This is KFC popcorn chicken,
and this is everything that's in KFC popcorn chicken.
Welcome to "Fast Food Chemistry."
You probably know about the 11 herbs and spices,
but there are over 40 other ingredients
that go into making your popcorn chicken.
Seeing as I can't get ahold of American popcorn chicken,
we wanted to find out exactly what makes it so addictive
by making our own from scratch.
I of course am here to judge on how well Harry does.
It took some digging, but we did manage to find
an official KFC recipe for popcorn chicken,
and we're going to follow it to the letter.
Also, don't try this at home.
So, let's take a look at some of the chemicals
that are going into the chicken.
And when I say into the chicken, I mean into the chicken.
[crew laughing]
The first is carrageenan.
It's part of a mixture which we're actually
going to inject into the chicken itself.
It comes from this, seaweed.
You can buy it dehydrated,
as some people consider it a superfood.
However, if you leave it in water, it will turn into this.
So we're going to wet one on camera.
I mean, yeah, that's not surprising. It's seaweed, right?
I mean, it's supposed to be wet and kind of weed-like.
Still organic.
Oh, Harry, no!
It's crunchier than I was expecting.
And not in a good way.
This seaweed is incredibly useful for jelling and thickening
because it's so mucilaginous.
These properties mean it's used in everything, from sauces
to shoe polish to firefighting foam and even lube.
And we're going to put it in chicken.
While the seaweed itself
is often considered to be a health food,
the extract is supposedly less good for you.
Here are some studies looking
into the possible dangers of carrageenan.
It traditionally comes in two or three different types,
iota, kappa, and less commonly lambda.
Each of them have slightly different properties.
So, by mixing 1 gram of carrageenan
with 100 milliliters of water
and heating it to 70 degrees, you can form a jelly.
So here are the two types of jelly we've made
using the two types of carrageenan.
Uh, and then what, just slap 'em?
Slap 'em out?
[wet flopping]
I really hope you got the sound on that,
'cause that was incredible.
The kappa one seems to be a lot sturdier
and also slightly cloudier in color,
whereas the iota one is the opposite.
It's a little clearer, and it's also extremely liquidy.
I feel like I've just delivered a baby.
Then we have sodium caseinate,
which is another texture-altering substance
and protein supplement.
It comes from milk curds
and is the thing that makes cheese stringy.
Before synthetic PVA took over,
casein glue was used for a lot of things.
It was even strong enough
to hold World War II fighter planes together.
We're going to try and use it
to stick these two pieces of wood together.
It's already pretty sticky.
That's well and truly stuck to the spoon.
I really can't, I don't think I've ever felt
anything like this, to be honest.
At what point does this go in the chicken?
I'm still not clear, and it's really like,
it's already pretty unsettling that we've made
some sort of, like, natural, incredibly powerful glue.
And we all know the real test
as to how sticky something is.
Harry, we use that wall for, like, three different shows!
What are you doing?
Harry: Some of that is not coming off.
And the chicken ingredients are as follows. [clears throat]
Chicken breast with rib meat.
Contains up to 25% of a solution of water,
seasoning, which is soy protein concentrate, salt,
modified food starch, food starch, carrageenan,
onion powder, dehydrated chicken broth,
and spice extractives and sodium phosphates.
That means that up to 25% of your chicken
is actually just water and seasonings.
If you go for the chicken strips, that can be up to 45%.
KFC doesn't specify exactly
how it gets the solution into its chicken.
However, we did find out how other companies do it,
and it's something which I think you all need to see.
This is the Schröder IMAX 350 meat injector,
which might be one of the most upsetting things
I've ever seen.
Hey, Harry, quit being a baby.
Nothing about that was unsettling, OK?
To make sure all our ingredients
are getting into the chicken in a similar way,
we're going to mix all of these together
and then inject it into the breast.
The first ingredient after water is soy protein concentrate.
This will improve the springiness,
the chewiness, and the cohesiveness.
Then we have a series of thickeners and flavorings,
that seaweed we talked about,
which helps the chicken absorb more water,
and some dehydrated chicken broth.
We want to make sure we're following
the ingredients exactly,
so what we're going to do is take some chicken,
make a broth, dehydrate it, rehydrate it,
and then put it back into the chicken.
Once again, we're not doing this in a kitchen.
We're doing it in an office for some strange reason.
The final ingredient is sodium phosphate,
or the bowel cleanser that we mentioned earlier.
Mbowel. How do you say bowel?
Bowel.
Mbowel.
In this case it's used to emulsify
this delicious jelly mixture,
which we're going to inject into our chicken.
OK, this is getting injected.
It looks like you've just taken chicken and blended it.
Shout-out to the IMAX 350. We're doing the best we can.
[syringe slurping liquid]
Oh, the noise.
[liquid squirts] [Harry laughing]
There you go.
It's hard to describe. It's not unpleasant.
I think it's just 'cause there's quite a lot of onion in it.
Come on, inject it. Let's go!
Oh, look at it. Can you see that?
The little bubble.
That is disgusting. Oh, my God.
What are we doing? [crew laughing]
Go on, there you go.
This looks so unholy.
Leon: You got all of that in there!
Harry: Empty.
[sighs] Good lord.
Hey, man, people inject meat with stuff
to make it taste better.
This is common sense, so none of this has surprised me.
I didn't think that footage was that upsetting at all.
Basically 2 fluid ounces of fluid.
I didn't think that chicken as a kind of solid material
would have the room in it to accept 2 ounces of fluid.
Obviously we've had some overflow here,
but a shocking amount of that has gone in.
Replacing with the water, buddy.
Come on, we went over this.
Out with the water, in with the flavored goo.
So, our injected chicken breast
has now been resting in the fridge for one hour
along with the other chicken breast,
which we left untouched.
And we just want to show you the size difference,
because it's pretty wild.
It's just massive. The size of it is huge.
It's gained quite a lot of volume thanks to the injections.
Wow, that's interesting.
It absorbed that stuff like a sponge.
It's, like, twice as big now.
I think I just found a hack for cooking at home, man.
I'm going to start injecting it with stuff.
And the breading ingredients are as follow.
Enriched wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron,
sodium bicarbonate, modified food starch,
autolyzed yeast extract, monocalcium phosphate,
and corn syrup solids.
Breading, baby, let's go!
Now, there are two incredibly similar lists here,
because KFC predusts its chicken
with a slightly different recipe.
They both have a lot of flavoring agents, enriched flour,
and leavening agents to help make the breading rise.
There are two small differences between the coatings.
The first has some more of that
dehydrated chicken broth we made
as well as some autolyzed yeast extract.
This is yeast that's been broken down, usually by heat,
and it's used as a kind of cheaper substitute for MSG.
It's also a key ingredient in a British favorite, Marmite.
There is one item that we couldn't get our hands on exactly,
and that's monocalcium phosphate.
Calcium phosphate comes in three different varieties,
mono, di, and tri.
These are all pretty common additives in food,
the only difference being the phosphorus percentage.
Instead of monocalcium phosphate,
we got dicalcium phosphate,
which in the UK tends to be used as a horse supplement.
The only downside is that it comes
in this handy 4-kilogram tub,
of which we need 1 gram.
4 kilogram!
Nothing makes food taste better than liquefied horses,
is how I understand what a horse supplement is.
Don't correct me.
So, the elephant in the room
when it comes to KFC ingredients
are the 11 secret herbs and spices they use.
It's 11 herbs and spices? Here we go.
11 herbs and spices. We'll go 10.
I'm gonna go, let's go salt and pepper,
paprika,
oregano,
thyme,
garlic powder,
and then therefore onion powder.
Sage?
Oh, yeah, cayenne pepper, good?
We'll put it in there,
'cause we can't even think of 11 at all, so.
OK, we need two more.
Mustard? What do you think about mustard?
Crew member: Coriander. Joe: Coriander?
Let's go coriander.
While KFC, of course, refuses to disclose
the exact herbs and spices used,
a nephew of Colonel Sanders a few years back
discovered an envelope with a recipe written on it.
This included not only the spices
but also the quantities used by KFC.
A lot of people have tried this on the internet,
and they swear by it as an accurate representation of KFC,
so we're going to base our recipe on that today.
The spices in order of amounts are:
paprika, white pepper,
garlic salt, ginger,
mustard, black pepper,
celery salt, salt, thyme,
basil, and oregano.
Holy [beep]!
We were, like, really close!
I do love paprika.
The colonel doesn't want you to know.
Whew!
This is Ultratex, which is a "gluten-free, multi-functional,
highly dispersible instant thickening starch."
It smells like a stable.
[sniffs] Ah.
British flour isn't as enriched as American flour,
so we have to add our own riboflavin and folic acid to ours.
The batter contains water, enriched bleached white flour,
which is niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate,
autola -- autolayaazed,
autolyzed yeet extract.
Yeet. Yeast extract.
Modified cellulose as emulsifiers.
Surprisingly, there's no egg or buttermilk used,
unlike most of the KFC imitation recipes
you might find online.
Instead, the chain uses a mixture of food starches,
flours, and sodium caseinate.
That's the chemical we came across earlier
that's extracted from milk and also that we used
to glue these pieces of wood together.
Should we see if it worked?
Leon talks a big game with these things.
Leon: No, I'm just gonna,
I might have to use a tool though.
Looks like pretty well. That's a bit disturbing.
Getting there.
Don't cut off your fingers for this bit! Oh!
Harry: OK.
Yeah, that's why we won the war.
[crew laughing]
Yeah, you got help with that, buddy.
Don't get so cocky.
Given how hard it was for us
to pull those pieces of wood apart,
I think it will hold on to the chicken pretty well.
It's worth noting the popcorn chicken is a different recipe
to the original recipe KFC chicken.
It's thought that the early versions of that
used buttermilk; however, these days,
it seems as if they might use dried egg whites
and dried milk instead.
If the roles were reversed for this show,
this would be a much different show.
If I had to do this s---, holy crap.
This would be ... [laughs]
This would be the most out-of-control,
poorly made meal you've ever seen.
I used to have the same exact deep fryer,
and as Harry is about to find out,
it is such a pain in the butt.
Wait for it to cool down
and then walk it over to the dumpster.
It was an apartment, so, like, it was a whole thing.
Like, what do you do with all that oil
once you're done cooking?
So, this is what we're aiming for.
This is popcorn chicken in the UK.
As you can see, it's a really small piece of chicken,
quite a thin layer of breading around the side,
and, yeah, a nice kind of
golden-brown color on the outsides.
We've taken a look at popcorn chicken in the US,
and it kind of looks maybe a little bit bigger
and also maybe a little bit craggier on the outside
when you get those lumps of flour during the frying process.
Looks bigger.
Also, craggily. Totally a word.
Harry: I'll start by cutting our injected chicken
into popcorn-chicken-sized pieces.
I feel like the sizes are going to be wildly inconsistent.
I've just gone straight through a pocket there.
Look at that.
Something came off on my knife.
I'm going for a little bit bigger
than the ones that we found in the UK,
because I think, A, it'll make a tastier end result,
and also, B, I think it will be closer to the American one.
Now that we have our chicken pieces,
we're going to put them in the predust,
the batter, and then the breading.
It's the whole, the wet-hand, dry-hand approach.
All right.
That's looking crispy as hell as well.
I'm making so much mess.
These look f---ing banging.
Yeah, those look really good.
Have fun cleaning that deep fryer.
Harry: These are just like, yeah, just slightly bigger.
That one's pretty good.
These are my boys. A couple of the big lads at the back.
So there we have it. We've made popcorn chicken.
Right away, I much, much prefer
the look of our popcorn chicken.
I think we've gone for more
of what I think the American style is,
where maybe slightly larger pieces,
but also with the breading,
we've really gone the craggily route with that,
and we've got these big lumps of
really kind of crispy breading on there.
The British version, which is just kind of, like,
a bit more pale and smooth and just looks,
I don't know, a bit sad compared to ours.
Of course, with KFC, the most important thing
to get right is the flavor.
I think I actually might prefer the taste of our one.
I think with the UK one,
the predominant taste I got was salt,
and not too many other spices going on.
Whereas with ours, I definitely got some of the paprika.
I definitely got some of the pepper.
I still got the salt, which is what you look for.
And, yeah, I think there's just a lot more going on.
It's a little bit more complex and just very nice.
Although the UK version looks more appetizing,
the challenge was to make it as close
to the KFC popcorn chicken as possible.
So for that, I'll give the guys,
I'll go B minus.
Eh, I'll go B. I'll be generous. B.
Do ours look closer to American popcorn chicken?
Let us know in the comments.
Ours is better.
They don't taste of anything. That's silly.