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!

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

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

Steve Ellis used his Culinary Institute of America training to develop a simple menu for the first Chipotle Mexican Grill he opened in 1993 near the University of Denver. Today Chipotle has grown to more than 700 units, and the chain continues to serve a relatively limited selection (compared to other Mexican chains) of burritos, tacos, and salads that are made-to-order, with unprocessed and hormone-free ingredients. 

Just as when ordering a burrito or taco, you get to choose the meat, beans, salsa, and cheese that will top your romaine lettuce salad. The finishing touch is an amazing house dressing that's made fresh every day. It's sweet, it's tangy, it's smoky, and it's packing some heat. It's also a quick recipe to duplicate with just a blender and a dozen common ingredients, including ground chipotle chile, which you can usually find near the ground cayenne. After you whip up my Chipotle Mexican Grill Chipotle-Honey Vinaigrette recipe below, let it chill out in the fridge for an hour or two. If you do, you'll have a perfect flavor match and enough dressing for at least 10 salads.

Now, how about making Chipotle's famous barbacoa, carnitas, carne asada or pollo asado? Find all of those recipes and more here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

During the holiday months, you'd better get over to Starbucks bright and early if you want to sink your teeth into a delicious pumpkin scone. These orange triangles of happiness are made with real pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices, and they quickly vanish from the pastry case when fall rolls around. Each scone is generously coated with a plain glaze, and then spiced icing is drizzled over the top. To get the crumbly texture, cut cold butter into the dry ingredients, either with a pastry knife or by pulsing it in a food processor until all the butter chunks have been worked in. 

My Starbucks Pumpkin Scone copycat recipe calls for 1/2 can of pumpkin purée. Use the leftover purée to make Starbucks pumpkin bread or a pumpkin spice latte.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

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

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

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

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The talented chefs at Benihana cook food on hibachi grills with flair and charisma, treating the preparation like a tiny stage show. They juggle salt and pepper shakers, trim food with lightning speed, and flip the shrimp and mushrooms perfectly onto serving plates or into their tall chef's hat.

One of the side dishes that everyone seems to love is the fried rice. At Benihana this dish is prepared by chefs with precooked rice on open hibachi grills, and is ordered a la cart to complement any Benihana entrée, including Hibachi Steak and Chicken. I like when the rice is thrown onto the hot hibachi grill and seems to come alive as it sizzles and dances around like a bunch of little jumping beans. Okay, so I'm easily amused.

My Benihana Japanese fried rice copycat recipe will go well with just about any Japanese entrée, and can be partially prepared ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator until the rest of the meal is close to done.

Re-create more of your favorite dishes from Benihana here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The most popular recipe circulating on the internet and among Food Network chefs who claim it as their own makes decent marshmallows, but the ubiquitous formula won’t pass as a hack for America’s favorite marshmallows, Jet-Puffed. I know this for sure because my eleven-year-old daughter says so, and she’s the House Marshmallow Expert (HME).

According to our HME, the internet recipe makes marshmallows that are too sweet, and they don't have the right flavor. After testing the sweetness for myself I decided she was right, so I reduced the sugar for my Jet-Puffed Marshmallow copycat recipe. I also adjusted the flavor by adding more vanilla, and after another taste test, my batch of fresh marshmallows got the HME seal of approval.

But the shape was still wrong.

One thing you’ll notice about homemade marshmallow recipes is that they all make cubic marshmallows, which are hand-sliced from one sheet of marshmallow that has set up in a square pan. But Jet-Puffed Marshmallows aren’t cubes, they’re cylindrical, and I wanted marshmallows like that. So, borrowing a technique for cornstarch molds used by candy manufacturers, I came up with a way you can make cylindrical marshmallows just like the big boys do. All you need is cornstarch and a muffin pan. You’ll find instructions for cylindrical marshmallows at the bottom of the recipe in the Tidbits if you want to give the more authentic shape a try.

Regardless of what shape you decide to make, a stand mixer and a candy thermometer will help you turn out the best-ever homemade marshmallows—which, by the way, make fantastic s'mores.

Outback makes their sauces and salad dressings from scratch every day following master formulas in a corporate cookbook. Now you've got a secret recipe of your own that will duplicate the taste of their hugely popular house honey mustard recipe. You'll need just three basic ingredients and only about two minutes of free time to make my Outback honey mustard dressing recipe.

Try more recipes for your favorite dishes from Outback here. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Our melt-in-your-mouth cream cheese pie with a tangy lemon topping."

Here's a great double-layered pie with lemon topping covering a creamy cheesecake filling. It's two great pies in one dessert. This creation has been a huge seller for Marie Callender's, and I've heard nothing but raves from anyone who's tried it. Make the crust from scratch like the pros using my Marie Callender's lemon cream cheese pie copycat recipe here, or take the easy route with a pre-made graham cracker crust found in the baking aisle. Either way, it's pie heaven. 

Banana Cream more your speed? Check out more of my Marie Callender's pie recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

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

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

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

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

Try more awesome Chili's copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

You're not in the mood for pumpkin pie, but you want to bake something with pumpkin in it for the holidays. Give my Mrs. Fields Pumpkin Harvest Cookies recipe below a shot. You'll use pure canned pumpkin, plus there are pecans in there and chunks of white chocolate that can be chopped up from bars. Pull the cookies out when they're still soft in the middle and just slightly browned around the edges, and you'll produce 2 dozen perfectly baked pumpkin-pumped happy pucks.

Update 10/12/17: A more accurate measurement for the flour in this recipe is 14 ounces by weight. If you don't have a scale, add another 2 tablespoons to the 2 1/2 cups of flour called for in the recipe. Also, you may get better results if you bake the cookies at 325 degrees for 16 minutes, or until they are just beginning to turn light brown around the bottom edges.

Check out my other Mrs. Fields copycat recipes here. 

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Exclusive signed copy. Todd Wilbur shares his best kept secrets for making knockoffs of your favorite drinks—right in your own kitchen and without spending a lot of money.

You can re-create the delicious taste of America's most popular brand-name soft drinks, beverages, dessert drinks, mixers, and liqueurs by following Todd's easy, step-by-step instructions. If it comes in a glass, cup, bottle, or mug, it's here for you to clone at home.

Discover how to make your own versions of: Nestea, Cinnabon Icescape, Jamba Juice Smoothies, Orange Julius, Red Robin Jamaican Shake, Bailey's Irish Cream, Sonic Drive In Cream Pie Shakes, Dairy Queen Blizzard. Plus dozens of specialty drinks from T.G.I Friday's, Chili's, Hard Rock Cafe, Outback Steakhouse, Applebee's, House of Blues, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Claim Jumper, and many more from your favorite restaurant chains. Over 200 popular recipes in all!

Other books you may like: Even More Top Secret Recipes and Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3.

Sodas
A&W Cream Soda
A&W Root Beer
Coca-Cola
Orange Slice
7UP
Sonic Drive-In Cherry Limeade
Sonic Drive-In Strawberry Limeade
Sonic Drive-In Ocean Water
Squirt
T.G.I. Friday's November Sea Breeze Fling
T.G.I. Friday's Strawberry Surprise Fling

Smoothies
Applebee's Bananaberry Freeze
Baskin-Robbins Peach Smoothie
Baskin-Robbins Strawberry Smoothie
Baskin-Robbins Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Baskin-Robbins Wild Berry Banana Smoothie
Jamba Juice Banana Berry
Jamba Juice Citrus Squeeze
Jamba Juice Cranberry Craze
Jamba Juice Orange-A-Peel
Jamba Juice Peach Pleasure
Jamba Juice Strawberries  Wild
Orange Julius Pineapple Julius
Orange Julius Strawberry Julius
Red Robin Chillin Mango Smoothie
Red Robin Groovy Smoothies
Starbucks Tazoberry Tea
Starbucks Tazoberry Tea & Cream
T.G.I. Friday's Tropical Oasis Smoothie

Shakes
Arby's Jamocha Shake
Baskin-Robbins B.R. Blast--Cappuccino
Baskin-Robbins B.R. Blast--Mocha
Cinnabon Icescapes--Strawberry
Cinnabon Icescapes--Orange
Cinnabon Icescapes--Mochalatta Chill
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Baby Ruth
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Banana Pudding
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Banana Split
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Berry Banana
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Chocolate Chip
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Hawaiian
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Whopp'n' Wild
Dairy Queen Blizzard--Yukon Cruncher
Jack in the Box Oreo Cookie Shake
McDonald's McFlurry--Butterfinger
McDonald's McFlurry--M&M's
McDonald's McFlurry--Oreo Cookie
McDonald's McFlurry--Reese's
McDonald's Shakes--Chocolate
McDonald's Shakes--Strawberry
McDonald's Shakes--Vanilla
McDonald's Shamrock Shake
Sonic Drive-In Cream Pie Shakes--Banana
Sonic Drive-In Cream Pie Shakes--Chocolate
Sonic Drive-In Cream Pie Shakes--Coconut
Sonic Drive-In Cream Pie Shakes--Strawberry
Starbucks Frozen Frappuccino--Coffee
Starbucks Frozen Frappuccino--Caramel
Starbucks Frozen Frappuccino--Mocha Coconut
Wendy's Frosty

Other Sips
Arizona Green Tea w/Ginseng and Honey
Arizona Iced Tea w/Ginseng
Cinnabon Strawberry Lemonade
General Foods International Coffees--Cafe Vienna
General Foods International Coffees--French Vanilla Cafe
General Foods International Coffees--Hazelnut Belgian Cafe
General Foods International Coffees--Suisse Mocha
General Foods International Coffees--Viennese Chocolate Cafe
Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red
Hot Dog On A Stick Muscle Beach Lemonade
Minute Maid All Natural Lemonade
Nestea Natural Lemon Flavored Iced Tea
Red Robin Freckled lemonade
Red Robin Strawberry Ecstasy
7-Eleven Cherry Slurpee
Snapple Iced Tea--Cranberry Iced Tea
Snapple Iced Tea--Diet Lemon Iced Tea
Snapple Iced Tea--Lemon Iced Tea
Snapple Iced Tea--Orange Iced Tea
Snapple Iced Tea--Peach Iced Tea
Snapple Iced Tea--Raspberry Iced Tea
Sunny Delight
Yoo-Hoo Chocolate Drink
Yoo-Hoo Mix-ups--Chocolate-Banana
Yoo-Hoo Mix-ups--Chocolate-Mint
Yoo-Hoo Mix-ups--Chocolate-Strawberry

Spirits: Schnapps & Liqueurs
Bailey's Original Irish Cream
Dekuyper Thrilla Vanilla French Vanilla Liqueur
Disaronno Amaretto
Grand Marnier Liqueur
Hiram Walker Annisette Liqueur
Hiram Walker Creme De Banana Liqueur
Hiram Walker Creme De Cacao Liqueur
Hiram Walker Creme De Menthe Liqueur
Hiram Walker Creme De Strawberry Liqueur
Hiram Walker Razz Attack Raspberry Schnapps
Hiram Walker Root Beer Schnapps
Kahlua Coffee Liqueur
Marie Brizard Watermelon Liqueur
Midori Melon Liqueur

Spirits: Cocktails
Applebee's Bananaberry Split
Applebee's Blue Skies
Applebee's Perfect Margarita
Applebee's Summer Squeeze
Bahama Breeze Bahama Mama
Bahama Breeze Caribbean Magic
Bahama Breeze Malimbo Breeze
Bahama Breeze Verry Berry Good
Bennigan's Emerald Isle Iced Tea
Bennigan's Irish Coffee
Bennigan's O'Malley's Orange Cooler
Bennigan's Raspberry Road Iced Tea
Cheesecake Factory Caribbean Cooler
Cheesecake Factory Key Lime Martini
Cheesecake Factory J.W. Pink Lemonade
Cheesecake Factory Twilight Zone
Cheesecake Factory Tropical Martini
Chevys 100% Blue Agave Margarita
Chevys House Rocks Margarita
Chevys Lava Lamp Margarita
Chevys The Sunburn Margarita
Chevys Ultimate Orange Margarita
Chevys Watermelon Fresh Fruit Margarita (On the Rocks)
Chili's Calypso Cooler
Chili's Chambord 1800 Margarita
Chili's Jamaican Paradise
Chili's Mandrin Blush
Chili's Margarita Presidente
Chili's Tropical Sunburn
Chili's Twisted Lemonade
Claim Jumper Absolutely Electric Lemonade
Claim Jumper Bermuda Sunset
Claim Jumper Hawaiian Punch
Claim Jumper Mai Tai
Claim Jumper Otter Pop
Claim Jumper Root Beer Float
Claim Jumper Shark On The Beach
Claim Jumper Tropical Storm
Hard Rock Cafe The Hard Rock Hurricane
Hard Rock Cafe Lynchburg Lo--Rider
Hard Rock Cafe Shooters--Lemon Drop
Hard Rock Cafe Shooters--Purple Shooter
House of Blues Eve's Revenge Martini
House of Blues HOB Blue Martini
House of Blues HOB Cruiser
House of Blues Mo' Betta Blues
Joe's Crab Shack Joe Makin' Me Java
Joe's Crab Shack Joe's Ya Ya
Joe's Crab Shack Red Snapper
Joe's Crab Shack Secret Passion Punch
Joe's Crab Shack Shark Tooth
Joe's Crab Shack Swamp Moss
Olive Garden Chocolate Almond Amore
Olive Garden Italian Margarita
Olive Garden Strawberry Siciliano
Olive Garden Venetian Sunset
Outback Steakhouse Coral Reef  'Rita
Outback Steakhouse Don't Koala Me, I'll Koala You Cooler
Outback Steakhouse Great Barrier Punch
Outback Steakhouse Melbourne Cooler
Outback Steakhouse Wallaby Darned
P.F. Chang's Buddha's Dream
P.F. Chang's Heat Wave
P.F. Chang's Nutty Uncle Chang's Favorite
P.F. Chang's The Poolside
Planet Hollywood The Comet
Planet Hollywood Cool Running
Planet Hollywood Meet Jack Black
Planet Hollywood Shooters--Blue Hawaii
Planet Hollywood Shooters--Bubble Gum
Planet Hollywood Shooters--Grape Crush
Planet Hollywood Shooters--Peanut Butter & Jelly
Planet Hollywood Sweet Death Becomes Her
Planet Hollywoo0d Terminator
Red Lobster Bahama Mama
Red Lobster Butter-Tini Funtini
Red Lobster The Hawaiian Funtini
Red Lobster Red Passion Colada
Red Robin Absolut Lemonade
Red Robin Jamaican Shake
Red Robin Sand In Your Shorts
Red Robin T.N.T
T.G.I. Friday's Banana Split Blender Blaster
T.G.I. Friday's Electric Lemonade
T.G.I. Friday's Hawaiian Volcano
T.G.I. Friday's June Bug
T.G.I. Friday's Lights of Havana
T.G.I. Friday's Strawberry Shortcake Blender Blaster
Z'Tejas Z' Big Stick Margarita
Z'Tejas Famous Chambord Raspberry Margarita

Spirits: Mixers
Beau Rivage Bloody Mary Mix
Mara Simple Syrup
Mr. & Mrs. T Bloody Mary Mix
Mr. & Mrs. T Sweet & Sour Mix
Restaurant-Style Mai Tai Mix
Restaurant-Style Pina Colada Mix
Restaurant-Style Sweet & Sour Mix

A deserted Kroger grocery store in Richfield, Minnesota, was the site for the first Chi-Chi's in 1976. That was the year restaurateur Marno McDermott got together with ex-Green Bay Packer football player Max McGee to open the first of what would soon become a growing chain of Mexican food restaurants. Today, with around 100 restaurants found mostly in the Midwestern and Eastern states, Chi-Chi's has become famous for its large portions of food, and for the expression, "don't touch the plate, it's very hot!" 

Alongside many of the entrees served at the restaurant is this sweet side dish. It's sort of like a combination of custard and cornbread, with corn and cornmeal in it. But the original is loaded with butter. That means if you eat just a very small scoop of the tasty corn cake you'll be putting away around a dozen grams of fat. By using light butter or margarine and substituting milk for the heavy cream, we knock those fat grams down to about half of the real thing served in the restaurant. Yet the flavor and texture is just as good.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size–1 scoop
Total servings–8
Calories per serving–125 (Original–185)
Fat per serving–6.5g (Original–13g)

Source: Top Secret Recipes Lite by Todd Wilbur.

This delicious fall offering arrives frozen to each Starbucks store and is thawed out just before opening in the morning. The pumpkin cream cheese muffins were especially popular in the fall of 2008. According to my local Starbucks manager, a memo fired off to all stores warned of a shortage in the product and that inventory in most states would be depleted before the holidays arrived. That was enough information to get me quickly working on a seriously great Starbucks pumpkin cream cheese muffin recipe, and here you go. 

First, sweeten some cream cheese and get it back in the fridge to firm up. It's much easier to work into the top of the muffins when it's cold. The pumpkin seeds that are sprinkled on top of each muffin get candied in a large skillet with brown sugar and cinnamon. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper muffin cups, add the muffin batter and some cream cheese, top with the candied pumpkins seeds, and then bake. Soon you'll have a dozen fresh clones of the amazing muffins, and you'll always be prepared for the next pumpkin cream cheese muffin shortage.

See if I cloned more of your favorites from Starbucks here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

No one is sure exactly which restaurant invented toasted ravioli, but we do know the dish originated in St. Louis sometime in the 40s. Olive Garden's delicious take on the appetizer can be cloned with ease using one of several varieties of pre-made raviolis carried in just about any supermarket. It's best to use the fresher raviolis found in the refrigerated section, but you can also use frozen ones; you just have to let them thaw first before breading them.

The original has a beefy inside, but you can use any ravioli that tickles your fancy including chicken, sausage, vegetarian, or cheese. As for the breading, find Progresso brand Italian style breadcrumbs. Contadina is another popular brand, but their version is much too salty for a good clone.

Try my Olive Garden toasted ravioli copycat recipe below, and find more of my Olive Garden copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Menu Description: "Our famous pumpkin pie has just the right amount of spice."

The vittles from Marie Callender's have made an impression beyond the chain's West Coast roots with home-style packaged entrées and side dishes available in frozen food sections of supermarkets across the country. Pie making is where the chain excels. A fresh slice of a Marie Callender's pie is as close as you'll get to homemade heaven this side of Grandma's porch window. Creating a recipe for Marie Callender's Pumpkin Pie is an obvious selection, since the restaurant sells more pumpkin pies than any other, even in non-holiday months. 

Creating my Marie Callender's Pumpkin Pie copycat recipe was a perfect opportunity to improve on icky pumpkin pie recipes (like those found on cans of canned pumpkin, for example) in many ways. For one thing, there's no need to use canned evaporated milk when fresh whole milk and cream is so much better. And three eggs, versus two found in many recipes, will add to the richness and firmness of the cooked filling. After mixing the filling, we'll let it sit for a bit while waiting for the oven to preheat. This way it can come closer to room temperature, and the pie filling will bake more evenly. My recipe included here for the crust uses a chilled combination of butter and shortening for the perfect mix of flavor and flakiness. If you find your crust getting too dark on top during baking, use a pie crust shield or mold some foil around the top of the crust to prevent it from over-browning.

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

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Other Mexican food chains such as Chi-Chi's and El Torito call it "Sweet Corn Cake." But at Chevys, the corn-filled, pudding-like stuff that's served with most entrees is known as "Tomalito." Masa harina is what's used to make tamales, and it can be found in your supermarket either with the corn meal and flour, or where the other Mexican/Spanish items are stocked. Everything else here is basic stuff. While other corn cake recipes may require canned corn or canned cream-style corn, Chevys "no cans in the kitchen" commandment requires that my Chevys Sweet Corn Tomalito recipe calls for fresh corn for a proper clone.

See if I hacked more of your favorites from Chevys here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

Abiding by this large Mexican food chain's "no cans in the kitchen" edict, we'll craft our clone of the delicious flan dessert with fresh whole milk, rather than canned sweetened condensed milk required by most flan recipes out there. The canned stuff has a bit of a funky taste to it anyway, plus it's much too sweet to be an accurate Chevys knockoff. 

When you're ready to make my Chevys Flan recipe below, be sure to get some parchment paper. When laid over the top of the baking pan, the parchment paper helps the flan cook faster and more evenly than if left uncovered. Aluminum foil doesn't seem to work as well since it tends to reflect the heat away from the ramekins of sweet, creamy goodness.

See if I hacked more of your favorites from Chevys here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

GrandMa's Cookie Company was founded back in 1914 by Foster Wheeler, but it wasn't until 1977 that the company introduced the popular Big Cookie. This large, soft cookie comes two to a pack and is offered in several varieties, including oatmeal raisin. Now you can bake up a couple batches of your own with my GrandMa's oatmeal raisin cookies copycat recipe. Just be sure not to over bake these. You want the cookies soft and chewy when cool—just like a happy grandma would make. Be sure to take the cookies out of the oven when they are just beginning to turn light brown around the edges.

You might also like my copycat for GrandMa's Peanut Butter Big Cookies.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 1/13/17: For an improved GrandMa's Big Cookies recipe, replace the 1/2 cup shortening with 3/4 cup softened unsalted butter. Also, reduce baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoons and cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon. Raising the oven temperature a little—to 300 degrees F—will help with browning and still keep the cookies chewy. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes.

Early in 1997 Wendy's introduced its selection of cold "Fresh Stuffed" pita sandwiches—a nice change of pace from the typical fast food fare. Basically what you're getting is a small salad wrapped in a warm pita bread. You might be saying to yourself "That doesn't sound like much for 3 bucks!" Then I would say, "Perhaps, but what if you could make a clone yourself for a mere fraction of that?" You would say, "Cool, man! Lay it on me." And then I would say, "Here you go." 

And now, since Wendy's took these cool little sandwiches off their menu, you can use my Wendy's Chicken Caesar Fresh Stuffed Pita recipe below and enjoy them at home.

You might also want to try my recipes for Wendy's classic Greek fresh stuffed pita sandwich.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

If those cute little cookie peddlers aren't posted outside the market, it may be tough to get your hands on these thin mint cookies—the most popular cookies sold by the Girl Scouts every spring. One out of every four boxes of cookies sold by the girls is Thin Mints. 

My Girl Scout cookie thin mint copycat recipe uses an improved version of the chocolate wafers created for my Oreo cookie clone in the second TSR book, More Top Secret Recipes. That recipe creates 108 cookie wafers, so when you're done dipping, you'll have the equivalent of three boxes of the Girl Scout Cookies favorite. That's why you bought those extra cookie sheets, right? You could, of course, reduce this recipe by baking only one-third of the cookie dough for the wafers and then reducing the coating ingredients by one-third, giving you a total of 36 cookies. But that may not be enough to last you until next spring.

Click here for more of your favorite Girl Scout Cookies. 

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Update 11/16/17: You can make an even better clone using a chocolate product that wasn't available when I created this recipe. Rather than using the semi-sweet chocolate chips combined with shortening and peppermint for coating the cookies, use Ghirardelli Dark Melting Wafers. You will need 2 10-ounce bags of the chips, mixed with 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract (and no shortening). Melt the chocolate the same way, and dip the cookies as instructed.

While most restaurant chains attempt to keep their menus simple so as not to tax the kitchen, the Cheesecake Factory's menu contains more than 200 items on a 17-page menu. And at the end of the meal there are 40 cheesecakes to choose from for dessert, including the delicious Pumpkin Cheesecake hacked here for you.

Use an 8-inch springform pan for my Cheesecake Factory Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe. If you don't have one, you should get one. They're indispensable for thick, gourmet cheesecake and several other scrumptious desserts. If you don't want to use a springform pan, this recipe will also work with two 9-inch pie plates. You'll just end up with two smaller cheesecakes. 

Find more of your favorites from Cheesecake Factory here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

The year 1963 was a big one in McDonald's history. The 500th McDonald's restaurant opened in Toledo, Ohio, and Hamburger University graduated its 500th student. It was in that same year that McDonald's served its one billionth hamburger in grand fashion on The Art Linkletter Show. Ronald McDonald also made his debut that year in Washington, D.C., and the Fillet-O-Fish sandwich was introduced as the first new menu addition since the restaurant chain opened in 1948.

Now, you can use my easy McDonald's Filet-O-Fish copycat recipe to make it at home. Complete the meal with my recipe for McDonald's French Fries.

Update 8/4/19: Current versions of this sandwich come with the bun untoasted. For a classic version, make yours as described below, or skip step 2. Be sure to microwave your finished sandwich for 10-15 seconds to warm up your bun, and steam the sandwich before serving.

Source: More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

In 1991 Kentucky Fried Chicken bigwigs decided to improve the image of America's third-largest fast-food chain. As a more health-conscious society began to affect sales of fried chicken, the company changed its name to KFC and introduced a lighter fare of skinless chicken.

In the last forty years KFC has experienced extraordinary growth. Five years after first franchising the business, Colonel Harland Sanders had 400 outlets in the United States and Canada. Four years later there were more than 600 franchises, including one in England, the first overseas outlet. In 1964 John Y. Brown, Jr., a young Louisville lawyer, and Jack Massey, a Nashville financier, bought the Colonel's business for $2 million. Only seven years later, in 1971 Heublein, Inc., bought the KFC Corporation for $275 million. Then in 1986, for a whopping $840 million, PepsiCo added KFC to its conglomerate, which now includes Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. That means PepsiCo owns more fast food outlets than any other company including McDonald's.

At each KFC restaurant, workers blend real buttermilk with a dry blend to create the well-known KFC buttermilk biscuits recipe that have made a popular menu item since their introduction in 1982. Pair these buttermilk biscuits with my KFC mac and cheese recipe and the famous KFC Original Recipe Chicken to complete your meal.

Source: Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

Roll a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream in homemade candied pecans. Surround the ice cream with warm cinnamon apples and drizzle caramel over the top. Sprinkle fresh cinnamon-butter croutons on the dessert, and you've got an irresistible copy of Outback Steakhouse Cinnamon Apple Oblivion that will make your diet cry "uncle!"

For the croutons, the restaurant uses leftover Honey Wheat Bushman Bread, which you can make here. If you don't have plans to make the bread from scratch, you can use any sweet bread from the store, such as Hawaiian Sweet Bread or Pillsbury Honey White Bread.

Try my Outback Steakhouse Cinnamon Apple Oblivion copycat recipe below, and more of my Outback Steakhouse copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur.

The secret to cloning Chick fil-A's popular carrot raisin salad lies in proper carrot shredding technique. A standard shredder, like the type you might use to shred a hunk of cheddar cheese, creates a coarse shred that makes the salad taste much too "carroty." Instead, find yourself the type of fine shredder that is often used for Parmesan cheese. Sure, it'll take a little more elbow grease to reduce 5 or 6 carrots to ultra thin strips, but I guarantee you'll end up with a superior finished product that will help you forget all about the extra effort.

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

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Hard Rock Café Twisted Mac & Cheese Menu Description: "Twisted cavatappi pasta, tossed in a lightly spiced 3-cheese sauce with roasted red peppers and topped with Parmesan parsley breadcrumbs."

The rock-and-roll theme chain peps up old-school macaroni and cheese with roasted red bell pepper, a breadcrumb topping, and a delicious sauce made from three cheeses. For a home clone of this hip appetizer, I found that it's best to shred your own Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, since the pre-shredded type sold in bags doesn't melt as well, and you'll likely end up with a grainy sauce. Grainy is not good for a sauce. You can use bottled roasted red bell pepper for convenience, or you can roast your own pepper with the tips provided in the Tidbits below. And don't worry about tracking down the hard-to-find cavatappi pasta twisted tubes. Any pasta shape will do here, including the ubiquitous mac & cheese standard: elbow macaroni.

Try my Hard Rock Cafe Twisted Mac & Cheese copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite Hard Rock Cafe dishes here.
 
Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Online taste tests and reviews frequently highlight Farmland Fresh, Darigold, and Southern Comfort as America's top egg nog brands. Among these, Southern Comfort, a brand known for its fruit-flavored whiskey, often ranks highest with its delicious “traditional” egg nog, which, ironically, contains no alcohol.

But the first egg nog, invented in medieval Britain, was quite intoxicating. In those days, it was a warm drink made with milk and sherry, thickened with plenty of egg yolks. Sure, that’s a different experience than today’s cold egg nog, but at least it was made with wholesome ingredients. The cartons of nog available at the market today are typically made with non-traditional ingredients, such as corn syrup, and much of the egg yolk has been replaced with cheaper, longer-lasting natural gums like carrageenan and guar gum.

For my Southern Comfort Traditional Egg Nog copycat recipe, we're turning back the clock to make egg nog the traditional way, using plenty of real egg yolks to thicken the batch without any gums or corn syrup. My easy recipe yields around 36 ounces of fresh homemade egg nog, and the decision to add booze is up to you.

Make more fun, famous drinks with my recipes here.

In 2023, IHOP introduced some creative new eggs Benedict dishes, including one with bacon jam and another featuring shredded beef and poblano hollandaise sauce. I can certainly appreciate the chain’s novel approach to the traditional recipe, but your taste buds may not be ready for those bold flavors in the early a.m. That’s why, for this hack, I'm turning to the classic version of the chain’s Benedict, which will be gentle on your palate, no matter the time of day.

For my IHOP Classic Eggs Benedict copycat recipe, I’ll show you how to make hollandaise sauce from scratch in just a few minutes and how to poach perfect eggs just as quickly. Hopefully, this recipe will be one that you return to whenever you want an impressive breakfast that doesn’t take much work.

Once the poached eggs are done, stack them on black forest ham (a much better choice than Canadian bacon) and English muffins, douse them with the great hollandaise, and serve the dish with crispy hash browns or fruit on the side.

This phenomenal clam chowder, made with lots of fresh littleneck clams, was chosen to represent the state of Massachusetts at the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981—just a year after first being served at the restaurant—and has been served at every presidential inauguration since. I think it's the best clam chowder you'll get at any casual restaurant chain in America, making it a perfect home clone candidate.

I could glean only minimal information from servers at Legal Sea Foods in Philly where I first tasted this fantastic chowder. Fortunately, the company has an online seafood store where I could order a quart of the soup—for a whopping 45 bucks with shipping—which provided me with an ingredients list on the package to aid in the hacking. The restaurant has its cookbook, which provides a few more clues, but the recipe there does not produce a soup that is anything like the version in the restaurant. Many of the ingredients I found on the label of the restaurant version are not listed in the cookbook recipe. 

The real soup includes a little salt pork, which I have replaced here with bacon since such a small amount is used. For the best flavor, you'll want to use fish or seafood stock, which I found at Walmart, but you can substitute with chicken broth if seafood stock is unavailable. My Legal Sea Foods New England Clam Chowder copycat recipe makes over 2 quarts of the soup and will cost you a fraction of what I paid for just a single quart through the company's website. 

Find my Legal Sea Foods Crab Cakes copycat recipe here.

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

Here’s an easy secret recipe for a great coleslaw that’s as good, if not better, than the world-famous cole slaw from KFC (which I hacked here). And making a home copy with my exclusive original secret formula is about as easy as it gets.

To make my Dickie’s Barbecue Pit coleslaw recipe, you won’t have to mince the cabbage as fine as you would for some of the other clones. For this hack, thin-slice the cabbage first, then give those slices a medium chop, and you're good to go. A medium head of cabbage will give you around 8 cups chopped—the perfect amount for this recipe.

After you mix in the dressing, let the finished slaw sit in your refrigerator for at least an hour so that the flavor develops and improves, and be sure to give it a good stir before you serve it. Your patience will be rewarded.

Try more of my Dickey's copycat recipes here.

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

The Fresno chili jam presented the biggest hacking challenge of the two sauces. I had to work through several batches to find the perfect ratio of red bell peppers to Fresno chilies to tone the heat down to an edible level. Also, I was not expecting tomato juice. My first batches omitted that ingredient, but on a return visit to Outback, my server helped provide some valuable intel on the sauce's contents.

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

Find copycat recipes for more of your favorite Outback dishes here. 

The secret recipe for BJ’s great fall-off-the-bone ribs requires a specialty moist oven called a CVap, made specifically for commercial kitchens, with a price tag in the thousands of dollars. This controlled vapor oven cooks food with moist heat to braise meats, like ribs, so they're fork-tender. If you want to make ribs like that at home, but don’t have a CVap in your kitchen (or if yours is currently in the shop) you’ll need to incorporate a similar technique using a standard conventional oven. And that’s where I can help.

For my BJ’s Root Beer Glazed Ribs copycat recipe, I first made a hack of the Big Poppa’s rub the chain uses to season the ribs, then I cooked the seasoned ribs on a rack over water mixed with liquid smoke. The liquid smoke infuses the ribs with smoke flavor, and the water in the pan will keep the ribs from drying out. Once the ribs are cooled, they are sliced, sauced, and reheated in a super-hot oven to simulate the pizza oven used at BJ’s.

When buying your ribs, pick the smallest rack of ribs with the least meat to better resemble the real recipe. Also, you’ll want to plan ahead for this recipe, since the ribs take several hours to bake and chill before they’re finished in the hot oven before serving. Because of that long slow-bake time, you’ll want to start this dish early in the day, or even the day before.

Find more of my BJ's Brewhouse copycat recipes here.

The menu at this 24-unit West Coast barbecue chain features everything you’d expect from a respectable barbecue chain, plus a few unique dishes that recently piqued my food hacker curiosity.

One of the new premium sides is Lucille’s Country Fair Corn Pudding, which seems more like spoonbread than corn pudding custard, which would usually be made with more eggs and milk. But no matter what you call it, it’s really good stuff. After fiddling around with several variations I came up with a simple Lucille's County Corn Fair Pudding copycat recipe using canned or fresh yellow corn, eggs, milk, butter, and Jiffy corn muffin mix.

Once it's out of the oven, the corn pudding is excellent on its own, but the dish isn’t complete until it’s topped with a scoop of the chain’s top secret whipped apple butter. It’s the same delicious butter you get with a side of sugar biscuits when you sit down at your table at the restaurant, and it’s a recipe eaters have been craving. So, I whipped up a Lucille's whipped apple butter recipe that I'm including for you here as well.  

Want another cool clone? You might also like my recipe for Lucille's Cracked Out Deviled Eggs.    

Many fast food chains have offered French toast sticks over the years, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Sonic, Roy Rogers, and Jack in the Box, but Burger King was first to introduce the morning finger food way back in 1985, and if staying power is any indication of preference, then BK is most deserving of this new top secret recipe.

Burger King French Toast Sticks are a perfect fast food item, since they come pre-battered and par-fried, and workers just need to toss a few frozen sticks into the fryer next to the French fries for 3 or 4 minutes, and they’re ready to go, along with a handy dipper pack of maple-flavored syrup.

But no deep-frying is necessary here for my French toast sticks copycat recipe. Instead, you’ll cook your quartered and battered white bread slices in a combination of butter and oil in a sauté pan for a couple of minutes per side, or until the sticks are nicely browned. Serve them with a side of warm maple syrup, and you can even add a dusting of powdered sugar on top if you want to get fancy about it.

Next time you make breakfast, mix things up with some of these as a sweet, easy-to-eat starter.  

Find recipes for more of your favorite items from Burger King here.  

The milk caramel lollipop that has been sticking to teeth for 100 years is an iconic American candy treat. Robert Welch invented the pop in 1925 and originally called it "Papa Sucker," a name that lasted until 1932 when it changed to a popular expression of the time, "Sugar Daddy." A chocolate-covered version of the pop called "Sugar Mama" was discontinued in the 1980s, but the caramel jellybeans called "Sugar Babies" are still found on candy shelves today.

Making a home version of a Sugar Daddy involves cooking caramel from a simple mixture of condensed milk, sugar, corn syrup, butter, and vanilla, then heating it to a specific temperature that creates the desired firmness when the candy cools. If the temperature is too low, your caramel will be too soft. If the caramel gets too hot, it will scorch, darken, and become overly brittle. You need to achieve a target temperature of exactly 250 degrees F, and to do that, a candy thermometer is essential.

One unique aspect of my Sugar Daddy recipe is the technique revealed here that transforms a pasta box into an ideal disposable lollipop mold. I’ll show you how to create two molds from one spaghetti box for a total yield of 20 pops, and I’ve included plenty of step-by-step photos to ensure yours will turn out great.

Unlike the real Sugar Daddy, this clone doesn’t contain artificial flavoring, so you will experience richer, purer flavors from ingredients likely similar to those used in the original pop before the recipe was adjusted for greater shelf stability.

Find more famous candy recipes here. 

To experience butter cake which harkens back to the original creation that debuted in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1930s, you’ll want to try Outback’s take on the great American dessert, or at least a good hack of it. The butter cake served at the steakhouse chain is sliced sheet cake just like the first butter cakes from nearly a century ago, but Outback improves on the original formula by adding a butter cookie crust and presenting the dish with fresh whipped cream and strawberries.

The formulas to perfectly re-create every layer are here in my Outback Steakhouse Butter Cake recipe below. You'll first par-bake the sugar cookie crust, then the cake batter and gooey layer are added, and the cake is baked until the top is golden brown. The cake gets sliced into triangles and arranged beautifully on serving plates with the toppings for a grand total of 10 impressive servings.

Many of the most popular online recipes for butter cake, including one by Paula Deen, call for yellow cake mix, but that won’t do if we want the best clone of the real thing. You’ll make this recipe completely from scratch, and you’ll be glad you did—the higher-quality, great-tasting cake created here is everything box mixes want to be when they grow up.

Find more of your favorite Outback Steakhouse copycat recipes here. 

When Lofthouse frosted cookies were first produced from a handed-down family recipe in a makeshift bakery in the back of a Utah garage in 1994, it's likely the ingredients were different than they are in the mass-produced product found in markets across the country today. To maintain a long shelf-life, it's common for baked goods to be manufactured with nondairy substitutes, so butter is often replaced with hydrogenated oil and butter flavoring (otherwise known as margarine), and various vegetable gums and preservatives are added to improve the texture and stabilize the product. 

Rather than using ingredients you find on the label of the store product, such as artificial flavoring, lecithin, cellulose gum, or carrageenan in my Lofthouse cookie copycat recipe, we'll use real butter, fresh eggs, and vanilla extract in our clone—perhaps just as the family who created this recipe did back in the day. The big difference is that you have to be sure to eat the cookies within a few days to get that freshly baked taste and texture. Or you can freeze them so they last longer. 

Cake flour is used here rather than all-purpose flour to duplicate the tender, cakey texture of the original, and sour cream is used to add in the dairy needed without over liquefying the dough (as milk would). An added benefit of sour cream is its high acidity, which activates the leavening power of the baking soda. The dough is still going to be much thinner and tackier than typical cookie dough, so chilling it for a couple of hours before portioning it out onto a baking sheet is a must to make it easier to work with. 

Find more copycat recipes for your favorite famous cookies here.

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

A scoop of cocoa powder and a handful of chocolate chips are mixed into the chain’s famous buttermilk batter for a bold stack that is a chocoholic’s dream come true. And making a picture-perfect home hack with my IHOP Chocolate Chip Pancake recipe is about as easy as cooking can get.

Just before you serve up each stack, drizzle it with chocolate syrup and add more chips. Finish it up with a pile of whipped cream on top, and some warmed maple syrup on the side.

Check here for many more of my IHOP copycat recipes.

This 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 with an 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 hard, 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 Tamales copycat 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 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.

The chicken chain’s seasonal milkshake made with chips of peppermint and chocolate is only available November through January each year, but what if you’re craving one in March? Or what if it’s Sunday and you can’t get your favorite shake because that’s when every Chick-fil-A is closed?

Now, you can use my Chick-fil-A Peppermint Chip Milkshake recipe to make this treat at home in the few minutes it takes to smash some candy canes and turn on a blender. Use a small storage bag and a kitchen mallet or handle of a butter knife to smash the peppermint candy into small crumbs, then combine those with dark chocolate bits, ice cream, milk, flavoring, and color, and you’ll be sipping on a perfect copy of the famous shake in under 5 minutes.

Oh, don’t forget the whipped cream and a cherry.

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

Menu Description: “Four delicate crepes topped with sweet-tart lingonberries and lingonberry butter.”

Good crepes should be soft in the center, crispy around the edges, buttery, custardy, a bit sweet, and slightly salty, and there are many ways to achieve all this. But to make crepes like those served at IHOP, the formula must be specific.

Over two days, I crafted dozens of crepes, making minor adjustments to all seven ingredients, until I finally settled on the version here that best mirrors the look and taste of the delicious IHOP Swedish Crepes. You'll get ten tasty crepes using a 10-inch non-stick skillet, and the recipe is a no-brainer.

Top your crepes with my simple formula for lingonberry butter, made with bottled lingonberries and softened butter, and now your IHOP Swedish Crepe recipe hack is complete. If you like crepes, you’ll definitely love these.

I cloned a ton of items from IHOP. See if I hacked your favorite here.

Sherwood Johnson survived a case of malaria while serving in World War II, which left him with some residual nerve damage and earned him a new nickname: Shakey. Despite his affliction, Shakey Johnson could still 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 nationwide. The top 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 claiming that pancake mix is the secret seasoning ingredient in Mojo Potatoes fail to recognize that pancake mix contains sugar, yet there is no noticeable sweetness in the breading. I also concluded that dry breading wouldn't work, as my tests showed that the paprika failed to bloom and contribute the same color as it does when the mixture is wet.

For my Shakey's Mojo Potatoes recipe, I eventually settled on a wet batter made with seasoned salt, flour, cornstarch, and paprika to 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.

These potatoes make a great appetizer or side dish to any meal. Find some famous entrée recipes here.

When ranking Pad Thai served at U.S. chains, Pei Wei’s tasty take on the dish comes in at the top. The secret sauce is perfectly balanced with sweetness, sourness, saltiness, and a hint of spice, while the chicken is moist, tender, and packed with great flavor.

For Pei Wei Pad Thai copycat recipe, you'll start by brining the chicken to prevent it from drying out, as white meat tends to do. The secret marinade includes fish sauce, Thailand's MSG. Soaking the chicken in this salty sauce allows the natural aminos to contribute fantastic umami goodness, and cooking it with moist heat, as detailed in the steps below, will result in fork-tender, juicy chicken.

The noodles at Pei Wei are thin, so select the thinnest rice noodles available on the shelf. Prepare them for stir-frying by soaking them in a bowl of hot water rather than boiling water on the stovetop, as suggested on the package. Once they are ready, rinse the noodles under cold water and they will keep until you need them.

This hack will make two large meal-sized entrées, just like what you get at the restaurant, which can easily be divided into four more modest servings.

Check out my recipe for Pei Wei Better Orange Chicken here. 

I’m sure it’s frustrating to be standing in line at Panda Express and they run out of chow mein when it’s your turn. For me, though, that scenario is a blessing, and it’s how this dish was hacked. From the line, I watched a cook whip up a new batch of chow mein in the giant wok in the clearly visible kitchen and took plenty of mental notes. The dish was done in just a few minutes, and before I knew it, I was out the door with a hot serving of fresh chow mein and great intel to help hack a perfect clone. 

Like the real Panda Express Chow Mein, the beauty of my re-creation lies in its simplicity. There are only seven ingredients, and the prep work is low-impact. I used dry chow mein noodles (also known as Chinese stir fry noodles), which are easy to find and inexpensive, along with dark soy sauce for its deep caramel color. If you don’t have a wok to prepare your faux Panda, a large skillet with sloped sides for tossing will work nicely.

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

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

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 stove top. 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 copycat recipe below, and find more of your favorite Olive Garden copycat recipes here. 

I imagine a chef at Domino's in the middle of the development kitchen, surrounded by all the toppings they use on pizza, experimenting with new combinations of these ingredients, trying to come up with something delicious that isn't pizza. And then this dish happens: crispy chicken topped with garlic-Parmesan sauce, Cheddar-mozzarella cheese, bacon, tomato, and baked until gooey.  

Use my Domino's Crispy Bacon & Tomato Specialty Chicken copycat recipe below to make your own killer appetizer at home. To make it simple, you'll start with crispy chicken strips or popcorn chicken from the freezer section.

All the assembly instructions are here, including an original, and simple, hack for the garlic-Parmesan sauce that gets drizzled over the chicken before adding all the other good stuff.

Build your dish on a strip of parchment paper, just like the restaurant does, and bake it until the cheese is bubbly. Now you have a cool new thing to make with frozen crispy chicken strips.    

You might also like my Domino's Pizza recipe created with secrets I learned at Domino's HQ. Find this recipe and more in my book Top Secret Recipes: Step-by-Step.   

The country’s largest chicken chain offers some of the best salad dressing options you’ll find at any fast food restaurant. However, good luck trying to sweet-talk your order-taker into giving you a few extra packets of this delicious fruity vinaigrette for your home salads—they are under strict orders to be stingy. And that’s why I’m here.

Apple cider vinegar, pineapple juice, honey, lemon juice, and lime juice are just a few of the secret ingredients you’ll need to clone this great dressing. Another secret you'll find here is xanthan gum, a natural thickener often used as an emulsifier to prevent the salad dressing from separating. You can find xanthan online or at Whole Foods, and you won't need much.

Try my Chick-fil-A Zesty Apple Cider Vinaigrette copycat recipe below, and find my recipes for Chick-fil-A Mac & Cheese, and their famous chicken sandwiches here.  

Jack Link created his first kippered beef sticks in Wisconsin in 1986, using his grandfather's old sausage and smoked meats recipes, and they quickly became a popular snack throughout the state. But that wasn’t enough for Jack, so he invested in a packaging machine and expanded into other markets. Eventually, with the help of a successful Sasquatch-themed marketing campaign, Jack Link’s became the #1 jerky brand in the U.S.

Beef jerky is usually made in a dehydrator designed to circulate air around the food at a low temperature. The optimal temperature for drying beef jerky in a dehydrator is typically 130 to 140 degrees, which is a lower temperature than can be reached with a conventional home oven. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use our home oven to make a perfectly acceptable beef jerky hack that tastes like Jack’s. And while Jack uses a smoker for his beef jerky, this recipe uses liquid smoke to create smoky beef jerky without a smoker.

The pineapple juice in the marinade is a crucial component of the flavor, but its primary contribution is a unique enzyme that helps break down the proteins in the tough cut of meat, thereby tenderizing it. Soy sauce and beef bouillon contribute to the umami savoriness of the jerky, and liquid hickory smoke is used in my Jack Link's Original Beef Jerky copycat recipe as a quick way to add the smoke flavor.

The marinating takes 24 hours, and the oven drying takes between 6 and 8 hours. So, get the sliced beef into the bath in the morning, and you should be munching on copycat Jack Link's beef jerky by dinnertime the next day.

Find more cool recipes for your favorite snacks here.

Starbucks’ Frappuccino, the most famous blended coffee drink in the world, is a hacked clone of this blended concoction invented at the California-based chain, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. In the mid-'80s, a store manager at the Westwood, California location mixed diet drink powder with ice, milk, and coffee in a blender and was pleasantly surprised by how delicious it was. The recipe was tweaked to include the chain’s chocolate powder instead of the diet powder, and a new hit product was born.

To make the vanilla version of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Ice Blended at home, we must first make the secret flavoring powder, which starts with dry coffee creamer. You’ll also need vanilla extract powder, which can be found online. And if you can find them, I recommend superfine sugar (Baker’s sugar) and superfine salt (popcorn salt), because the fine crystals will dissolve better in the cold drink. 

Once your secret powder is made, measure 1/3 cup of it into a blender with ice, cold espresso, and milk, and blend on high until smooth. In just a few minutes, you'll have a 16-ounce re-creation of the original blended coffee drink now served at over 1,100 Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf locations around the globe.

Try my Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Vanilla Ice Blended copycat recipe below, and find more of my copycat drink recipes here.