15 Cracker Barrel Copycat Recipes

We love Saturdays. Do you know why? It is normally the day where the kitchen at home is closed! But we still like home-cooked food. So, what’s the answer? Well, we’ll tell you. It’s Cracker Barrel. The menu at Cracker Barrel is huge and is packed full of the kind of food that makes you want to curl up and go to sleep right after eating! As to our favorite? That’s a tough one. Today we’ve assembled a list of 15 cracker barrel copycat recipes, so you can enjoy your favorites even if you are staying at home! Take a look and see what you like.

Best Cracker Barrel Recipes At Home

1. Cracker Barrel French Toast

We absolutely love French toast. It’s like a cross between a pancake, an omelet, and… Well, toast! This recipe is very quick to make and is good ‘as is’ or supplemented with a few little extras if you are making a meal. (Our favorite is strips of sweet cured bacon along with a generous lashing of maple syrup). The trick here is to get a production line going, with the bread, the egg wash, and the pan all in a line. There’s a good chance that if you are feeding a family, demand will quickly outstrip supply. Better make a double portion then!

2. Fried Apples

This recipe is ideal if you have a few leftover apples that look in danger of not being eaten. Aside from being utterly delicious, this recipe is very easy to make. When you cook apples in a frying pan, they tend to break down slightly. They also release their sugars as they turn soft, making a gooey sweet treat. The beauty of this recipe is that you can serve it as an accompaniment to a savory dish (it works really well with pork); alternatively, you can reserve a little and have it as a dessert. Gooey fried apples and ice cream? Yes, please! 

Cracker Barrel traditionally uses bacon dripping to make their fried apples, but if that is a little too unhealthy for you, feel free to use butter instead. Aside from that, there are only a few simple ingredients to add, and you’ll find them in your store cupboard at home!

3. Cracker Barrel Carrots

These are a firm favorite in our house and are a great recipe if you have kids at home who normally refuse to eat their vegetables. Cracker-barrel carrots are absolutely amazing. The trick is to cook the carrots until they are completely soft and tender. The sweetness comes from the inclusion of sugar, which really brings out the taste of the carrots. They are also poached in a little butter; this gives them the slightest savory edge. Just make sure you reserve some of that cooking liquid to spoon over the carrots just before serving.

4. Homestyle Fried Chicken

We love that cracker barrel serves homestyle food. It doesn’t get more homely than this. We love to serve this dish alongside simple sides like mashed potato and sweetcorn. And here’s the good part. This recipe relies on only 5 ingredients! Chicken, flour, seasoning, buttermilk, and water. That’s it! To help the chicken cook more evenly, we give it a good pounding with a meat hammer until it is really thin. We don’t know why but thin chicken breast seems to taste better! The buttermilk helps keep the chicken juicy. It is a very mild acid that slightly softens the proteins in the meat. The longer you leave it in the buttermilk, the nicer it is.

Related: What to serve with fried chicken

5. Cracker Barrel Hashbrown Casserole

Two of our favorite dishes combined into one! We love casserole, and we love hash browns, so what could be better? This is great as a breakfast treat, but you can also serve it as a side to other dishes during the day. This isn’t just any standard hash brown either. The entire thing is packed full of flavor with the taste of sweet and soft onions, a layer of thick and gooey cheese, and a generous helping of sour cream all thrown into the mix. And here is our secret ingredient… A can of chicken soup. This gives the dish a really tasty savory edge.

6. Banana Pudding

Is it time for dessert? Oh yes! Banana pudding is rich, creamy, and indulgent. We challenge you to try and eat more than one! The trick to getting this recipe tasting just like the original is to use ripe bananas. We aren’t normally a fan of bananas turning a bit brown, but we will make an exception in this case. As a word of warning, this is definitely not waistline-friendly food, so if you are trying to be good, look away now!

Still here? Good. This recipe contains loads of good stuff, including; lashings of whipped cream, rich and smooth cream cheese, butter, and bananas. 

7. Coca Cola Chocolate Cake

Let’s keep it sweet, shall we? Coca-cola chocolate cake is utterly heavenly. This cake is heavy, sweet, and utterly indulgent. Pair it up with a pour of heavy cream, and you’ve got a dessert that will have you in a carb coma in seconds! By adding coke to the cake batter, you make it super sweet. Some magic happens in the oven, and this cake turns super gooey. You can try it with coke zero, but we prefer the full-fat version. There are a fair few ingredients in this recipe, so make sure to make a list if you are going to the store.

8. Cracker Barrel Meatloaf

“I would do anything for love”… No, silly, not that meatloaf. We are talking about cracker barrel meatloaf, which always brings claps of joy when we announce what is for dinner. Again this isn’t waistline-friendly. Why? Well, to get a juicy meatloaf that isn’t dry, you ideally want to use ground beef with relatively high-fat content. Trust us, the calories are worth it! This meatloaf recipe is full of good things like sliced peppers, onions, and cheese even makes a guest appearance. Don’t forget to add the brown sugar and mustard topping, either! 

Related: Lipton Onion Soup Meatloaf

9. Country Dumplings

It doesn’t get more homecooked country than these country dumplings! This recipe is super simple and a great way to use up a few of those store cupboard ingredients. A little trick is to poach these dumplings in stock. This adds just a hint of savory flavor. They are a great accompaniment to so many dishes too. If you are feeding a crowd, they are a great filler! We top them with a sauce made from the stock the dumplings were boiled in, so be sure not to tip it away! 

10. Cracker Barrel Biscuits

Crumbly flaky and light biscuits. These are not something you want to serve on their own, but they go really well with various dishes. We tend to serve them with any dish with a sauce as they are great for soaking up juices. We cheat a little with the recipe as we haven’t always got time to be blending butter and flour. 

The trick to this recipe is to make sure that you’ve got a box of Bisquick mix. This is a blend of flour and shortening and is fabulous for creating a string of pastry-based dishes. To make sure the biscuits turn brown, give them a little brush with melted butter just before you pop them into the oven.

11. Cracker Barrel Mac and Cheese

You’ve been waiting all week to get to cracker barrel, and now you are hungry. Nothing fills you up better than a large plate of mac n cheese. We’ve tried countless versions of mac n cheese, and we think that cracker barrel has to be up there as one of our favorites. 

Cracker barrel is all about simple home-cooked food, so there aren’t any fancy ingredients here. We make this mac and cheese in the traditional way… We make a roux of flour and butter. Once it starts to sizzle and smells a little biscuity, we add milk and constantly stir until we are left with a thick bechamel sauce. From there, we add a few handfuls of shredded cheese and add the macaroni before bubbling until thick. 

But we aren’t done yet. We finish the macaroni cheese under a broiler. Adding a handful of shredded cheese and flashing it until it turns slightly brown and bubbly. IF you leave it to rest for 5 minutes, you get a sort of crisp cheese crust that needs to be broken through to get to the creamy elbow macaroni beneath. 

Related: Mac and cheese sides

12. Cracker Barrel Chicken Tenders

Who needs KFC when you’ve got cracker barrel? These chicken tenders aren’t deep-fried or crispy, but what they are is utterly delicious! And here is the best bit… Take a guess at how many ingredients you are going to need to make this dish? The answer? Just four. That’s right. All you need (aside from chicken breast) is some Italian dressing, a little honey, and a small squeeze of lime juice! 

The only downside is that to get the best flavor, you will have to marinate your tenders. We recommend a minimum of an hour, but if you leave them in the fridge overnight, they are even better. The lime juice acts in a similar way to buttermilk and breaks down the chicken slightly, making it super tender.

13. Chicken and Dumplings

So you liked the dumplings above but want something a little more substantial? Give this one a try. This recipe is really hearty and filling. Although Cracker Barrel serves this as an entrée, we sometimes make a double portion as a main meal. 

This is a mix between a chicken stew and a soup. It is perfect for cold winter evenings and warms you up from the inside. The main addition to this recipe is cooked chicken, so if you’ve had a roast chicken the night before and have some leftovers, then this could be ideal. We don’t make the soup from scratch and instead prefer to just use a can of the store-bought variety.

These dumplings are made using buttermilk. This can be a little difficult to acquire, but you can easily make your own by beating double cream until it separates. The best bit is that if you compress the solids, you’ve made your very own homemade butter!

14. Cracker Barrel Pancakes

There is nothing nicer than getting up to be greeted to a tower of delicious golden pancakes, especially when they are absolutely smothered in lashings of syrup! As with many of Cracker Barrel’s recipes, these feature buttermilk, which, when combined with baking soda, makes for a really light and airy pancake.

Cracker Barrel doesn’t do things by halves. To get that golden and slightly crisp exterior, you are going to have to fry your pancakes in butter. Once they are cooked, it is entirely up to you how you top them. One of our favorite suggestions is a few chunks of freshly cut fruit, like strawberries and bananas (oh and blueberries), served with a large dollop of sweetened heavy cream.

Related: What to serve with pancakes

15. Cracker Barrel Green Beans

While we like green beans, they can be a little, well, boring. Not so with this contribution from cracker barrel! These are ultra-special, and we could easily demolish an entire plate of these without any encouragement.

What makes them so special? Oh, only a combination of green beans, sweet white onion, crispy shards of bacon, and a little sugar. We don’t know why but the sugar makes all the difference and really adds another dimension to the flavor of these beans. 

They are great for adding a splash of color to your plate!

Conclusion

We are in no doubt that you’ll be able to find something you like among our list of 15 Cracker Barrel Copycat recipes. Cracker Barrel cooks all their food fresh, so you should be able to make something that tastes just as good in your own kitchen at home. What is your favorite dish on the list? Let us know in the comments