We put the KFC ‘secret’ recipe to the test

KFC’S original secret recipe has finally been revealed, but could it really be that simple? We put it to the test to find out.

MY FIRST job, 22 years ago, was in the kitchen of my local KFC.

I’m in the minority of veterans for whom the experience of endlessly preparing and cooking the chicken didn’t ruin my love of the product, and I unashamedly enjoy KFC as much today as I did on my first day in that gleaming white kitchen.

That’s why, when news broke this week that Colonel Sanders’ nephew had discovered the original secret recipe scrawled in a notebook, hidden in the home of Sanders’ late second wife, my spicy senses tingled.

Plenty have claimed to reveal the authentic “11 secret herbs and spices” that represent fast food’s holy grail, but most have been pretenders; pale imitations that never came close to living up to that golden, salty, peppery crust. This seemed different though.

The recipe, as written in the notebook and transcribed in the Chicago Tribune, seemed so simple:

11 Spices — Mix With 2 Cups White Fl.

1) 2/3 Ts Salt

2) 1/2 Ts Thyme

3) 1/2 Ts Basil

4) 1/3 Ts Origino (sic)

5) 1 Ts Celery Salt

6) 1 Ts Black Pepper

7) 1 Ts Dried Mustard

8) 4 Ts Paprika

9) 2 Ts Garlic Salt

10) 1 Ts Ground Ginger

11) 3 Ts White Pepper

I gathered the herbs and spices in front of me, carefully measured, and looked down on them with a genuine sense of hope. Salt, paprika, dried basil, dried thyme; was it really this simple?

The 11 herbs and spices. Picture: Tristan Lutze

I knew from my time in the KFC kitchen that a few pieces of information were missing from the recipe.

First, while the spices would always arrive at our store already mixed, it was obviously no ordinary flour they were mixed with. This was much finer and lighter.

Secondly, fried chicken loves a bath in buttermilk or brine prior to its breading. Buttermilk gives the best results, but I vaguely remembered using a more watery brine in my minimum wage earning youth. I decided I’d stick with what I knew — this was about those glorious herbs and spices — and used buttermilk.

Thirdly, KFC uses MSG in their current chicken recipe. Without it, my chicken would never taste exactly the same.

The final missing piece, the other great secret to Kentucky Fried Chicken’s succulent deliciousness, is their use of a glorious piece of equipment called a pressure fryer. A cross between a pressure cooker and deep fryer, it fries the chicken under pressure, speeding up the process and yielding much juicier results.

Without the budget or room for a pressure fryer, and the inclination to experiment with flours and brines, I stuck with my usual tried-and-tested methods for making fried chicken: buttermilk, plain flour, no MSG.

The breaded chicken, ready to be fried. Picture: Tristan Lutze

I mixed the herbs and spices with the flour, soaked the chicken in buttermilk, then dusted each piece carefully in the magical breading mix.

The oil bubbled gleefully as the chicken pieces vanished into it and I was hopeful. After a little over 10 minutes, I recovered the golden, glistening, cooked, finished product.

It was immediately apparent that it didn’t look like its famous counterpart, but this was attributable to the type of flour KFC has mysterious access to, and to the presence of larger flakes of dried thyme, oregano and basil in my chicken skin (the mix should probably have spent a few seconds in a food processor).

Finally, I sunk my teeth into a drumstick with excitement and apprehension — was this it?

The disappointing answer: Maybe …?

Tristan’s end result. Picture: Tristan Lutze

Without the MSG, I knew to expect a slightly muted version of the Colonel’s best, and that’s what this mostly tasted like. But the paprika I used had imparted slightly too much smokiness (something I could easily change next time), and without the exact flour or brine information, the density and saltiness was underwhelming.

It was delicious, but not yet something I could pass off as KFC.

And so the experiments and the dream will continue, but in the meantime, Colonel, you wouldn’t happen to have a second secret notebook lying around somewhere?

It’s hard to live up to the original.

Tristan Lutze is a food writer and photography with a deep love of fried chicken. You can find him on Instagram and Facebook.