The Chick-Fil-A Copycat Recipes You Can Now Make At Home

Whether you love Chick-fil-A or have vowed never to eat there again, there's nothing stopping you from making Chick-fil-A favorites for yourself at home. So if it's Sunday, or you love the chicken but not the politics, you can still get the flavors you're after from Chick-fil-A.

Yes, it probably takes more effort to make Chick-fil-A favorites for yourself than it does to hit the drive-thru, but it can be fun to take on classic restaurant recipes at home and see how they stack up against the real deal. Or, in the case of coleslaw, bring a recipe back from the dead.

While a lot of the classics at Chick-fil-A arrive at the restaurant ready to cook, that's not the case at home. Pre-brined chicken? Sorry, you'll have to brine it yourself. Even the fries, you'll need to cut and soak. But it's well worth it if you've got a craving you can't shake, or you just want to save some cash and eat at home.

Coleslaw is off the menu at Chick-fil-A, though it's still available at Dwarf House restaurants (the original, original Chick-fil-A) in Georgia. Chick-fil-A said goodbye to their coleslaw side in 2015, and even released a copycat recipe on its way out. 

If you're missing the taste of Chick-fil-A coleslaw, it's quick to put together on your own. This copycat coleslaw recipe is nearly the same as the recipe Chick-fil-A shared, except you'll use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar for a little added sweetness. 

The copycat recipe offers some advice on adjustments you can make to suit your tastes, such as dialing back the mayonnaise and sugar. You can also swap in hand-chopped cabbage if you prefer, but it's easy enough to just use pre-shredded cabbage bags.

At most fast food restaurants, drinks are an afterthought –- just something to wash down the burgers and fries. Chick-fil-A lemonade is destination-worthy, but you might not want to head to the restaurant when it's so easy and inexpensive to make at home, especially if you have a juicer. 

You can copy Chick-fil-A's hand-squeezed lemonade with just lemon, sugar, and water. Really, that's all you need! All it takes to make this lemonade is juicing the lemons with an electric or handheld juicer, straining the juice, and combining it with just-right amounts of water and sugar, stirring until the sugar has dissolved completely. Refrigerate for at least an hour, then serve.

Want to make a frosted lemonade? Blend together a cup of chilled lemonade with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

In 2019, Chick-fil-A stepped up their sides game, adding mac and cheese to the permanent menu. Want to make this extra creamy and cheesy mac at home? You can have it ready in about 30 minutes flat following this copycat recipe.

Chick-fil-A copycat mac and cheese calls for five different cheeses, a pound of macaroni, butter, flour, water, dry milk powder, an egg yolk, and spices. The spices don't add a lot of flavor to the finished product, but they do add color to make the mac and cheese look more appetizing.

Chick-fil-A nuggets are great on their own or in Chick-n-Minis, and they use whole chicken tender pieces, not ground or separated meat. And while Chick-fil-A nuggets arrive at the restaurant already brined, you can replicate that at home with a pickle brine that adds flavor and keeps the meat moist. It's easy to pair your copycat Chick-fil-A nuggets with a honey mustard dipping sauce made of mayonnaise, yellow mustard, honey, and rice vinegar. Or, just buy your favorite Chick-fil-A sauce at the store!

All in, it takes about 45 minutes to make copycat Chick-fil-A nuggets at home. Probably not faster than the drive-thru, depending on your proximity to the nearest Chick-fil-A restaurant, but certainly doable if you'd rather stay home.

How can you get the signature juiciness of a Chick-fil-A grilled chicken sandwich? It's all in the brine, which sits for four hours. You can shortcut and use fewer ingredients with a pickle brine, but to get closer to the classic Chick-fil-A flavor, you'll need to go with a homemade brine of apple cider vinegar, orange juice, grape juice, chicken stock, molasses, and spices. 

Once the brine is done, you're just about ten minutes away from a copycat Chick-fil-A grilled chicken sandwich. You can grill on charcoal, or just use a stovetop grill pan. Don't have a grill pan? That's fine, but you'll just miss out on the grill marks. Top with veggies and copycat Chick-fil-A sauce, or make the Sweet Sriracha copycat sauce from the recipe.

The secret to Chick-fil-A's signature sauce? It's pretty much just a mashup of other sauces. To make this copycat Chick-fil-A sauce, you'll mix together honey mustard, barbeque sauce, buffalo sauce, and sauce from coleslaw in the right proportions – that's it. According to the recipe, it's easy enough to make this mix at other chicken chains if you order coleslaw and pick up the rest of the sauces. 

You can use premade coleslaw and drain off enough of the juice, or you can just take the opportunity to make copycat Chick-fil-A coleslaw and take it from there. This sauce goes great with chicken, fries, or even baked potatoes.

In the chicken sandwich wars, Chick-fil-A's classic chicken sandwich is the one to beat. When restaurants launch a new chicken sandwich contender these days, a lot of times, it looks a lot like the one from Chick-fil-A. It's tough to beat a classic, but it's not so hard to make a copycat Chick-fil-A sandwich just like it at home.

Seasoned fried chicken breast on a buttered bun with pickle chips: it's simple, but works well together. The most important step: brining the chicken for a juicy flavor. You can brine overnight if you'd like, or at least for an hour. Next, you'll dredge the breasts in a flour mixture and pan fry, then assemble the sandwich and enjoy.

What's a fast food meal (even a copycat one) without fries? Round out your Chick-fil-A copycat with waffle fries that are almost like the real thing. Yes, you could just grab a bag of waffle fries from your grocer's freezer and bake them, but there's nothing like cutting and frying your own. 

Check out this copycat Chick-fil-A waffle fries recipe to find out how to cut potatoes into the waffle shape with a mandoline slicer or potato cutter. There's also a great tip for making your fries come out crispy: soak them in ice water for up to 30 minutes, which pulls out some of the starches that can make your fries turn soggy. These fries pair great with a copycat classic Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich.

It takes just 30 minutes to make these copycat Chick-fil-A chicken strips, and the recipe is so easy you might just opt for these instead of ready-made chicken strips from your freezer. While you can't make them 100 percent like Chick-fil-A does, you can get pretty close to the classic flavor you'll find at the restaurant. And you can customize the ingredients if you'd like, substituting in canola or vegetable oil instead of peanut oil, or adding more spices to the flour mixture.

Make a copycat Chick-fil-A spicy chicken sandwich at home with a versatile recipe that can be made regular or spicy in under 30 minutes. You'll bread and fry the chicken, then dip it in Texas Pete hot sauce –- which the recipe author says is the closest you can get to Chick-fil-A's proprietary spice blend. Prefer to turn down the heat? Just skip the sauce and assemble your sandwich with a buttered bun and optional pickles on top.