This Is Why KFC's Fried Chicken Is So Delicious

Anyone who's ever bit into a piping hot piece of KFC

fried

chicken

knows it's

delicious

. But what makes KFC different from other

chicken

joints? Turns out there's more to it than just those 11 secret herbs and spices. Much progress has been made in KFC's story about its proprietary blend of 11 secret herbs and spices. However, in the culinary world, it's essentially the equivalent of an urban legend, and no one has been able to confirm precisely what that proprietary blend comprises. Or if? In 2016, the real-life nephew of KFC legend Colonel Sanders appeared to reveal the top-secret list. That year, Chicago Tribune reporter Jay Jones traveled to the small town of Corbin, Kentucky, where Colonel Harland Sanders began serving his now world-famous

fried

chicken.

There he met Sanders' nephew, Joe Ledington, who shared a family scrapbook with him. And there, scrawled on the back of a living will, was a handwritten list labeled "11 Spices - Mix with 2 Cups White Flower." What were they? Salt, thyme, basil, oregano, celery salt, black pepper, dry mustard, paprika, garlic salt, ground ginger and white pepper. Since KFC's official blend of 11 secret herbs and spices has never been verified, it's unclear how accurate Ledington's list was. But suffice it to say, whatever they put on that chicken makes it pretty

delicious

. "Excellent job, Captain. Now keep your herbs and spices balanced!" Whenever you crave KFC chicken, it's the only thing that will satisfy the raging hunger beast inside you.

You don't necessarily know why it's so satisfying to bite into a piece, but it is. In a Quora thread exploring the inherent appeal of KFC, chef Martin Bayer pointed out a possible reason why you can't seem to get the Colonel's menu out of your head, and it all has to do with our cravings. He explained: "Sure, they boast of their 11 herbs and spices, which is great, but that's not what you taste when you bite into an extra savory crunch. You taste sweet, salty, and umami, or savory, which keeps you coming back for more. "KFC." Food that is more balanced between tastes is more appealing to the palate, and KFC's chicken simply ticks many of the boxes.

Remember how the Chicago Tribune supposedly sniffed out KFC's secret blend of herbs and spices? Well, once they had what was supposedly the magic formula in their hands, they decided to put it to the test. They went to the kitchen in an attempt to replicate the fast food restaurant's signature fried chicken flavor. But something was missing. After several batches that weren't quite right, the Tribune team came, quote, "very close" to recreating the taste of the Colonel's secret blend. On a whim, someone took a container of MSG flavor enhancer that was in the test kitchen and sprinkled it on the chicken.

Voila! According to the paper, their test chicken was, quote, "virtually indistinguishable" from the bucket they bought at KFC. When approached by the Tribune, a KFC spokesperson reportedly confirmed that they use MSG in their original recipe chicken. If you're feeling a little horrified, don't worry. There's really no reason to do it. While MSG tends to have a bad reputation, U.S. News & World Report says the negative publicity is undeserved. Monosodium glutamate is simply a combination of sodium and glutamate, an amino acid found naturally in many foods. And guess what? The body digests it anyway, whether it comes with food naturally or if you sprinkle it on a little.

Plus, it makes the food taste great. In 2014, KFC offered near-total transparency by inviting Gizmodo to go behind the scenes for a tour of the restaurant's headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. During the enlightening step-by-step of how the signature chicken is made, they discovered that KFC is obsessed with the number seven. And surprisingly, it actually plays a big role in making chicken taste so good. "One two three FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN!" To prepare it for breading, the chicken is inspected and then soaked in brine. To dry the chicken, KFC employees toss it seven times. The chicken is then placed in the breading using a pseudo-breaststroke motion seven times.

When it is nice and covered, the chicken is collected in a basket and swung seven times. Finally, the chicken is placed on the frying rack and pressure cooked to perfection. So, you see, without KFC's commitment to making things seven times, the chicken probably wouldn't be as tasty. When you think of someone making fried chicken, you probably imagine them dipping it into a bubbling tub or cast-iron skillet full of oil. While KFC has always used oil, it originally used it in a decidedly different way: basically by hacking a pressure cooker. For the record, the colonel lived on the edge, because using oil in a pressure cooker that was not intended for oil was dangerous.

Fortunately, in the late 1950s, a commercial pressure fryer was developed specifically suitable for

this

use. And while many other restaurants have adopted the oil and pressure cooking method, according to Josh Ozersky's book Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, KFC actually pioneered hot oil pressure cooking in the 1940s. The science behind it Why pressure cooking makes fried chicken taste so amazing is, well, kind of surprising. As chef Jacob Burton of Stella Culinary explained, "the collagen in tough pieces of meat like leg and thigh breaks down much faster, producing a tender product with less cooking time. Less moisture evaporates from the product, resulting in which results in a juicier piece of meat. meat." Or, in KFC's words, their chicken is "pressure cooked at low temperatures to retain all the great taste we are known for around the world." It would be easy to assume that KFC and other fast food restaurants like

this

They use frozen meat products in all of their menu offerings.

Presumably, doing so would be a significant cost savings compared to fresh proteins. But according to several former employees in a Quora thread dedicated to how KFC's chicken is cooked, the restaurant is. commits to using fresh, quality ingredients. One former employee had this to say about what type of chicken was used: "Our chicken was always fresh; refrigerated, but not frozen. It was supplied by a local poultry company and was already cut into pieces: leg, thigh, breast, & wing. There was nothing really special about the chicken itself; The poultry supplier supplied chicken to many other restaurants, so it was really all chicken.

KFC, at least in my experience, is very picky about their food." Fresh is better, right? Every time you eat a juicy bite of chicken, tell yourself that you are simply following your evolutionary cues, because yes, you can be thankful absolutely blame your ancestors for your primal need to dive headfirst into a bucket of Extra Crispy. Business Insider explains why it's someone in your family tree who came along long, long, long before you, and explains it like this: " Because humans evolved as foragers, our brains learned to recognize and crave things that contain a lot of calories. The calorie density scale ranges from 0 for water to 9 for pure fat.

Wondering Where does KFC rank? Let's just say this chicken should satisfy the picker in you. "While raw, skinless chicken has a calorie density of 1.35, KFC's original chicken breast scores 2.3. The extra crunchy version gets a score of 2.9. The skin alone scores a heady 5.0". To put it plainly, our ancestors knew that to survive on a meager diet while also having to raid food and travel great distances, they needed high-calorie foods to So if anyone ever questions your devotion to KFC fried chicken, tell them it runs in the family, "Come on, honey. Live a little. A few calories won't kill you." It's a well-known fact that salt makes everything taste better.

Even if the flavor profile is almost perfect, salt can improve it. So is it really surprising that KFC's delicious chicken is loaded with sodium? No. That clever Colonel Sanders knew exactly what he was doing when he developed the recipe that the world would absolutely fall in love with. In an interview with NPR in 2012, researcher Paul Breslin of the Monell Center in Philadelphia pointed out the peculiar. paradox of humans' love for salt. "If you don't keep a high level of sodium in your body, you will die. There is no doubt that people who consume too much salt are at risk of heart attack, stroke and death, and that reducing their salt intake will save lives." Still, people don't like to allow a little thing like impending mortality gets in the way of our appreciation for salt.

This relates to KFC because their fried chicken, as you may have guessed, is incredibly salty. According to their own nutritional table, an original recipe chicken breast has a whopping . 1190 mg sodium. Considering that the American Heart Association recommends limiting sodium intake to just 1500 mg a day, well, is it any wonder we love what's so bad for us? Sometimes the best food is? which is fast and affordable, and KFC chicken is both. Most of the KFC menu items are a real bargain. A two-piece chicken combo will only set you back $5.99, and you can get a full meal. of 8-piece fried chicken with two large sides and four biscuits, all for under $22.

Who doesn't like saving money? Plus, it goes without saying that sometimes when you're tired and you've been dealing with work, kids, or whatever all day, you crave comfort food. According to Psychology Today, this is normal human behavior. They explain: "Eating foods high in fat, sugar or salt activates the brain's reward system. Highly palatable foods activate the same reward and pleasure brain regions that are active in drug addiction." So what they are saying is, yes! You are definitely addicted to KFC, just as you have suspected for many, many years. Chalk it up to your brain's reward system.

Make no mistake: KFC's fried chicken fresh from the pressure cooker is truly finger-licking good. But most of us can't devour our entire order in one sitting. So we do the normal and responsible thing and put the leftovers in the refrigerator. And you know what? That chicken is as good cold as it is hot. What gives? For starters, eating cold chicken is not a new concept at all. There seems to be a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. According to Southern Kitchen, the magic happens when fried chicken cools. The skin contracts, the crust separates, and that delicious breading remains crispy while the loss of some of the moisture concentrates the flavor.

And you must love that flavor. Here's something you probably don't pay much attention to: the sound of your food probably affects the way you think it tastes. In a 2015 study, cognitive neurology researchers called sound the "forgotten taste sense" for its importance in our enjoyment of food. The essence is simple and says that our perception of flavor is multisensory, just like the actual experience of eating. And this is where KFC has an advantage. The study found that crunchy and nice were definitely related when it came time to rate how tasty the food is, and that goes for everything from fried chicken to French fries.

It's also why marketing campaigns focus so much on the crunchy sounds your foods make. Why are we like this? Our brains may associate crunchiness with freshness, signaling to our inner ancestral foragers that crispy chicken contains the type of vitamins and nutrients our bodies need. So once again, go ahead and blame your ancestors for your weekly KFC consumption. They're not there to argue with you anyway. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, more Mashed videos about your favorite things will be coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and press the bell so you don't miss a single one.