What are the original 11 herbs and spices used in Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Kentucky Fried Chicken

As far as anyone knows, Colonel Harland Sanders revealed his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken to just two living souls. One was his wife, Claudia. The other was Jack C. Massey, head of the three-man syndicate that purchased the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation from Sanders in 1964.

Apparently, none of the five thousand Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees has ever been told the full recipe. New restaurant operators attend "KFC University," a company-owned outlet in Louisville. There they are initiated into the special cooking method. They aren't told what is in the seasoning mix, however. Franchisees must buy the seasonings premixed from the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation. Some outlets buy ten-ounce packets of seasonings that are to be mixed with twenty-five pounds of flour. Others buy a preseasoned coating mix that contains the flour.

"No Platinum in There"

Ever since the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain mushroomed in the mid-1960s, the secret recipe has been the object of speculation. Examination of the chicken shows that the coating is a thin, almost soggy layer (in the "original recipe"; there is also a "spicycrispy" version) adhering to the skin. The meat is notably moist, allegedly because of the special pressure-cooking process. There is little popular conviction as to what seasonings figure in the "secret blend of eleven herbs and spices." The chicken is flavorful,but no herb or spice predominates. The New York Times quoted Sanders as maintaining that the herbs and spices "stand on everybody's shelf ".

The presumption that the seasonings in Kentucky Fried Chicken are in fact perfectly ordinary ones has long been a bone of contention between franchisees and Kentucky Fried Chicken management. Restaurateurs are charged a steep price for the seasonings-more than any conceivable combination of herbs and spices ought to cost, say franchisees. In a 1976 book on McDonald's (Big Mac: The Unauthorized Story of McDonald's by Max Boas and Steven Chain), McDonald's founder Ray Kroc observed:

"Kentucky Fried Chicken licensees claimed that they were paying three to four to five times for the same herbs and for the same chicken, and that they could get it from Durkee's or Kraft or any big company in the United States. And Kentucky Fried Chicken said, no, you couldn't because the formula was a secret. You know that was a lot of crap. Any laboratory can tell you what's in it. There's no platinum in there. There's no gold in there."

That there isn't platinum or eye of passenger pigeon in the mix is supported by the fact that the colonel occasionally whipped up the seasoning mixture impromptu. In Sanders' autobiography, Life as I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin' Good, he tells of selling his first franchisee, Leon "Pete" Harmon, on the chicken. Sanders concocted a batch of the seasoning mix from the pantry of Harmon's Salt Lake City restaurant.

Granting that all of the colonel's seasonings could be found at any well-stocked A&P, the task of identifying them remains formidable. There are approximately forty herbs, spices, and other seasonings available in American supermarkets and gourmet stores. Of these, perhaps twenty or thirty are common enough to "stand on everybody's shelf," figuratively speaking, and to have been in use at Sanders' roadside cafe. The use of eleven different seasonings is not remarkable. The standard "poultry seasoning" of the food industry has ten herbs and spices:

Pepper,
Ginger,
Mace,
Allspice,
Cloves,
Marjoram,
Nutmeg,
Thyme,
Savory, and
Sage.

Analysing the Secret Formula

In 1974 Esquire magazine asked four food writers to try Kentucky Fried Chicken and offer their analyses. There was little consensus.

James Beard found the chicken "well seasoned with salt"; with less assurance, he thought he detected monosodium glutamate, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. Roy Andries de Groot was "reasonably sure of minuscule amounts" of rosemary, savory, tarragon, thyme, pepper, turmeric, and cinnamon. He also noted salt, monosodium glutamate, "tiny globules of what might be honey or brown sugar," and "the faintest touch of both almond and mint." Waverly Root concluded that the chicken was "dunked in some sort of batter" containing flour, milk, and perhaps egg. Root was certain only of salt and pepper in the seasoning; he guessed that celery salt, caraway, chili powder, and/or horseradish might be present. James Villas doubted that any milk or egg was used in the coating and further doubted that there were eleven herbs and spices. He detected only cinnamon and cloves. Villas argued that the secret of Kentucky Fried Chicken is sugar: "Real fried chicken is not sweet; this is." The sugar, he suspected, was added to the "very light and very safe and very healthy cooking oil."

Another analysis comes from Gloria Pitzer, a St. Clair, Michigan, homemaker and newsletter publisher. Pitzer's Secret Recipe Report attempts to duplicate the recipes of popular processed foods for home use. In the late 1970s, Pitzer devised three recipes for facsimile Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The recipes call for the chicken pieces to be fried in a pan or deep fryer until brown and then transferred to an oven for thirty to thirty-five minutes' additional cooking. One-fourth to one-half inch of water in the baking pan keeps the chicken moist in the oven. In Pitzer's first recipe, the chicken is seasoned with a marinade made from commercial Italian salad dressing mix, flour, salt, lemon juice, and oil.

Pitzer's second and third recipes use eleven herbs and spices each. The second, said to simulate spicy-crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken, requires

Garlic salt,
Onion powder,
Paprika,
Black pepper,
Allspice,
Sweet basil,
Oregano,
Sage,
Summer savory (substitution: parsley flakes),
Ginger, and
Rosemary.

All are mixed with flour and salt. Chicken pieces are dampened with beer or club soda, dredged in the flour/seasoning mix, and fried.

The third recipe uses a modified list of herbs and spices:

Rosemary,
Oregano,
Sage,
Ginger,
Marjoram,
Thyme,
Parsley,
Pepper,
Paprika,
Garlic salt, and
Onion salt.

Three additional flavorings - brown sugar, powdered chicken bouillon, and Lipton Tomato Cup-a-Soup mix - supplement the herbs and spices.

Sorry if this doesn't answer your question properly, but this one is a very big secret however it gives you a starting point to have the secret. If it tastes like KFC let us know.

First answer by Cassius2k. Last edit by Cassius2k. Contributor trust: 27 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 1 [recommend question]