Colonel Sanders needs no introduction and so do KFC chicken bucket. People have been trying to crack the secret herbs and spices which is told to be stored in a very secure safe in a very secure location. After dining at KFC, people would always want to clone their chicken at home. I never wanted to try cloning it (I don't know why), but when I had a kinda KFC clone at my Chithi's place I wanted to give it a try. Wow !! it was yummy and gave me a spark to try it with my own twist to make the only and the best KFC clone I have ever had a little more better.
Before getting into cloning, I asked myself a question first. Why do I like KFC chicken? Aside from KFC being a popular fast food chain (I believe brand name definitely has an impact) I really liked the chicken they served. It was mainly because it was crispy and tasty outside and at the same time it was juicy and tasty inside. I wanted to try my hand on cloning after my mom informed me there was a chicken waiting in the freezer (obviously not alive - without skin).
The process flow for my version of KFC is as follows:
- I am very confident that KFC uses chicken with skin (lot of people disagree with me on this), but only skinless chicken was available during the time of trial.
- I marinated the chicken using dark soy sauce, some salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, ginger garlic paste, and lemon juice.
- I let the chicken marinate in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
- I lost some interest after this initial process as my day gotta little busy while the chicken was getting marinated.
- After I was happy with the marination process (a few hours), I took some all purpose flour (maida) in a bowl and added a few tablespoons of dark soy sauce, some MSG (avoid it if you believe it is carcinogenic - I believe MSG cannot create more damage than the smoke you inhale in thick traffic everyday), Italian seasoning again, some ground pepper, salt to taste, a little ginger garlic paste ++++ my favorite Maggi Magic Masala (it is high in sodium, so please HANDLE WITH CARE). I have read in various blogs people using chicken soup cubes in their clones - I skipped because of Magic Masala.
- After adding the above contents to your flour, a few lumps would form because of soy sauce and the ginger garlic paste (they are not dry). It would be very easy to break them. Also I added some small amount of corn flour to the entire mix.
- I had a beaten egg ready in a saucer.
- Then it was time for the BIG TEST.
- I dipped the marinated pieces of chicken in the egg mixture, then coated it with my flour mixture, and shallow fried the pieces (half of the chicken pieced was dipped in the oil and half above the oil) in a slow flame. I turned them a few times to make sure that they never got burnt. I even tried frying them without the egg mix. I personally liked the one without the egg, but my nephew and niece loved the one with egg+flour mix.
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| KFC Clone Trial #1 |
Result: I believe it turned out to be a good try and my efforts paid me back good. I really had made a chicken fry which was crispy outside and juicy inside (the marination helped it to remain juicy and soft inside and the flour mix made it crispy and tasty outside). It was not exactly a KFC clone (I called it Kanyakumari Fried Chicken - it's finger nakkin' good), but it is definitely something like KFC which my family enjoyed very much as we don't have an KFC outlet here. They want me to give it an improvised shot again. I will be updating about the improvisations in my future posts.
