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  5. 25 Restaurant Copycat Dinners You'll Want to Make Forever

25 Restaurant Copycat Dinners You'll Want to Make Forever

Leah Goggins headshot
Leah Goggins October 19, 2021
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Beer-Battered Fish Tacos with Tomato & Avocado Salsa

These dinners are sure to satisfy your cravings for the burger joint down the block or the Italian restaurant across town. These healthy takes on classic dishes, like chicken fried rice, steak frites and eggplant parmesan, are so delicious and easy to recreate in the comfort of your own kitchen. Recipes like our Beer-Battered Fish Tacos with Tomato & Avocado Salsa and Chicken Shawarma with Yogurt Sauce are tasty enough to please everyone at the table.

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Cauliflower Chicken Fried "Rice"

Cauliflower Chicken Fried Rice
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Get an extra serving of vegetables and cut back on carbs by replacing rice with riced cauliflower in this healthy chicken fried rice recipe.

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Beer-Battered Fish Tacos with Tomato & Avocado Salsa

Beer-Battered Fish Tacos with Tomato & Avocado Salsa
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Lovers of fried fish get the taste without all the calories, and the salsa adds a fresh, clean note. To complete the Baja theme, serve with black beans, some diced mango and a bit of light sour cream.

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Chicken Shawarma with Yogurt Sauce

Chicken Shawarma with Yogurt Sauce
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The key to cooking juicy chicken without a spit in this healthy recipe is high heat and dark meat. The yogurt in the marinade gives the chicken both its tender texture and its alluring char. More yogurt in the sauce, along with crunchy cucumbers and herbs, keeps the flavors bright.

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Better-Than-Takeout Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries

Better-Than-Takeout Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries
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This healthy take on burgers and fries swaps in chopped mushrooms for some of the meat in the burger patties, to cut back on calories and saturated fat.

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BBQ Chicken Skillet Pizza

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Upgrade chicken-BBQ pizza with this Alabama-style white sauce recipe made with mayo and a little vinegar. Using premade dough helps get dinner on the table quickly and easily.

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Montreal-Style Hanger Steak & Sweet Potato Frites

plate of steak and frites
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Steak frites, aka steak and fries, is a French bistro staple. In this healthy recipe, we swap roasted sweet potatoes for the fried spuds and make a yogurt-blue cheese sauce instead of compound butter.

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Chicken & Kale Taco Salad with Jalapeño-Avocado Ranch

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This healthy, super-fast salad recipe swaps out romaine for kale, giving you more than 10 times the vitamin C. Easy flavor hacks like store-bought ranch and pickled jalapeños help make a creamy, tangy and spicy dressing you'll want to drizzle on everything from salad to sliced veggies and shredded poached chicken.

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Strawberry Poppy Seed Salad with Chicken

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In this healthy copycat of a takeout salad favorite we combine precooked (or leftover) chicken and poppy seed dressing with fresh greens, strawberries and goat cheese for an easy throw-together meal that's ready in 10 minutes.

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Shrimp Piccata with Zucchini Noodles

Shrimp Piccata with Zucchini Noodles
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The tangy lemon-caper sauce in this healthy Italian makeover recipe is a natural with shrimp. Serving it over zucchini noodles (aka zoodles) keeps the dish summery and low-cal, but it's also delicious with whole-wheat spaghetti.

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Chicken Satay Bowls with Spicy Peanut Sauce

Chicken Satay Bowls with Spicy Peanut Sauce
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Chicken satay moves from classic Thai restaurant appetizer to delicious homemade dinner with this easy meal-prep recipe. A crunchy Asian-inspired slaw serves as the satisfying low-carb base, and the bold, creamy peanut sauce brings a hint of heat to every bite.

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Chicken Parmesan Casserole

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We took the best parts of chicken Parmesan--ooey-gooey cheese, crispy breadcrumbs and plenty of tomato sauce--and spun them into an easy family-friendly casserole. We simplified it by skipping the breading on the chicken and, instead, loaded the top of the casserole with cheese and breadcrumbs. Serve with a crisp green salad to complete the meal.

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EatingWell's Eggplant Parmesan

EatingWell's Eggplant Parmesan
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Here we bake breaded eggplant for crispy results with fewer calories to boot. This makeover of the classic recipe was originally developed by our Test Kitchen in 1995 and got an update in 2020 for our 30th anniversary issue.

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Shrimp Scampi

Shrimp Scampi
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Shrimp scampi is a favorite dish at many Italian restaurants but our version takes just 20 minutes to prepare, so it's perfect for a weeknight dinner at home. Large shrimp are cooked with garlic and then served over linguine pasta with a buttery-wine sauce--it's so good your family may think you ordered takeout!

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Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers

Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers
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Mounding a classic Philly cheesesteak mixture in a colorful bell pepper and melting cheese on top is an easy way to skip the bread and cut the carbs.

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Cabbage Lo Mein

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Jam-packed with a colorful medley of vegetables, this classic noodle dish relies on a bold sesame-soy sauce to tie all the flavors and textures together.

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Rainbow Veggie Pizza

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Add more veggies to your pizza night with this colorful rainbow pizza! This vibrant pie is a fun way to add a little bit more excitement to dinnertime.

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Chipotle-Lime Cauliflower Tacos

Chipotle-Lime Cauliflower Tacos
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In this vegetarian taco recipe, cauliflower is tossed with a smoky-tangy sauce made with honey, lime juice and chipotles in adobo sauce before being roasted. Serve with more hot sauce, if desired.

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Greek Cauliflower Rice Bowls with Grilled Chicken

Greek Cauliflower Rice Bowls with Grilled Chicken
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These healthy Mediterranean cauliflower rice bowls topped with feta, olives, veggies and grilled chicken are impressive yet take just 30 minutes to make.

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Slow-Cooker Carne Picada Tacos with Avocado Salsa

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Loosely translated as "minced meat," the traditional texture of carne picada ranges from finely chopped to ground. Here we start with brisket, which becomes nice and tender in the slow cooker, then shred and chop the meat before serving. The seasoning is flavorful but not too spicy. Blistered jalapeños added at the end will satisfy the heat-lovers in the family. Pile the brisket into warmed corn tortillas, with lettuce, the jalapeños, cheese and avocado salsa for a healthy dinner that'll wake up your taco night routine.

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Sheet-Pan Shrimp Fried Rice

Sheet-Pan Shrimp Fried Rice
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Classic shrimp fried rice gets amped-up flavor with sambal heat. The textures are pretty spot on with hits of crispy and tender rice and are the same as you'd get if you prepared it in a wok or skillet. This sheet-pan shrimp fried rice recipe is a great way to use leftover rice, but you could also use pre-cooked microwave rice so that it can be coming to room temperature while you chop the veggies.

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Spicy Noodles with Pork, Scallions & Bok Choy

Spicy Noodles with Pork, Scallions & Bok Choy
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These spicy noodles are inspired by a Chinese dish called Ants Climbing a Tree, named for the way the small pieces of ground pork (the "ants") cling to the noodles (the "tree"). The twist in these healthy noodles comes from adding vegetables like scallions and bok choy.

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Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza with Sausage & Kale

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A piping-hot cast-iron skillet turns pizza dough into a puffy, crisp-bottomed crust (similar to focaccia). If you have children, let them help make this easy pizza recipe: While you cook the sausage, have the kids tear up the kale--no knife required!

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Fried Chicken Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

Fried Chicken Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
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A blend of whole-wheat panko and fine cornmeal gives this healthy chicken recipe the perfect amount of crunch even though it's not deep fried. Making an easy homemade buttermilk ranch dressing recipe means you can skip bottled, which may have additives and stabilizers.

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Sheet-Pan Steak & Potatoes

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One pan = less cleanup. To make this sheet-pan dinner work, the potatoes are roasted for 15 minutes before the asparagus and skirt steak are added. Finished with rosemary and blue cheese, it's our easy--and healthy--take on steak frites.

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Shrimp Tacos with Avocado Crema

Shrimp Tacos with Avocado Crema
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Avocado cuts some of the sour cream in our quick crema loaded with cilantro, for a healthier taco sauce that takes these shrimp tacos to the next level. Shrimp cook up super-fast, making them the ultimate taco filling for a fast weeknight dinner that's also impressive and delicious enough for a weekend dinner party.

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    Everything in This Slideshow

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    1 of 25 Cauliflower Chicken Fried "Rice"
    2 of 25 Beer-Battered Fish Tacos with Tomato & Avocado Salsa
    3 of 25 Chicken Shawarma with Yogurt Sauce
    4 of 25 Better-Than-Takeout Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries
    5 of 25 BBQ Chicken Skillet Pizza
    6 of 25 Montreal-Style Hanger Steak & Sweet Potato Frites
    7 of 25 Chicken & Kale Taco Salad with Jalapeño-Avocado Ranch
    8 of 25 Strawberry Poppy Seed Salad with Chicken
    9 of 25 Shrimp Piccata with Zucchini Noodles
    10 of 25 Chicken Satay Bowls with Spicy Peanut Sauce
    11 of 25 Chicken Parmesan Casserole
    12 of 25 EatingWell's Eggplant Parmesan
    13 of 25 Shrimp Scampi
    14 of 25 Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers
    15 of 25 Cabbage Lo Mein
    16 of 25 Rainbow Veggie Pizza
    17 of 25 Chipotle-Lime Cauliflower Tacos
    18 of 25 Greek Cauliflower Rice Bowls with Grilled Chicken
    19 of 25 Slow-Cooker Carne Picada Tacos with Avocado Salsa
    20 of 25 Sheet-Pan Shrimp Fried Rice
    21 of 25 Spicy Noodles with Pork, Scallions & Bok Choy
    22 of 25 Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza with Sausage & Kale
    23 of 25 Fried Chicken Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
    24 of 25 Sheet-Pan Steak & Potatoes
    25 of 25 Shrimp Tacos with Avocado Crema

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    25 Restaurant Copycat Dinners You'll Want to Make Forever
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