The beauty of restaurant recipes is the ability to adapt them to suite your particular tastes and needs. This is a great appetizer that could make a complete meal with just a couple of side-dishes.  Outback Steakhouse™ serves their Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp with a signature “Creole Marmalade”, but you may want to try another dipping sauce if you’re not partial to orange marmalade.

These are tender crispy shrimp in a beer batter with a light flaky coconut coating on the outside.  They offer just the right amount of sweetness and taste delicious with the tangy tart flavors that come in the Creole marmalade.

I would recommend using the largest shrimp possible, but don’t hesitate to make them with whatever is available (other than tiny bay shrimp).  If you have some friends who don’t like shrimp or seafood, try this with tender chicken breast cutlets and they’ll be very impressed.
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Outback Steakhouse™ Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp Recipe

The Cheesecake Factory™ serves one of the best appetizers you’ll ever find.  With all of the different ingredients and sauces, these lettuce wraps are perfect for sharing with a group.  These make a great dish for bringing to a pot luck.

This is served with Thai chicken satays, julienne carrots, sesame bean sprouts, coconut curry noodles, Thai marinaded cucumbers and butter lettuce leaves to wrap it all up.  Include with this three different Thai sauces for dipping.  Peanut, sweet red chili and the tangy tamarind cashew sauce.

The best top secret restaurant recipes for each item and the sauces are all included.  Feel free to do some experimenting with other ingredients and sauces.
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The Cheesecake Factory™ Lettuce Wraps Recipe

I don’t know why it always seems a salad from a restaurant tastes so much better than anything I can put together at home.  My only guess is the salad dressing.  At home, we’re stuck with whatever we can find in a bottle on the grocery store shelves.  Restaurant recipes will usually be something you’ve heard of, but with an added twist.

The Outback Steakhouse™ Ranch Dressing can be duplicated at home with the help of Hidden Valley Ranch™.  They have a dry salad dressing mix (not the ranch dip) which makes a wonderful starter for our Outback Steakhouse™ Ranch Dressing.

The most important step is letting the dressing “set-up” in the refrigerator.  Do NOT skip this step or cut it short.  In fact, if you can, make this a day ahead of when you’re going to need it and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.  At the very least give it an hour to chill.
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Outback Steakhouse™ Ranch Dressing Recipe