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At one point in time, KFC’s chicken drove people to line up around the block in the hopes that they’d get a fried and juicy piece of chicken before the kitchen ran out of bird for the day. That was back in the 1930’s when Colonel Sanders opened his very first restaurant. Today, KFC is known for greasy yet somehow dry fried chicken that is more likely than not to give you the runs.
The main reason for the dip in quality is that they’ve changed the recipe to something that’s more easily produced on a large scale, whereas the original recipe was not beholden to corporate business models and distribution. But fear not – the original recipe hasn’t been lost, for on a trip to Kentucky to meet Colonel Sanders’ nephew, Joe Ledington, a contributor to the Chicago Tribune came across a handwritten list of 11 herbs and spices with exact measurements scribbled in an old famly scrapbook:
- 2/3 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Thyme
- 1/2 tsp Basil
- 1/3 tsp Oregano
- 1 tsp Celery salt
- 1 tsp Black pepper
- 1 tsp Dried mustard
- 4 tsp Paprika
- 2 tsp Garlic salt
- 1 tsp Ground ginger
- 3 tsp White pepper
Ledington isn’t willing to say that the list of herbs and spices are definitely the ones used in the infamous KFC recipe, but he did note that white pepper (which appears on the list) is “the secret ingredient.”
KFC, on the other hand, has stated that “lots of people through the years have claimed to discover or figure out the secret recipe” but that it’s yet to have been discovered.
Yeah, that’s what they WANT you to think. I bet you $10 that if you threw the above list of spices into your fried chicken batter that it’d come out 500x better than the slop in a box KFC serves, and that the whole “Tee hee it’s a secret!” thing is just bullshit to keep you cloggin’ your arteries with fast food fried chicken. Besides, why eat at KFC when you could go literally anywhere else? Popeyes is dope, Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets are the only thing that gets me to climax and come on, you’re telling me you’d rather eat at KFC than Bojangles? There’s something wrong with one of us, and it’s not the person who just admitted to finishing at the thought of chicken nuggets.
[H/T Chicago Tribune and Metro]