Brining chicken helps it retain more moisture, and Serious Eats suggests soaking the chicken in buttermilk instead of a saltwater solution. The buttermilk has the added benefit of tenderizing the meat, and adding an egg to the mix creates a stronger structure for the breading to stick to later. So, grab a large bowl and whisk the buttermilk and egg until they're well blended and homogenized. Add the chicken pieces and let them marinate for 20 to 30 minutes.
If you're a plan-ahead kind of person, place the bowl in the refrigerator to marinate overnight. Don't let the mixture sit for longer than 24 hours or the chicken will become mushy.
While your chicken is marinating, it's time to prepare the breading. KFC's blend of 11 herbs and spices was a closely guarded secret until There have been several other copycat versions floating around the internet before and since this one, but this particular recipe is the closest thing we've tasted to the real deal. We will say it has significantly larger quantities of spices than most recipes.
If you don't want to go through the trouble of measuring the spice mix every time you want to make fried chicken, Tablespoon suggests doubling it up. You can store it in an airtight container for up to three months. There is one teeny, tiny ingredient missing from the secret recipe uncovered by the Chicago Tribune : monosodium glutamate MSG. When their test kitchen tried out the famous chicken recipe, it was close to the original, "yet something was still missing.
The writers for the Chicago Tribune aren't the only ones who believe MSG is the real secret ingredient. Ron Douglas, author of America's Most Wanted Recipes , claims to have cracked the secret recipe in We can't say we were willing to add that much MSG to our recipe, so we just sprinkled a little bit on at the end. Before we start frying, we have to point out an important fact: One of the reasons KFC's fried chicken is so delicious is because they use pressure fryers. According to Slate , Harland Sanders did something very dangerous when he opened his restaurant back in the s and put oil rather than water in a regular pressure cooker.
The idea behind cooking under pressure is that you can heat water hotter than its normal boiling point of degrees Fahrenheit, cooking food faster and more efficiently. The same idea worked with oil — it was able to get much hotter than a regular deep fryer, cooking the chicken more quickly. Today, KFC still pressure cooks their fried chicken, although much more safely using commercial pressure fryers.
Since most of us don't have one of those and we can't emphasize enough that you should not put fryer oil in your pressure cooker , we used a Dutch oven instead. If you happen to have an electric tabletop fryer, that will work, too.
The hardest part about frying chicken on the bone is getting the insides to cook through without burning the outside. That's kind of tricky when it comes to frying bone-in chicken because it takes longer to cook than boneless chicken.
And, when frying food , the hot oil creates a crust on the food's surface, preventing the oil from getting through to the inside.
That's great for creating crispy exteriors but not so great for cooked-through interiors. If you lower the temperature to try to help equalize the cooking, the oil will be too cool to crisp up the outside, creating soggy fried chicken. In , the Louisville, Ky. Other protective measures include using two different suppliers to prepare the 11 herbs and spices so that no single entity can crack the code.
Feeding into the mystique, the recently revamped KFC website, www. Just as he's about to spill the beans, the sound malfunctions and an "out of order" sign pops up on the screen.
The recipe is, without question, a secret as juicy as well-fried fowl — and has been for the better part of a century. So, imagine my surprise when a list of 11 herbs and spices was plucked from a Sanders family scrapbook and placed into my hands. Crazy, right? Our story begins with my trip to the small town of Corbin, Ky.
I'm here to visit the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum, a shrine of sorts to the fried chicken magnate. His namesake restaurant has been restored to its midth-century appearance but with a modern-day KFC store as an appendage. My assignment: research the restaurant, museum and fried chicken in Corbin for a "Fork in the Road" feature in the Chicago Tribune's Travel section. With the help of the local tourism office, I arrange to meet a man named Joe Ledington. The year-old retired teacher has spent his entire life in Appalachia.
He still lives in the house in which he grew up, just north of the city limits of Corbin, a town of about 7, He agrees to meet me to share a few yarns about the Colonel. You see, the guy he called "H. Ledington says he used to do chores in the modest cafe as a young boy, making a quarter a day to sweep and clean up. I enter the dark-paneled restaurant lit by naked fluorescent tubes and find Ledington leafing through a photo album. His wife, Jill, sits quietly at the next table, munching chicken from a familiar red-and-white box.
Ledington and I shake hands, and I tell him about the assignment that brought me to this part of southeast Kentucky. Before I can even open my notebook, he draws my attention to the photo album overstuffed with pictures, newspaper clippings and various family documents. Claudia worked as a waitress in the cafe and was instrumental in launching what would become a multibillion-dollar fast-food chain boasting nearly 20, KFC restaurants in more than countries.
Combine spices with flour, brown sugar and salt. Dip chicken pieces in egg white to lightly coat them, then transfer to flour mixture. Turn a few times and make sure the flour mix is really stuck to the chicken.
Repeat with all the chicken pieces. Let chicken pieces rest for 5 minutes so crust has a chance to dry a bit. Fry chicken in batches. I get it off of Amazon. Hope this helps! You can find powdered buttermilk in almost any grocery store, on the baking isle. Walmart carries it.
I grew up 30 miles as the crow flies, in Eastern Kentucky. I met Colonel Sanders several times. He was a sharp business man known for his love of young ladies. The only ingredients that really mattered were MSG and white pepper. Both very unique in those days.
Every house wife in Kentucky knew it. That was not his secret. He used fresh farm raised chickens, A different experience from our modern ones, and a pressure cooler to fry them in. High quality consistent food.
I remember the original chicken. It was nothing like today. John Y Brown had to pay him an extra million dollars to get him to stop going into the restaurants in Lexington and Louisville and screaming about the quality of the food. Literally no one one tasted original KFC after I tried this recipe and was very careful to follow the recipe. The chicken looked great. There seems to be far too much pepper and maybe paprika. I was very disappointed. Show More Comments. Friend's Email Address.
Your Name. Your Email Address. Send Email. Skip to content It's finally here! Yield 4 servings. Prep Time 1 hour. Cook Time 45 minutes.
Total Time 1 hour 45 minutes. Course Main. Cuisine American. Author Sabrina Snyder. Save Saved! Print Rate. US Customary Metric. Instructions Add the spices to a small food processor until they're all uniform in size and the thyme, basil and oregano aren't larger in size anymore. Add the flour in a bowl with all the herbs and spices and mix with a whisk. In a second larger bowl add the buttermilk and egg together and whisk until combined. Add the chicken to the buttermilk mixture for minutes.
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