welcome friends welcome to the first episode in our cracking the KFC recipe
series and I thought I'd start off the first episode answering a bunch of
questions that I know we're going to get in the comment section and the first
question or comment is probably going to be why why bother why bother trying to
recreate KFC there's much better Fried Chicken out there and you're right there
probably is much better Fried Chicken out there there is much better Fried
Chicken out there I was gonna recreate Fried Chicken I'd probably start with
Gus's in Memphis that would be my fried chicken of choice but KFC Kentucky Fried
Chicken is the original it's the one that everyone knows it's all over the
world I say KFC and everyone on the planet is
going to know what I'm talking about so because of that global stature it is
probably the one that we could start with because everybody knows what it is
everybody knows what I'm talking about and in terms of global numbers KFC is
number four or five globally in terms of fast food restaurant outlets the next
largest would be Popeyes I think at like 25th on that list so KFC being first
being the largest is the one that I'm going to go with and everyone pretty
much agrees that KFC was great it was great before the Colonel's sold it to
corporate interests and there's a huge online movement of people who work very
hard trying to figure out how to capture that pre-1960 for flavor what was in
that chicken and so can we recapture some of that magic can we create a KFC
recipe that is more like the KFC recipe from the 1960s same basic flavor profile
is what I'm looking for but just better more flavour everyone seems to agree
that the flavor is gone the chicken is flavorless the batter is flavorless and
that's not what I remember as a kid what I remember as a kid was something that
you bit into and it was like wow this tastes really good and so I'd like to
get back to that I'd like to make chicken that is more like chicken pre
1964 in the US pre 1984 here in Canada because the colonel didn't sell out in
Canada until after his death the Canadian restaurants belonged to him so
we're gonna try and see if we can create something that is the same flavor
profile but more flavor can we do it I don't know so as part of this we have
taken a trip down to Kentucky and we've eaten at three restaurants that were all
started by Colonel Sanders or by his family and we ate chicken at each of
those and so the next video is just going to be about our trip to Kentucky
and the chicken that we ate there and we spoke to someone in Kentucky who worked
with Colonel Sanders and I learned from that person that everything I've ever
read or everything I think I know about KFC and Colonel Sanders is both true and
a lie he was a very mysterious man an enigma
in fact one of the other reasons that I wanted to do Kentucky Fried Chicken is
for a long time I worked in commercial production and we would produce TV
commercials and I worked on dozens of KFC spots over the years and I'll play
some of them over here while I'm talking and one of the things that I saw over
say 20 years was every time KFC came in and we were shooting a spot the recipe
didn't change but the methodology changed completely
they went from using milk and eggs to putting things into a tumbler to not
using a tumbler to dipping in water to three packages of something put into the
flour to two packages of something put into the flour it was always different
and you could tell those changes were never about the quality of the food it
was always about saving a little bit of money
streamlining the process making it easier to train employees so that leads
us to can we take this recipe back can we find the flavor profile that is still
there today but ramp that up improve the quality and make something that you
actually want to eat and I'm going to do that in this pressure fryer but I'm also
going to work towards figuring out how we can do that without a pressure fryer
and so in order to do this I'm gonna be looking at clues in the history books
there's a great piece of film from the late 1950s with Colonel Sanders on the
Tennessee Ernie Ford TV show with Minnie Pearl and he's making chicken and he
walks them through the process of what he's doing in order to make this chicken
and he very clearly says at that point that he uses milk and egg wash now the
mixture that the chicken was in what is that milk and milk and egg wash and so
at that point he was using milk and egg wash today they just use water they dip
it in water and the milk is powdered milk that's put in with the flour and
the egg is powdered egg that's again put in with the flour so we're gonna go back
to a milk and egg wash and see if that improves everything he also talks about
the pressure that they use in the pressure fryer he says twenty nine and
seven ten and twenty nine and seven times found pressure I know today they
use the pressure fryer that's between 13 and 15 pounds per square inch I think
that's where it is and some of that change can be down to the chickens
chickens today are slaughtered much earlier than chickens were in the past
and so some of that flavor may be lost because we can't get the same chickens
anymore so I'm gonna look at free-range or pasture fed chickens and see if that
improves flavor and then of course we're going to look at all the various spice
mixes there was a leaked KFC spice mix in 2016 the Chicago Tribune found we're
gonna look at that one there was a guy who wrote a book and he said he had KFC
chicken tested and there was only salt msg and pepper so we're gonna try that
one there's of course the famous Marion Kay 99x chicken spices that Colonel
Sanders had a hand in creating after he sold in America but while he's still
owned there was a bunch of lawsuits around
that one so we're going to try that as well and then there's this underground
group of people that have noticeboards all about deciphering that KFC chicken
recipe and they use all kinds of clues there's pictures of the 11 herbs and
spices and they've got some really good recipes so we're going to compare that
as well so in an upcoming episode we're going to do four or five recipes and
compare them to today's KFC and see which one gets into the right flavor
profile and then we're going to use that to sort of hopefully get to the right
spot so will we succeed does anyone really even care if we succeed does
anyone really even care if KFC chicken could taste better I guess we'll find
out
but for now I'm having a lot of fun trying out a bunch of different recipes
and seeing how close I can get to that ideal so thanks for stopping by hope to
see you again soon
you