My chicken is good enough....
Some video I saw said the secret ingredient is MSG....no thanks.
Frankly i can't imagine the kind of a world where Grandma's chicken isn't better than some mass produced fast food place.
I feel the same way when I see requests for the soup at Olive Garden or the salad dressing....or the cheese biscuits from another fast food restaurant.
I had a friend stop for a drink this week....a rather young to me....he's late 40's, man who doesn't cook and who's wife doesn't cook, but who does eat out....but not often at high end places....Oh and his mother didn't cook much either.
I said have you eaten....and he stayed for dinner...I was having frozen shrimp cooked with yellow peppers, shallots, garlic and halved cherry tomatoes, finished with a splash of pinot grigio and a generous spooning of pesto from last summer's basil, over angel hair...very ordinary quick food....AND I made popovers.
I asked did he like popovers? He had never had any....but were they like the things served at...."some fast food place"...?
What a sad commentary that we identify "really good food" as those things served at Dennys or Friday's or Olive Garden or KFC or any number of other chains.
Anyhow....when they came out of the oven....2 scotches later....he asked..."did you know they were going to do that??" LOL!
I'll match Ann's or Annie's or Theresa's or any number of our great cooks here's recipes with KFC's any day.

AND....during the days when I traveled for work, I ate at KFC a fair amount....because there wasn't much else in small town Iowa at 8:30 PM....and I found that even KFC varied a lot from town to town.
Linda C

Heck, I don't even know who Ron Douglas IS, and I spent my high school years working in a chicken/sub sandwich joint which was not KFC, so they were the "competition", LOL.

I can tell you the recipe Grandma used and the recipe we used at Mr. T's (the place I worked), but it won't taste like the restaurant's chicken. At Mr. T's we had pressure fryers that didn't just fry chicken, it pressure cooked it in the hot fat. We also breaded potato wedges in the same flour/seasoning mixture and put them in the pressure fryer, we sold more "T-Taters" than we did chicken!

Anyway, this is the recipe:

Seasoned flour for chicken and potatoes

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoon garlic salt
2 teaspoons onion salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/2 teaspoon dried powdered thyme
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients and use to coat chicken. If you double coat the chicken you'll get a thicker "crust"

Incidentally, the choice of fat for frying will also affect the end flavor, the closest I've come was the blocks of fat we bought for the fryers when I still owned the bar and grille, but Crisco works better than oil does.

So, if you like KFC and you want to try the recipe, go for it. It probably won't be like KFC's for all the reasons above, but it'll probably still be good.

Annie

LOL Annie, I have no ideas who Don Douglas is either!

We don't eat KFC. In fact, we don't do fast food at all. The only "fast" food hubby and little man eat at home is frozen pizza from the store. No Wendy's, no DQ, nothing. I had taken little man to McDonald's once and he hated it, and I was very proud of him! LOL

We like chicken, grilled, BBQ, stir fried, and baked. Never fried. So I have no intention to do KFC duplication. :-)

Al

I never heard of Ron Douglas either and don't care for KFC.
Some people just happen to love KFC's chicken. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that! To each his own taste and who can say who has the best taste! It really gets nauseating around here for people to put down others food tastes just because they don't match our own.

My Grandmother's best dish was her "American Chop Suey." Browned ground beef and onions (with some celery if she was feeling fancy)dumped in with a can of Campbell's Tomato soup and macaroni.

I can't remember that she ever fried chicken, but if she did I can only imagine how much better KFC chicken would be than hers! (Loved Nana, but she was a godawful cook!)

Lots of people haven't had the example and instruction of generations of good cooks to shape their tastes and hand down their skills, and have to learn on their own. The fact that they enter a forum like this to ask about recipes and cooking methods means that they are interested and experimenting...and might not be all that confident in their own skills and cooking background. What I like about this forum is that most of our posters are encouraging and helpful.

Perspective is everything. Some people are impressed with popovers, to me they are an easy bread to make when I don't have much time. I tend to like simple fried chicken, light on the coating. Others like a heavier, more highly seasoned coating. I have never found a frozen pizza I could bear to eat, but once in a blue moon I really enjoy a McD's quarter pounder and fries.

Variety is the spice of food, as they say...er...did I get that quite right? :D

I'd never heard of him either but he has written a bunch of secret recipe and other cookbooks.

I haven't eaten KFC in years. I have no memory of the flavor. That good, eh?

Here is a link that might be useful: Ron Douglas

I haven't heard of Ron or his copycat recipe, but I remember one floating around in the 70's that included a packet of instant tomato soup . . . as you can imagine, it was not a good thing :)

My take on KFC is that it's brined and those 11 herbs and spices could be just about anything, plus a lot of salt . . . but I think the pressure/deep fat fryer is the key. To me, there is just no substitution for KFC . . . and I HAVE to have it every so often; not the extra crispy, not the grilled, just the good old original stuff. I stuff my face and then I don't want to think about it for another 6 months or so.

(My toothpick daughter says they should make a "bucket of skin", LOL!)

I remember looking for such a recipe 20 or 30 years ago, since my fried chicken isn't particularly great (and what a mess). I never found anything I liked. I have to agree, I think the pressure frying is the key, not something I could ever do.

I can't eat it now, it makes my fingers look like sausages, but there grilled chicken is good, and apparently is now their biggest seller.

Momj, why does it make your finger look like sausages??

Apparently all the salt they put in it...

Every couple years I do FKC. I like it, but one visit does me for a good long time. And they could do with some better sides!

If I have to eat fast food, my first preference is KFC. However, I never eat chicken skin so I get very little of the herbs and spices. Neither of my grandmothers made fried chicken.
Nancy

Too much salt, Popeye's is even worse. It's temporary, salt doesn't usually bother me like that, but commercial fried chicken is always a problem. Fortunately I don't crave it very often anymore.

My husband loves KFC and I like to think I put a decent plate of food in front of him most days.

I would never try and duplicate it because it gives him a chance, once a year, to indulge his guilty pleasure.

Mudlady, I never eat the skin either, but the consistency of the meat itself is different too, I'm still of the opinion that it's the equipment they use which makes it "fall off the bone tender".

Annie

My BIL & my DS owned & operated several KFC franchises in the intermountain west for decades. Needless to say, I ate a lot of KFC in my younger years. Gotta love those coupons! They are not as numerous here in NE so haven't had any in years.

There's a lot of people that love KFC. Enough that my sister & her DH have retired to a beautiful Montana ranch. It can't be duplicated at home. At least not with equipment typically found in a home kitchen. Sometimes, it's best, IMO, to not try to duplicate a food...just indulge when the opportunity arises. Home fried chicken can be good but it's just not the same as KFC.

My sister has 7 kids. Normally, she's a from scratch cook but many times BIL brought home bucket(s) for dinner. It was their franchises that spurred me to purchase the A&W franchise.

/tricia

Ron's recipe does not duplicate the taste or texture of KFC. I've tried several of the DIY for KFC - just because....... You would need chicken treated with phosphates and then a pressure cooker-fryer to even attempt a duplicate. The original KFC recipe that Harland Sanders (sp??) used probably does not even taste like what KFC sells today because in Col. Sanders day chicken was just chicken and There were no chickens treated to make them moist. Chicken was not infused with "28% of solution"!!

I do like the KFC grilled chicken on occasion.

DL

Growing up KFC used to be a nice treat. My grandpa would grab a 'bucket' and it really was a bucket back then. Nice sunday dinner that would give my grandma an off-day of cooking. Stopped going for health reasons No.1, but the last few times it was nothing but skin and bones anyway. Part of the way they cram their chickens in (see the post Food, Inc.)

When me and DW went to Kauai a few years ago we had a nice big condo with a kitchen and grabbed take out at KFC to eat in. Boy was that good! Huge meaty pieces! We went back a couple of times. Good thing it isn't like that here...or my cholesterol and weight would be even higher.

Duane

I'm another who's never heard of Ron Douglas. I was reading in a secrets revealed book about KFC. They talked about the cookers. First you cut the chickens into 10 pieces instead of 8 to have consistent sizes. The oil starts hot and there's something like a 5# (or maybe more?) minimum batch that can be made to have it come out right. It is a combo pressure cooker and fryer, once the chicken hits the oil, it sears and then drops the temperature, then the pressure cooking and rying continues.

They got a cup of the coating mix and had it analyzed. The "11 herbs and spices" in there were flour, salt, pepper and MSG.

The recipes have probably changed. At least some. The gravy allegedly used to be a complicated recipe touted by Harlan as "pure ambrosia" and so good you can throw away the chicken and eat the gravy. After selling out, they went to a simpler recipe and Sanders called it "wallpaper paste".

I will say, KFC got me to appreciate cole slaw. I used to really like the chicken too but it's expensive and I don't get it often. Haven't had it now for years. One of these days I'll have to get some again and see what I think.

Cynic,

I speculated that the 11 herbs etc. was marketing hype. I always thought it was exactly what you stated!

I haven't eaten there in ages but I had a potpie there that I recall was very good. Now it would probably taste of too much salt.

cynic, like you, I like their coleslaw. I never worked at KFC, but I'm only assuming that they had pressure-fryers like we did at Mr. T's.

I also agree that maybe you shouldn't even try to duplicate it at home, just make it a special treat when you need/want to indulge.

I haven't tried their grilled chicken yet, but I hear that it's actually not bad.

Annie