Welcome to Greg's Grilling!

This blog is devoted to my passion, my philosophy in life, food. I dedicate my life to reviewing and challenging the food world. Originally I began by reviewing free food provided to us by corporates in the medical world. Free food however was not always so plentiful (recession) so I have branched out to other things, like trying to scull soy sauce or dining in fine resturants, sometimes both. I aim to capture the whole culinary experience-mood, taste, setting, difficulty, presentation and stir fry them together with a packet of watties wok creations to create an alternative food blog. Enjoy.

KFC blog







KFC blog

We all have that craving (like the ads suggest) and sometimes we just can’t help satisfying it with a 3 piece quarter pack. I am lucky in that this overwhelming desire for the colonel’s original recipe chicken only hits me every couple of months. I suppose it’s a defence mechanism for my heart. Today though my stomach overrules.

Driving to the KFC over the hill I encounter that familiar smell we are all aware of. The smell of fried chicken penetrates my air vents and fumigates my car. I welcome it into my nostrils, it makes me salivate over the steering wheel. The smell then gets me thinking. This smell travels quite far from KFC, do they have fans pumping this stuff out into the streets? Is it part of their strategy to lure people in?
Time to investigate.
I contacted the NZ KFC Corporation via email

Hi I am currently doing a school project on food marketing. KFC has an effective marketing strategy especially with the ‘can’t beat that taste campaign’ because sometimes you can not honestly beat that taste. I was wondering if the KFC stores have some sort of technology that pumps out the alluring smell of chicken into the surrounding air in order to attract hungry customers?
Thanks Larry Johnson

I had no reply to this email. KFC do not have as much time for their customers as McDonald’s do, slack. I decided to be a bit more aggressive and ring them. I put the conversation on loudspeaker so it could be recorded on Dictaphone. Here is the conversation that took place with one of the KFC staff. You can listen to my Dictaphone for yourself if you don’t believe me.

KFC: KFC kilbirnie Nathan speaking
Larry: Hi, can you hear me alright?
KFC staff member: yeah, yeah ,yeah
Larry: Cool, um anyway, I live near KFC
KFC staff: yip
Larry: and I was wondering, well the smells really getting to me, making me really tempted, could you maybe turn down those fans that is blowing out all that chicken smell?
KFC staff: um ok, we don’t actually control the fans, it’s actually the company that controls all that
Larry: really?
KFC staff: yeah
Larry: how powerful are the fans?
KFC staff: umm, not really sure aye, I just sell chicken mate, um yeah, as I said it’s up to the company, um we never really get this issue
Larry: hmm ok, yeah it just kinda gets annoying sometimes, and was wondering if you did actually have fans
KFC staff: oh yeah we got fans, but I mean we don’t actually control them, we need them you know to extract, you know the steam and all that out
Larry: oh ok, so it doesn’t blow out the chicken smell to attract customers
KFC staff: no, no no no
Larry: oh ok you could have fooled me
 (silence)
Larry: oh ok well il probably just have to deal with it somehow, maybe put a permanent peg on my nose
KFC staff: yeah…
Larry: hmmm ok thanks anyway bye.

So there you have it, KFC does have big arse fans blowing the beautiful smell of chicken into its surroundings. The fact that the company controls it means there’s more to it than ‘extracting steam’, this guy just didn’t want to admit it, what a loyal worker.

The smell gets stronger, I see the highly luminous lettering of KFC, shining a light straight at my appetite. Interestingly the stores used to be called Kentucky fried chicken but they changed it too KFC because it sounded healthier. They probably saved money on signage as well. Quite a stupid excuse for changing the name, if you haven’t realised your eating fried chicken from these stores then you probably can’t read this either so no point elaborating.
I have arrived. Walking into the giant grease box I see the colonel’s face smiling at me, like he’s appreciating my decision to come here rather than McDonalds which is a stones throw away from my flat. This got me thinking about the colonel.

The Colonel himself

I always wondered why its some random old guy promoting KFC. He doesn’t really have any appeal to children, for example you definitely couldn’t send him into a children’s hospital like Ronald McDonald without Chris Hansen from dateline NBC stopping him.
The whole age factor means he doesn’t really appeal to the majority of adults either. I suppose KFC tries to makes up for this with their adverts where the lovely young lady says ‘cooked by a cook like me’, trying to make it seem like an acceptable career for young adults. They leave out the bit about if you work there for a day there will be enough grease on your face to rival BP’s disaster.

I suppose it targets the elder population. Colonel Sanders used his first social security cheque of $105 at the age of 65 to start selling his chicken to restaurants. The first store opened in 1952, and by 1960 he had opened 600 restaurants, all serving a shit load of chicken. He must be like Satan to the chicken world. Imagine if all old people did this! Forget kiwisaver and voting for the party who gives the best super, Old people dabbling in restaurants could be the elder generation’s lifeline. Mr’s Mac has embraced it, Gordon Ramsay the list goes on. At least this way instead mousetraps being served at rest homes for lunch they would get some wicked as pies or chicken. Now that is a place to die.

Oh so many options. They certainly do crowd the overhead menu boards much to my flatmates distaste. It can be simplified quite easily though. Chicken meals, burger meals, and the beautiful combination of a burger meal and a piece of chicken, the best of both worlds kinda like a bisexual. I opt for the ultimate burger meal combo.
For the duration of the meal I am in a state of euphoria ‘how can anything be made to taste so good” . I start to wonder about the secret recipe

The secret recipe

Somehow the colonel chucked together 11 herbs and spices and came up with something that wasn’t a curry. It was written on a piece of paper by the colonel then locked away in a computerised vault. Only two executives have access to the recipe at one time, and apparently no one has come close to the recipe. I have a bit of work experience in cooking fried chicken so I thought I would have a shot at it.

My attempt at KFC chicken

Ingredients (serves 1)

Flour
A couple of eggs
Milk
A chicken drumstick
A deep fryer filled with a lot of oil
Chicken salt-may be hard to get hold of this stuff, maybe steal some from a local chicken and chips place
Herbs and spices-paprika, chili powder, sage, basil, pepper, dried marjoram, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, rosemary

Directions

Day one

  • Make sure chicken is defrosted; don’t want you getting some dirty salmonella.
  • Fill a bowl with water and put in one teaspoon of chicken salt, and the drumstick, leave to marinade overnight in the fridge. This infuses flavour deep into the chicken including the bone if that’s a part you like and is a vital step.
Day two

  • Heat deep fryer up to 180dg make sure there is sufficient oil and that it is a clear yellow colour.
  • Combine 2 cups of flour and the herbs and spices in a bowl, just chuck in a teaspoon of each.
  • Beat the egg and milk in another bowl
  • Dip the marinated drumstick in the egg mixture making sure you really cover it giving it a gooey texture,
  • Next dip the drumstick in the flour mix making sure it is covered sufficiently as that is the money part right there
  • Remove excess coating and leave to stand for approximately 1 min 30 seconds.
  • Place in the deep fryer and fry for 12 min 30 seconds.
  • Remove from oil and let drain for a little bit, it should look like this
If it doesn't look like this then you probably stuffed up.

Enjoy!

Once the final bits of grease have been sucked from my fingers like some kind of sensual foreplay, that greasy bloated feeling hits me. I immediately regret eating a meal that I could live off for a month. However I still got room for the challenge.

KFC Challenge

I really struggled with what to do in this challenge, I had suggestions to eat entire drumsticks, and did actually eat a whole wicked wing to see how bad it is, and yeah it’s bad, but that’s not really a challenge everyone can do or would do in their right mind. I wanted to do chicken because that is what KFC is obviously known for, however one of my darker moments at KFC where I received a piece of chicken the size of this dog’s leg made me realise the challenge would not be reproducible due to variance. So instead I went for the items that always stay the same size. The challenge was to eat a boneless chicken fillet, chips and drink all in under a minute. I made it quite similar to the McDonalds challenge purposefully to draw comparisons. Here is my attempt at the challenge for your viewing pleasure.





Warning: Don’t try this at home, serious choking hazard and risk of losing ones sense of smell for a while.
Thanks for reading
Until next time
Larry
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)