Assuming you have no dietary restrictions and you have a working set of teeth or dentures, the chances are if you live in the United States you have sunk them into a piece of fried chicken. One of the most popular places to do so in the United States and in the rest of the world is Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) with almost 20,000 franchises worldwide it dwarfs competitors Popeyes and Chik-fil-a (each with about 2,000 restaurants) in size and mystique. A good chunk of that mystique comes from Kentucky Colonel, founder and franchise mascot Harlan Sanders. The other part of KFC that mystique is the appropriate word for is it’s much-hyped secret spice mix that it uses on its fried chicken. The company is so protective over it’s legendary mix that attempts to publish it have resulted in lawsuits quite frequently. If that weren’t enough to convince you of the seriousness that KFC approaches its recipe with consider this: It stores it in a 770 pound safe, complete with two feet of concrete, video monitoring and motion detectors.
How would something so heavily guarded by it’s benefactors ever reach the eyes of the fried chicken consuming public? By pure luck of course, when a nephew of KFC’s famous founder was showing a scrapbook formerly owned by the colonel’s second wife there was a recipe in it that had 11 herbs and spices, the same number that the secret recipe is known to have. The complete list includes white pepper, ground ginger, salt, garlic salt,thyme, basil, oregano, celery salt, black pepper, paprika, and dried mustard at varying measures mixed within two cups of white flour. Since the publication the company has said that the nephew involved does not have the right recipe and he himself has walked back on his claim that it is in fact the right recipe. Whether it is right or not, I can guarantee with America’s carnal caloric lust for fried chicken, some fan will try out the recipe to see if they can replicate the Colonel’s chicken. No word yet on if it is finger lickin’ good.
