The KFC Original Recipe is a secret mix of ingredients that fast food restaurant chain KFC uses to produce fried chicken.
By the very late 1930s, Harland Sanders' gas station in Corbin, Kentucky was so well known for its fried chicken that Sanders decided to remove the gas pumps and build a restaurant and motel in their place. While perfecting his secret recipe with 11 herbs and spices, Sanders found that pan frying chicken was too slow, requiring 30 minutes per order. Deep frying the chicken required half the time but produced dry, unevenly done chicken. In 1939, he found that using a pressure fryer produced tasty, moist chicken in eight or nine minutes.[1] By July 1940, Sanders finalized what came to be known as his Original Recipe.[2]
After Sanders formed a partnership with Pete Harman, they began marketing the chicken in the 1950s as Kentucky Fried Chicken; the company shipped the spices already mixed to restaurants to preserve the recipe's secrecy.[1] He claimed that the ingredients "stand on everybody's shelf".[3][4]
Sanders used vegetable oil for frying chicken. By 1993, for economic reasons, many KFC outlets had chosen to use a blend of palm and soybean oil. In Japan, the oil used is mainly the more expensive cottonseed and corn oil, as KFC Japan believes that this offers superior taste quality.[5]
- ^ a b Whitworth, William (February 14, 1970). "Kentucky-Fried". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
- ^ Schreiner, Bruce (July 23, 2005). "KFC still guards Colonel's secret". Associated Press. Retrieved September 19, 2013.
- ^ Kleber, John E.; Thomas D. Clark; Lowell H. Harrison; James C. Klotter (June 1992). The Kentucky Encyclopedia. University Press of Kentucky. p. 796. ISBN 0-8131-1772-0.
- ^ Sanders, Harland (2012). The Autobiography of the Original Celebrity Chef (PDF). Louisville: KFC. p. 42. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 21, 2013.
- ^ Okawara, Takeshi (Summer 1993). "Universality and particularity in globalization". Business Quarterly. 57 (4): 128–134.