I published a clone recipe for T.G.I Friday’s Spicy Cajun Chicken Pasta because it was one of the chain’s most popular dishes at the time. But as the years pass and menus get tweaked, old food favorites are decommissioned to make way for fresh, new ideas. Sometimes the new dishes are twists on old favorites, as is this improved version of the classic Spicy Cajun Chicken Pasta, which now includes extra-large shrimp and a better spicy alfredo sauce.  

My T.G.I. Friday's Cajun Shrimp and Chicken Pasta recipe starts with a quick brine for moist, flavorful chicken. Prep the chicken and creamy sauce in one pan; the shrimp, bell pepper, and garlic in another.

When you’re ready to serve the dish, toss the sauce with the pasta, then plate it and top it with minced parsley and you've got a perfect restaurant-style hack.

There's a lot more T.G.I. Friday's clone recipes over here. 

Traditional Italian doughnuts are often made with soft choux dough dropped by a spoon into the oil, resulting in light and crispy puff pastries. Others—like what Olive Garden serves—are made with tighter dough for a finished product that is more substantial, like beignets. That's the pastry you'll be making here, and it's pretty darn easy, once you know the secret dough formula.

In Italy, Zeppoles (Olive Garden changed the spelling a bit) are often filled with fruit or jelly and always come dusted with granulated or powdered sugar. In this case, Olive Garden's Zeppolis are unfilled with dipping sauce on the side, and they're tossed in extra-fine granulated sugar (baker’s sugar).

At the restaurant, you get a plate of warm Zeppolis with your choice of raspberry sauce or chocolate sauce. But why choose? My Olive Garden Zeppolis recipe here makes 2 dozen pillowy pastries, which you can serve with both raspberry and chocolate dipping sauces, or with any sweet sauce you like. 

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

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

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

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

There 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).

A recipe for Portuguese sweet bread inspired the soft rolls that became a big hit at Robert Tiara's Bakery & Restaurant in Honolulu, Hawaii in the 1950s. It wasn’t long before Robert changed the name of his thriving business to King’s Hawaiian, and in 1977 the company opened its first bakery on the mainland, in Torrance, California, to make the now-famous island sweet rolls sold in stores across the U.S.

King’s Hawaiian Rolls are similar to Texas Roadhouse Rolls in that they are both pillowy, sweet white rolls, so it made sense to dig out my Texas Roadhouse Rolls clone recipe and use it as a starting point. These new rolls had to be slightly softer and sweeter, so I made some adjustments and added a little egg for color. And by baking the dough in a high-rimmed baking pan with 24 dough balls placed snugly together, I ended up with beautiful rolls that rose nicely to the occasion, forming a tear-apart loaf just like the original King's Hawaiian Rolls, but with clean ingredients, and without the dough conditioners found in the packaged rolls.

Use my King's Hawaiian Sweet Rolls recipe for sandwiches, sliders, or simply warmed up and slathered with soft European butter.

This recipe was our #3 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), Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken (#4), Chipotle Mexican Grill Carnitas (#5).

Braised 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).

I 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).

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

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

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

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

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

You might also like my #1 recipe of 2019, Texas Roadhouse Rolls.

For decades, Carl’s Jr. has effectively cornered the market on fried zucchini at major fast food chains by serving a great crispy breaded version that’s flavorful all the way through. Now you can make zucchini that tastes just as good, as long as you know the secret step that other fried zucchini recipes miss. It makes all the difference.

The secret is a brine. I found that this fried zucchini tastes best when it takes a salted water bath before breading. In 60 minutes, the salt in the brine is absorbed by the zucchini, spreading good flavor all the way through. After the brine, the zucchini is rinsed, coated twice with flour and once with seasoned breadcrumbs, and fried to a beautiful golden brown.

I’m giving you a couple choices here. You can make the recipe all the way through and serve it immediately, or if you want to serve it later, you can par-fry the zucchini and freeze it for several days. After that, when an occasion arises, a couple minutes is all it takes to finish off the dish and serve it. My Carl's Jr. Fried Zucchini recipe makes enough for a small gathering, but you can easily cut it in half for a more intimate hang.

Click here for more amazing Carl's Jr. copycat recipes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find more of my KFC copycat recipes here.

Menu Description: "Smoked ham, smoked turkey, two cheeses, battered and fried until golden with raspberry preserves and dusted with powdered sugar."

When pondering casual chains with the best Monte Cristo sandwiches, two come to mind: Bennigan's and Cheddar's recipes. At each chain the sandwich is built with turkey, ham, and cheese, then it’s battered and fried, dusted with powdered sugar, and served with raspberry preserves for dipping. It probably sounds strange if you've never had one, but Monte Cristo alums know it all tastes pretty darn great together. I hacked Bennigans' version years ago for my cookbook Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2, and recently, on a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, I was able to get my hands on Cheddars' signature version of this famous sandwich.

I planned for the mission by bringing along a cooler of ice so that I could get a fresh sample safely back home. Once I was back in the lab in Vegas, I subjected the sandwich to a series of tasty tests, burned through several versions of batter, and eventually assembled this new Cheddar's Monte Cristo copycat recipe that I think is even better than my previous Bennigan's hack. The better batter is the big secret here—it's light and crispy and perfectly golden brown, and the sandwich features two kinds of cheese, both white and yellow American. Will this be the best Monte Cristo you've ever had? You’re about to find out.

A requirement of any visit to Chicago is eating at least one slice of deep dish pizza in the city that perfected it. Deep dish pizza quickly became a Chicago staple after Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo opened the first Pizzeria Uno in 1943 and served a hearty new style of pizza constructed in a high-rimmed cake pan. The yeast crust was tender and flakey, like a pastry, and the cheese was layered under the sauce so that it wouldn’t burn in a hot oven for the long cooking time.

While researching a home hack of this now-iconic recipe, I discovered an unexpected technique that I hadn’t seen in other deep dish recipes. Employees told me the pizza crusts are partially cooked each morning to cut down on the wait time for customers. Before the restaurant opens each day, cooks press the dough into a pan and then sprinkle it with a little shredded cheese. The shells are then partially baked and set aside. Later, when an order comes in, the pizza is built into one of the par-baked crusts and finished off. This way customers get their food faster, and the tables turn over quicker.

Copying that delicious, flakey crust was the task that took me the longest. After two weeks of baking, I finally settled on a formula that was a mash-up of yeast dough and pie crust and made a perfectly tender deep dish crust, with great flavor that exactly mimicked the original. If you like Uno, you'll love this! 

Regarding the cheese: be sure your cheese is at room temperature, not cold, or it may not melt all the way through. Also, it’s best if you buy cheese by the block and shred it yourself. Pre-shredded cheese is dusted with cornstarch so that the shreds don’t stick together in the bag, and it won’t melt as smoothly as cheese you shred by hand.

My Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza recipe will make enough sauce for two pizzas. I just thought you should know that in case you get the urge to make another deep dish after this one disappears.

This recipe was our #4 most popular in 2019. Check out the other four most unlocked recipes of the year: Texas Roadhouse Rolls (#1) KFC Extra Crispy Fried Chicken (#2), Olive Garden Braised Beef Bolognese (#3), Bush's Country Style Baked Beans (#5).

Hooters debuted a new flavor and style of their famous chicken wings in 2013 with the introduction of Daytona Beach Style Wings—naked wings (not breaded) that are fried, sauced, and grilled. The new menu item was a sales success, eclipsing the famous buffalo-style wings the chain had become known for, making it imperative that we have a delicious and accurate Hooters Daytona Beach style wings copycat recipe. And now we do.

To build an identical home version of Hooters Daytona Wings, you’ll first need to make a knockoff of the delicious Daytona sauce to brush over the wings. It’s a combination of barbecue sauce and the same cayenne sauce used to coat traditional buffalo wings, plus a few other important ingredients that make the sauce special—and things you won’t find in other hacks—like Worcestershire sauce and minced jalapeños. The wings are coated, grilled for just a minute on each side, then sauced again for maximum flavor. Stack the napkins close by and get something tall to drink, because these messy wings are guaranteed to deliver a super-spicy kick to your food hole.

Find more of my Hooters copycat recipes here.

Menu Description: "The one and only! The style we invented over 30 years ago; they're breaded by hand, tossed in your choice of wing sauce and served by your favorite Hooters girl."

When I first hacked this recipe back in 1997 for the book Top Secret Restaurant Recipes, Hooters wings looked different than they do today. The chain used to leave the pointy end of the wing attached to the middle piece, or “flat,” which, frankly, is unnecessary because there is very little meat on the tip segment. Today the chain serves wings like everyone else, with drumettes and flats completely separated, and delivered by waitresses in the same bright orange shorts as when the chain started in 1983.

One thing that wasn't available to me back then was the opportunity to examine the chain’s packaging for the lists of ingredients on signature items like sauces and breading. Today, since they sell these items as retail products, I can take advantage of labeling laws that require ingredients to be clearly listed and see what really goes into these recipes. Using that new information, I’ve made a few small tweaks to improve my Hooters Wings recipe from over 20 years ago, including two versions of the kickass wing sauce—medium and hot—for your wing-devouring pleasure.

Find more of my Hooters copycat recipes here.

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

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

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.