I originally cloned these famous biscuits in 2002 for my book, Even More Top Secret Recipes. The recipe was fine, but I used Bisquick in the formula, and if I could rework it, I’d ditch the baking mix and make it from scratch with real buttermilk. So, that’s exactly what I did here, using McDonald’s official ingredients list as a guide. I think the results are a significant improvement.

For my improved McDonald’s Biscuits copycat recipe, you’ll first combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Then, using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour blend. If you don’t have a pastry blender, you can grate the cold butter with a cheese grater. Lightly coat the cold stick of butter with the flour blend to help you hold it, then grate it directly into the bowl.

You won’t need a rolling pin because you want the tops of the biscuits bumpy and dimpled, not flat. Use your hands to flatten the dough to about ½ inch thick, then use a 3-inch biscuit cutter to punch out 8 to 9 rounds. When the biscuits come out of the oven, brush them with melted butter and serve warm.

Psssst... there are a lot more McDonald's recipes over here.

The name Jolly Rancher has a friendly Western sound to it, and that’s why Bill Harmsen picked the name for his Golden, Colorado confection company in 1949. Bill sold chocolate and ice cream, but it was his hard candies that got the most attention, and that’s where Bill focused his efforts and grew his business.

The first Jolly Rancher hard candies came in just three flavors: apple, grape, and cinnamon. Eventually they added more flavors including cherry, orange, lemon, grape, peach, and blue raspberry. But today the main flavors have been cut to just five: cherry, watermelon, apple, grape, and blue raspberry. I’ve included clone recipes here for four of them: grape, cherry, watermelon, and green apple.

The flavors are all sour, thanks to malic acid, a very tart natural ingredient often used to make sour candies. If you can’t find malic acid, you can duplicate the sour taste with easier-to-find citric acid. I found some at Walmart.

You’ll also need super-strength flavoring from LorAnn in whichever flavors you chose to make. This is the most popular baking/candy flavoring brand, and you can find it online or in craft stores like Michael’s. Each small bottle is 1 dram, which is just under 1 teaspoon, and you’ll need one of those for each flavor.  

Regardless of which flavors you choose to make, the base candy recipe will be the same. The hard candy is formed by bringing the sugar solution up to the “hard crack” stage, or the stage where the candy becomes hard and brittle when cool. You must get the candy to exactly 300 degrees F, and for that, you’ll need a candy thermometer.

The thermometer is essential here and will help you determine when to add the coloring, when to remove the candy from the heat, and when to add the malic or citric acid. If you cook the candy too long, it will begin to caramelize and darken and won't taste right. If you add the acid before the candy cools to 265 degrees F, it will burn and turn bitter. If you add it too late, it may be hard to mix.

My Jolly Rancher hard candy copycat recipe makes over 60 candies. When cool, crack the candies apart along their score lines, wrap them up in 4x4-inch cellophane candy wrappers, and you should have more than enough hacked homemade hard candies to fill a candy bowl.

Click here to make more famous candy at home.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unleashed by Todd Wilbur.

Once a regular menu item, these sweet, saucy wings are now added to the KFC menu on a "limited-time-only" basis in many markets. So how are we to get that sticky sauce all over our faces and hands during those many months when we are cruelly denied our Honey BBQ Wings? Now it's as easy as whipping up my KFC honey BBQ wings copycat recipe that re-creates the crispy breading on the chicken wings, and the sweet-and-smoky honey BBQ sauce. "Limited-time-only" signs—we laugh at you.

How about some famous coleslaw or wedge potatoes? Check out my collection of KFC clone recipes here.

Source: Even More Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur.

This Belgian bakery has been producing high-quality products for the world since 1976 when two Flemish baking families, the Popeliers and the Casteleins, teamed up to open Poppies Bakeries in Ypres, Belgium. Today the company produces biscuits, donuts, cakes, and cookies in 14 facilities around the world for 57 countries, including the U.S. where the soft-and-chewy gluten-free coconut macaroons are found in supermarkets and convenience stores.

If you want to make good macaroons, you’ll need to start with good coconut. Some generic brands of sweetened shredded coconut are much too dry, so look for a major label like Baker’s brand which is perfectly sweetened for this recipe and always very moist. The real Poppie’s macaroons also contain rice flour and potato starch, which are the same ingredients you’ll find in bags of gluten-free flour, so that’s what we’ll use here. I found that Pillsbury brand worked great for our Poppie's Coconut Macaroon copycat recipe.

Each cookie is made with 2 tablespoons of the coconut dough, which can be pressed into an ice cream scoop to create a round shape. You’ll just need to flatten them a bit on the top with your fingers. After they’ve baked and cooled, your macaroons can be coated with melted dark chocolate, or you can just keep them plain—Poppie’s sells them both ways. Just be sure to store your macaroons in a sealed container so that they’ll stay moist.

You can find more famous cookie and brownie copycat recipes here. 

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

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

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

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

Find more of my Panda Express copycat recipes here.

Source: Hack That Dish by Todd Wilbur.

Every brand of hummus I've tried over the years has been just so-so in taste and texture, until I discovered Sabra. Now this ultra-smooth hummus—which has been rated number one in a blind taste test—is the only hummus in my fridge, unless I've made this clone. Hummus is an awesome snack as a dip for vegetables or pita chips, since it's rich in protein, soluble fiber, potassium, and Vitamin E. 

The secret to duplicating Sabra's smooth and creamy quality is to let your food processor work the stuff over for a solid 10 minutes. Also, when getting your Sabra hummus ingredients ready, don't use all of the liquid from the can of garbanzo beans or the hummus will end up too runny. Strain off the liquid first, then measure only 1/2 cup back into the food processor. Sabra uses canola and/or soybean oil, but you may think olive oil tastes better. Look for a jar of sesame tahini in the aisle where all the international foods are parked, and while you're there find the citric acid, which may also go by the name "sour salt." My Sabra Hummus copycat recipe below will not have the proper acidic bite without this secret ingredient, and citric acid also works as a preservative to help the leftover hummus stay fresh and tasty.

Find more of my famous dip copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unlocked by Todd Wilbur.

Panera Bread dominates the U.S., accounting for over 78 percent of all sales in the bakery-cafe segment. The chain's success is attributed to the great offering of specialty sandwiches, delicious soups, and awesome salads. One of the most popular of those salads is the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad, which includes the chain's citrus-lemon-pepper-marinated chicken on mixed greens with pecans, gorgonzola, crispy apple chips, and a balsamic apple vinaigrette.

For the apple chips, you don't need to use Fuji apple chips—any apple chips will work here. I found that Seneca Crispy Apple Chips, the original apple chips, taste the best. Plan ahead for this salad, since it takes a couple of hours to marinate the chicken and another couple of hours to chill it after it's cooked.  

Try my Panera Bread Fuji Apple Chicken Salad copycat recipe below, and click here for more of my copycat Panera Bread recipes.

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

One might wonder whether Arby’s curly fries, which debuted in 1988, inspired the fries from Checkers and Rally’s, which came out just one year later, in 1989. Both versions are coated with a seasoned batter, but Arby’s fries are cut with a curly slicer, while Checkers & Rally’s fries come in the standard straight-cut or waffle-sliced versions. The flavor of Checkers and Rally’s fries is similar to Arby’s but bolder, with more black pepper and chili pepper for a spicier finish.

To make my copycat recipe for Checkers and Rally’s Famous Seasoned Fries, I started with my hack of Arby’s Curly Fries. But since these fries are crispier, I added cornstarch to the batter for a crunch that flour alone can't provide. For the pepper, I was surprised it took a whole tablespoon of ground black pepper to match the amount of black specks in the real thing, and I found it tasted best when the pepper was freshly ground from whole peppercorns. And to round out the batter's zing, a little cayenne pepper was essential.

For this home hack, you can slice your potatoes by hand, but if you've got one, I recommend using a potato slicer set to ¼-inch. To reproduce the crispy texture of the real fries, this secret recipe requires a 2-stage frying process. After par-frying the potatoes, you’ll freeze them until they’re solid, then fry them again to finish. You can fry them immediately after they freeze, or keep them in the freezer until a craving for seasoned fries hits. To finish, you simply fry them a second time, and they'll be ready in mere minutes.  

Find more of my famous French fries copycat recipes here.

One of the top choices for your salad at this popular Mexican chain is this delicious, slightly spicy chipotle-flavored dressing. A clone for this one is made easily by combining several ingredients in a small pan over medium heat and simmering for 5 minutes. The final step involves creating an emulsion to thicken the dressing and to keep the oil from separating. I suggest measuring the oil into a spouted measuring cup. This will make it easy to drizzle the oil in a thin stream into the dressing while you are rapidly whipping the mixture with a wire whisk. If you break a sweat, you’re doing it right.

You may notice that there is no jalapeño mentioned in my On The Border Smoked Jalapeño Vinaigrette copycat recipe below. Chipotle is a smoke dried jalapeño. We'll use ground chipotle chili found near the spices in your market.

You might also like my copycat recipes for On The Border guacamole and Mexican mojito. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

The heat of red jalapeños combines with Asian flavors for this delicious dipping sauce McDonald’s introduced in the Summer of 2026. And there’s no need to hunt down hard-to-find red jalapeños when sriracha has the ideal blend to kick-start this secret formula.

In addition to sriracha, I added soy sauce, sambal oelek, and sesame oil to re-create the perfect flavor for this versatile secret dipping sauce.

Use my McDonald's Creamy Chili Dip copycat recipe to make one cup of great sauce in just five minutes, perfect for dipping chicken fingers, chicken nuggets, and fried shrimp, or for spreading on wraps or sandwiches.

Find more McDonald's famous dipping sauces here.

In the Fall of 2025, Arby’s introduced a tasty new milkshake made with apple pie filling ingredients, which, when combined with ice cream, delivers the profound sensation of sucking apple pie à la mode through a straw. But the shake is only available for a limited time at Arby’s, so if you want this frosty treat whenever you crave it, you’ll need to add my secret copycat recipe to your recipe box.

For my version of Arby’s Apple Pie Shake, you’ll first make a spice blend that’s similar to what’s used in apple pie. Combine that with ice cream, milk, and apple juice concentrate in a blender, and you’ll have a 16-ounce knockoff of the creamy shake. And don’t forget the whipped cream topper dusted with cinnamon/sugar for the perfect finishing touch.

Think of all the popular drinks you can make at home! Click here to see if I hacked your favorite.

Menu Description: “Golden brown, chicken breast strips coated with crispy Japanese panko breadcrumbs with the extra crunch of toasted sesame seeds and tossed in our famous Jack Daniel's sauce.”

Although the original recipe is made from sliced chicken breasts, you may consider using the less chewy tenderloins in this kitchen copy. Packs of fresh chicken tenderloins are sold in most markets and you can also find bags of them in the freezer section. I’m a big fan of the more tender meat in the tenderloins, especially when it comes to chicken fingers. 

The breading for my T.G.I. Friday's Sesame Jack Strips copycat recipe is a simple combination of flour and panko (or Japanese bread crumbs). When the chicken fingers are done frying, gently toss them in the Jack Daniel’s glaze made from my recipe here, and you’ve got a great appetizer that can serve a half dozen finger food fanatics.

I've cloned a ton of items from T.G.I. Friday's. Click here to see if I hacked your favorite. 

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Customers raved about the chicken sandwich and French fries with Korean flavors that Shake Shack debuted in 2021, so the chain brought them back in 2024 and 2026 and added this great K-Shack BBQ Burger. Some reviewers of the chain’s Korean menu love it so much that they have begged for it to become permanent and want the chain to bottle the delicious Korean BBQ Sauce. When I see a particular food generate that much excitement, I know it’s time to start hacking.

The beef patty in my Shake Shack K-Shack BBQ Burger copycat recipe is smashed-style with American cheese, just like the chain’s original burger, but the similarities end there. Rather than tomato and lettuce, this burger is topped with crispy onions, green onions, and plenty of Korean BBQ Sauce. After you make the crispy onions and Korean BBQ Sauce from scratch, it’s time to cook the patty and assemble the burger.

A great sauce hack is crucial for an accurate clone, so I've included my Shake Shack Korean BBQ Sauce copycat recipe here too. To make it legit, you’ll need dark soy sauce, gochujang, and kimchi, along with a few other common ingredients. Mince the kimchi as finely as possible before adding it, and use spicy kimchi for a zestier sauce. Combine the minced kimchi with the other ingredients in a small bowl, and you’ll have plenty of sauce for the four burgers in this recipe, plus extra for a few more later. You can even use the leftover sauce as a tasty dip for chicken fingers and wings. 

Find more of my Shake Shack copycat recipes here.

Be prepared for a short wait when ordering one of the fresh peach pies from this West Coast chain, which has gained fame for its wide range of homestyle pies. Like the Fresh Strawberry Pie (I cloned it here), the Fresh Peach Pie is available only from March through November and is made with hand-sliced, glazed fruit. 

And, just like the strawberry pie, the glaze on the peach pie is a mostly flavorless sweet goo that could be improved by using real fruit. So that’s what I did.

For my Marie Callender’s Fresh Peach Pie copycat recipe, the glaze is made from real peaches and gently tossed with the sliced peaches before filling the pie. Adding the glaze this way results in more evenly flavored bites than the restaurant version, where the glaze is just spooned over the top. 

I’m including a great scratch recipe for the pie shell, but you can also choose to skip this step and buy a pre-made frozen pie shell. If you get the one made by Marie Callender’s, your clone will be a great knockoff.

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

It's not served every day at Carrabba's Italian Grill, but when this amazing soup is on the menu, consider yourself lucky and snag a bowl. It's chock-full of lentils and other good bits of vegetables and herbs, plus there are big chunks of spicy Italian sausage in every bite. 

Use my Carrabba's Spicy Sausage Lentil Soup copycat recipe to easily make it at home. Most of the work here is just chopping stuff up, including a small ham steak, which you can find where the bacon is sold in your market. If you can't find a ham steak, you can slice up some deli ham. Get everything in a pot and let it simmer. In 1 hour, you'll have enough hot, chunky soup for at least a dozen cup-size servings.

Find more of your favorite Carrabba's copycat recipes here.

Source: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur.

Introduced in the summer of 2026 for the Cantina menu, this Taco Bell specialty sauce combines red jalapeños with sweet-and-sour citrus and fruit flavors. Like the chain’s Avocado Verde Salsa, introduced in 2024, the Jalapeno Citrus Salsa is not free. Each packet costs 20 cents and contains about 1 tablespoon of the sauce. If you really dig the stuff, you’ll be glad to know that this recipe will give you 2 cups of cloned sauce, or the equivalent of more than 32 packets!

The special ingredient in the sauce is red jalapenos, which can be hard to find at grocery stores. Fortunately, I had been growing jalapenos in my garden, and several had ripened to bright red just in time to hack this recipe. If you can’t find red jalapenos and don’t have your own jalapeno pepper bush, you can substitute the more common red Fresno peppers. They are about the same size as jalapenos and have approximately the same Scoville heat rating.

After making chili powder from dried guajillo peppers and apricot puree made with dried apricots, you’ll blend everything until smooth. I’ve added the ground mustard and honey to emulsify the sauce. Those ingredients, plus a 2-hour chill in your refrigerator between blends, will help suspend the oil particles within the other ingredients so that your sauce won’t separate.

Find more of your favorite Taco Bell sauce recipes here. 

A dozen ingredients tossed in a refreshing lemon-basil dressing make Ruth's Chris's signature salad taste great, but it's the presentation that earns the "wows." 

Now, you can make a salad tower just like the one at this upscale steakhouse chain after you track down forming rings (3 inches wide and 4 inches tall), or, for do-it-yourselfers, pick up 3-inch PVC pipe at your local hardware store and grab a saw. Saw a 4-inch length off the pipe, then use sandpaper to smooth the edges. Find a glass or bottle with a flat bottom to use as a press.

Once you prepare the dressing and crispy onions, and chop and toss the other ingredients, you can use this inexpensive mold to create a perfectly hacked salad masterpiece every time.

Try my Ruth's Chris Chop Salad copycat recipe and find more of my Ruth's Chris copycat recipes here.

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

Researchers at University of Florida’s College of Medicine developed Gatorade in 1965 when the head coach of the Florida Gators football team requested a specially designed drink that could replace lost fluids during hot weather games. With players pounding the new sports drink, the Gators went on to take their first Orange Bowl victory in 1967 against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. When the head coach of the Yellow Jackets was asked why his team lost, he said, “We didn’t have Gatorade. That made the difference.” Later that year, Gatorade became the official drink of the NFL.

The secret to making Gatorade at home is not just about getting the flavor right but also about locating a simple source of the drink’s important supplemental ingredients, potassium and dextrose. Potassium (along with salt) replaces electrolytes that are lost when you sweat to ensure proper functioning of your brain and organs. I discovered that a good source of potassium is Morton’s salt substitute, which is made with potassium chloride. Most supermarkets should have it stocked near the salt.

Dextrose, on the other hand, is a natural sugar that absorbs quickly into your body to restore glycogen in muscles lost during physical activity. Bodybuilders and athletes use it during and after games and workouts to speed up recovery and stimulate muscle growth. Luckily, I was able to find the perfect product that added just the right amount of dextrose to 64 ounces of water and that also came in the perfect orange flavor: Pixy Stix. Find the large 1-ounce size in the giant plastic straw, and grab two. If you can't find the big ones, you can also use 5 (.42-ounce) orange-flavored Pixy Stix.

For my Gatorade copycat recipe below, you'll dump all the ingredients into a 64-ounce pitcher of water, stir to dissolve, and in just a few minutes you’ll have the same taste and energy benefits of one of the two original flavors of Gatorade, but at about half the price.

Find more recipes for more famous drinks here.

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