The Restaurant Copycat Recipes You've All Been Waiting For

The Bloomin' Onion has long been Outback Steakhouse's signature menu item. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find a single dish more closely associated with a restaurant. Because the appetizer is so visually appealing, it may seem out of reach for an at-home chef. But making a copycat Outback Bloomin' Onion is certainly doable for an amateur. It may not look as pretty, but it should taste just as good, which ultimately is the most important.

You'll need to find yourself a large sweet onion, such as the Vidalia or Walla Walla variety, which don't have a strong oniony taste. The most difficult part will be cutting the onion. You may want to practice your knife skills in order to properly divide the vegetable into so many "petals." Once you get through that, it's just a matter of coating it in egg wash and a spice blend consisting of garlic powder, paprika, salt, cayenne pepper, dried thyme, and ground black pepper. A quick dip in oil later and you'll have yourself a Bloomin' Onion.

The final piece of the puzzle is the sauce. But don't worry — it's even easier to make. Just combine mayonnaise, ketchup, cream-style horseradish, paprika, salt, and black pepper, and you're ready for dipping.

If you're more into sweet baked goods than savory ones, then the cinnamon butter and rolls from Texas Roadhouse are for you. These soft, buttery treats are made in-house each day. The good news is that we have the recipe for you to recreate them in your house any day you'd like.

There is no shortage of dinner roll recipes available, but finding one that replicates those of Texas Roadhouse was challenging. After some investigating (and plenty of taste testing) we settled on this group of ingredients: all-purpose flour, one egg, salt, sugar, active dry yeast, milk, water, and butter. These will give the rolls the perfect texture and flavor.

The cinnamon butter is easier to concoct. Just whip together butter, powdered sugar, honey, and cinnamon. Make sure to use room temperature butter. Melted butter won't whip and cold butter will be too difficult to whip. Once the rolls come out of the oven, lather on the sweet butter and see how long you can go before eating the whole batch!

For a seemingly simple dish, a lot goes into P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps – literally. The recipe calls for a number of ingredients. After all, there are three separate components: the chicken filling, the cooking sauce, and the dipping sauce. In total, you'll need dried shiitake mushrooms, chicken thighs, butter lettuce, water chestnuts, canola oil, white pepper, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, hoisin, oyster sauce, rice cooking wine, cornstarch, sesame oil, rice vinegar, green onion, Chinese hot mustard, chili garlic sauce, and water.

Most notable on this list are the chicken thighs and butter lettuce. Many copycat recipes call for ground chicken, but we didn't think that would provide the right texture. Additionally, while the restaurant chain uses 100 percent white meat, it also adds fat and gristle from chicken trimmings. The extra fat in chicken thighs, as opposed to chicken breasts, will better recreate this flavor.

When it comes to the lettuce of choice, we admittedly veered away from the original recipe. P.F. Chang's uses iceberg lettuce for its wraps. But this type of lettuce is very difficult to remove intact. That's why we suggest opting for butter lettuce, which is much softer. Either choice is sure to leave you with a delicious meal.

Recreating some of your favorite restaurant dishes might sound intimidating. But what if we told you it could be done with just five ingredients? That's precisely what our TGI Friday's stuffed potato skins copycat recipe calls for.

Truth be told, you can find these tasty appetizers in the frozen food aisle, but these never taste as good. Instead, gather up your five ingredients — russet potatoes, bacon, shredded cheddar cheese, green onion, and sour cream –- and head to the kitchen.

To make things even easier, some of the steps to make the perfect stuffed potato skin can be done ahead of time. You can bake the potato and create the dipping sauce several days before. Once that's out of the way, it's time to assemble. Use a spoon to scoop out most of the potato filling, leaving a quarter-inch of potato. Fill each skin with shredded cheddar cheese and cooked bacon. Then, place them under the broiler until the cheese is melted — about two minutes. Top with some green onions and you're ready to dig in.

There's something irresistibly comforting about meatloaf. One bite immediately takes you right back to fond memories of enjoying mom's cooking as a kid. And while we would never say anything bad about any of mom's recipes, Cracker Barrel knows a few tricks of the trade that push its meatloaf to another level.

To copy Cracker Barrel's meatloaf, you'll first want to make sure your ground beef has enough fat. Look for beef that has at least 20 percent fat content. This ensures your meatloaf will be juicy and tasty, not dry or bland. Maybe the biggest deviation from traditional meatloaf recipes is the choice of breadcrumbs. While you could use traditional breadcrumbs, croutons, or biscuits, we found that the best option was Ritz crackers. Not only will they do the job of holding the loaf together, but they also add a rich buttery flavor that other options can't match.

Another trick is eschewing a loaf pan in favor of a baking sheet. This helps the meatloaf get crispy edges on all sides, one of the trademarks of Cracker Barrel's version. Once it's all set, bake for 30 minutes, apply a ketchup glaze (no need to fancy it up with other ingredients), cook for an additional half-hour, and serve.

What we know as Alfredo sauce is a quintessentially American creation. The traditional version was "Americanized" essentially by adding more fat (read: heavy cream). So it makes perfect sense that it's one of the most popular menu items of the very American Italian restaurant Olive Garden.

The chain took this domesticated version and ran with it, adding (more) butter, garlic, and plenty of cheese. So how do we recreate Olive Garden's alfredo sauce? It's pretty easy, actually, and any amateur should be able to put it together in no time without even breaking a sweat. Simply combine butter, garlic, flour, whole milk, and Parmesan and Romano cheese to a sauté pan. Give the mixture a few whisks until the cheese begins to break down.

Then you need to bring it to a boil. Once you see some bubbles, remove it from the heat. Giving it a stir or two should create the perfectly thick cream sauce we're looking for. Once you're there, throw in some parsley, then coat every last inch of your favorite pasta with this rich, buttery, cheesy Alfredo sauce.

Ask a person what they think when they hear "Olive Garden" and invariably they'll answer "unlimited breadsticks." The breadsticks' reputation precedes itself.

So how could something so simple be so good? What is the magic recipe that puts Olive Garden's breadsticks head and shoulders above the competition? We believe we've discovered it.

Creating these copycat Olive Garden breadsticks is similar to baking other bread products, but there are a few key steps in the process that can make or break the quality of the final product. The first comes right at the beginning: activating the yeast. Active dry yeast works best for this recipe and it needs to come in contact with liquid in order to dissolve and reactivate. Putting the yeast in liquid can tell you the yeast is alive, which you can tell if it starts to foam.

Olive Garden's breadsticks are known for their soft texture. In order to recreate that, you'll want to brush some cold water on each breadstick right before they go in the oven. But be careful — too much water will make the breadsticks soggy.

The final important step deals with the delectable garlic butter topping. The key here is to use both garlic powder and garlic salt. The combination adds a salty flavor to the taste. Once done, lather it on the breadsticks and go to town.