Can copycat recipes be trusted?

April 26, 2024 by
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There are many foods I enjoy out or that are commercially made that I would love to recreate at home, either because I don’t live near a store or restaurant that offers the item, or because the restaurant or food no longer exists. Over the years, I’ve tried copycat recipes for things ranging from Oreos to Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Olive Garden soups (don’t judge). Most get at least part of the way there, but some fall quite short of the mark. One of those is Food & Wine’s recipe for a homemade Juicy lucy.

For those not in the know, Jucy Lucy’s (the original and in my opinion best are from Matt’s Bar on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, misspelling intentional) are cheeseburgers with the cheese sandwiched inside the beef. Novice eaters will eagerly bite into a Lucy as soon as it hits the table despite an admonition from the server to wait, and will scald their tongues with molten lava disguised as American cheese as a consequence. Experienced Lucy lovers take time to enjoy the slim, perfect French fries before tucking into their burger. They will be rewarded with a burst of warm, cheesy excellence. Grilled finely diced onions and a couple of thin pickle slices bring it all together with a hint of acid that makes the burger sing.

The Food & Wine burger pictured above gets several things wrong. The burger is on the thick side, the cheese is almost solids, the onions are sliced and caramelized. This is all wrong. Take a gander at the the real deal from a food blog circa 2015. Yes, that’s almost 10 years ago but that is the beauty of Matt’s Bar – not much has changed since it opened in 1954. It’s a dive bar that doesn’t pretend to be anything else, it just happens to serve a fine burger. Burgers, fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, and a chicken sandwich are all you can order at Matt’s. Pop (soda for those outside the area) is served in cans and you must pay in cash or check – credit cards are not accepted (although there is an ATM on site). I go there a few times each year, arriving early because lines snake out the door even on the coldest days.

I have tried to recreate a Lucy at home and it’s harder than it looks. Getting the thickness of the patties right, making sure the edges stay sealed, and getting the right amount of cheese inside is a challenge. Making the patties ahead so they have time to weld themselves together helps. Although I’m not sure that they season the beef, I have a sneaking suspicion that something akin to Lawry’s Seasoned Salt gets sprinkled on the cheese before the second patty is placed on top. Maybe it’s just that the brand of cheese is extra salty or maybe it’s the finely diced grilled onions that give it that extra oomph. Speaking of the onions, that tiny dice is essential to recreate the eating experience. Sliced caramelized onions, even though delicious in their own right, don’t work. And sweet onions as called for by Food & Wine? Get outta here. Half-sour pickles, maybe, but better to use cheap dill slices.

I suspect that most copycat recipes suffer from issues similar to this one. Restaurants are loathe to share the secrets of their most popular dishes so the recipe creator (re-creator, as the case may be) is flying blind on how to replicate the flavors and textures of the dish. It’s all but impossible to recreate items like Oreos or Twinkies without having a panoply of additives like emulsifiers and preservatives. Often the copycat recipe gets close enough to work, but it’s never an exact copy. Plus, you can’t really duplicate the experience of eating at a dive bar like Matt’s or the convenience of tearing open a package to grab a few cookies.

Despite their flaws, I still enjoy copycat recipes. While they may never be the ‘real deal’, they can help scratch a particular culinary itch. Occasionally I’ll even find that I like the copycat better than the original because I can tweak it to suit my palate. Even if they aren’t superior, I still use copycat recipes to approximate something I’m craving but can’t easily buy. Long live the copycat recipe.

Category: Food Online

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12 Comments

  • LeilaD  on  April 26, 2024

    No judgment- I have a copycat recipe for Olive Garden’s Black Mousse Tie cake. My husband will not order it at the restaurant any longer, because he swears the copycat is better!

  • demomcook  on  April 26, 2024

    I still wish for a copycat of the old Starbucks maple scones. Mmmmm.

  • EmilyR  on  April 26, 2024

    Funny enough I just got the Summer Cookbook at a library book sale today and it has your Juicy Lucy in it. I loved during the early pandemic when restaurants were sharing more recipes. Staying home and cooking was and always is great.

  • gamulholland  on  April 26, 2024

    If I could get a copycat recipe for Aglamesis Bros mint chocolate chip ice cream, I’d be a happy girl. Everyone makes a big fuss about Graeter’s in Cincinnati, but Aglamesis is a hidden gem. And I live in Southern California, so it’s a far away hidden gem.

  • matag  on  April 27, 2024

    Matt’s all the way

  • OneAnd2  on  April 27, 2024

    The cheese bread from Mastoris diner in Bordentown, NJ. That’s the recipe that the angels will give me if I reach heaven. They closed ca. pandemic, and my world has never since been the same.

  • Fyretigger  on  April 27, 2024

    I managed to do one better than a copycat. I got the actual recipe for a retired PF Changs dish — Dali Chicken. Years after the dish had disappeared, I was talking to a manager that was on temporary assignment from another store and we got to talking about retired dishes. I bemoaned the loss of Dali Chicken. She volunteered that she had the old kitchen manuals at home and she sent me those pages. There was still a little experimenting. The recipes for the sauces were measured, but the wok assembly of the dish was just an ingredient list, with the amounts left to the expertise of the wok chefs. But the manager talked me through some of the general technique like dredging the chicken in potato starch and that helped a great deal. In the end, I ended up with the dish I had been missing.

    There were some of their lamb dishes they used to have that I would have loved to have as well, but those dated to before that manager’s time. And she would only give me recipes for retired dishes, before someone asks about the Lettuce Wraps. And in any case, that recipe is in Cecilia Chiang’s cookbook.

  • Plutarch  on  April 28, 2024

    In one of my Gordon Ramsay cookery books is a recipe for his braised spiced lamb shanks. This has been an occasional family favourite over the years. I always prepare it exactly to the recipe, not adding or removing ingredients or making any other changes. I hadn’t realised until visiting his London Restaurant, The Bread Street Kitchen, I found it on the menu. Of course, I ordered it, expecting my copy cat (ish) efforts to be less than comparable to the restaurant version. Well, what a surprise, the restaurant meal was exactly the same as the ones I whip up at home, except the price you understand.

  • Rinshin  on  April 30, 2024

    I have 3-4 perfect or even better copycat recipes, one created by myself, another improved other peoples’ ideas, and two coming from other sources.

    Although we hardly eat fast foods anymore, there are two which are still dear to my heart.

    I have been trying to crack the secret to our local market specializing in meat, deli and seafood called Fred’s steak. It is well known around here and read many ways to crack it. Nothing comes close. The last piece of info is using squid ink powder for dark appearance and umami unlike anything I’ve tried.

  • FuzzyChef  on  May 1, 2024

    The only copycat recipe I can recall making is the one for An and a Fuara’s meatloaf. That one is great tho.

  • Foodycat  on  May 10, 2024

    Australian Gourmet Traveller used to have a great column where you could write in and see if chefs would share their recipes for dishes you’d enjoyed in restaurants. I had a couple published over the years – a green duck curry and a honey parfait and both turned out absolutely perfectly. Now the main thing I look for in copycat recipes are things I can’t readily buy in the UK, so I can try international recipes, like Nilla wafers for making banana pudding.

  • slimmer  on  May 10, 2024

    Speaking of Olive Garden soups … I had a sausage and kale soup that I enjoyed so much I tried to re-create it at home, but with spinach. I think I made a pretty good version, working just from taste memory. I still make it without a recipe, just what’s in my head (mirepoix, sausage, chicken stock, shredded baby spinach; sometimes white beans or orzo).

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