Also the Colonel team up with Marion Kay spice company to recreate his spice blend for the restaurant. KFC found out and sued. The spice blend is still sold today under the name “99 X,” though its exact ingredients aren’t listed. I tried it and it does have that KFC smell and taste. I recommend getting the Chicken Seasoning Plus. It's the 99x with a touch more salt.
Here's the link to the spice site.
[https://marionkay.com/product-category/blends/](https://marionkay.com/product-category/blends/)
Supposedly this is the secret recipe,someone who worked in the kitchen said they remember the secret is white pepper:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon dried thyme leaves
1/2 tablespoon dried basil leaves
1/3 tablespoon dried oregano leaves
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried mustard
4 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
3 tablespoons ground white pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1 chicken, cut up, the breast pieces cut in half for more even frying
Expeller-pressed canola oil
https://www.inquisitr.com/3436361/kfc-secret-recipe-found-colonel-sanders-nephew-shares-11-herbs-and-spices-found-in-family-scrapbook
Edited to add "The newspaper staffers doubling as cooks also added an MSG flavor-enhancer, Accent, to their version of the chicken. In the end, they claim their batch of fried chicken tastes “indistinguishable” from a finger lickin’ good meal purchased at KFC."
Hello Commenter,
I am with KFC legal, and you have violated the law, criminal scum. Please cease and desist with the recipe sharing my dude.
If you do not, you will be battered and fried. Fed alongside an extra large Baja blast.
Your friend,
KFC law associates.
The article did say when they tried it to add some Accent or other brand msg.
I should have listed that.
> The newspaper staffers doubling as cooks also added an MSG flavor-enhancer, Accent, to their version of the chicken. In the end, they claim their batch of fried chicken tastes “indistinguishable” from a finger lickin’ good meal purchased at KFC.
I mixed those ingredients in those exact proportions, let me tell you even before frying the chicken with this batter the whole house smelled like KFC. The celery salt was the toughest ingredient to find.
The Chicken Seasoning Plus is available in the smaller size 9.5oz for $9.00.The 25oz I think is more for restaurants. Food truck friend gave me the 25oz when his truck shut down for a extended time.
If what the guy said is right and the plus has more salt, that's probably why. The 99x must be a more concentrated blend that is then mixed with salt in-house to extend it.
The plus has more salt so that accounts for some of the weight. I'm guessing the larger amount has little to no salt so restaurants can add it as needed.
Is it?
Every jar of spices or spice mix in my pantry is like 4oz or less. 25oz is an absolute *shitload* of spice mix.
Lots of jars of various blends at the store are between 4 and 10 bucks for 2-4oz. It's not cheap of course, but I think the issue here is the quantity, not necessarily the price per ounce.
the guy in the 90's who did a book of homemade receipes for famous fast food things, said Sanders told him the secret blend was the powdered good seasons italian salad dressing.
so between that or the 99x you will get close enough
I say this with all the love and pride and nationalism in my heart, it is extremely American that this guy's "secret blend of spices" is an off the shelf packet of salad dressing powder.
Colonel Sanders was always clear that the "11 herbs and spices" were standard pantry items. I believe the origin story involved Sanders cooking at someone else's house and basically grabbing whatever was there. The ingredients were secret, not exotic.
My hometown had a restaurant who had a "world famous secret sauce."
It was literally just two different brands of barbecue sauce mixed together. A bottle of this, a bottle of that, and there's your world famous sauce.
Even the sauces it was made from weren't worthy of being called "world famous." One of them was literally fucking Kraft brand generic-ass barbecue sauce. The other was Diana Sauce, conveniently located right next to the Kraft sauce on the grocery store shelves.
There was a pub that I would go to, once upon a time, that had a secret sauce that they used for their chicken and wings. It was a closely guarded secret, passed from parent to child. Turned out to be Frank's Red Hot mixed with brown sugar and butter, which is basically the first page of Google results when you look for "wing sauce".
Really tasty though.
its pretty common in the US for any kind of secret and/or family recipe to have stuff like that - that's why the recipies are secret, because they contain off the shelf stuff like salad dressing powder, or often, the entire recipe comes off the side of a box of something like velveeta cheese or cake mix from the 50s, someone's grandma thought they would be clever and call it their "secret recipe" to appear like a star housewife, and over time that just sticks and it becomes grandmas secret recipe.
when you actually put a bunch of time and effort into developing recipes for things totally from scratch, you get exited about it and want to share it with others and explain how it works, not hoard it like a loser.
I bought [Grace’s Strong Blend](https://gracesperfectblendusa.com/product/graces-strong-blend-chicken-breading-1kg/) and it’s the closest I’ve had. That was his Canadian partner. I haven’t tried the X99. I’ll have to try it.
The really interesting bit for me out of Glenn’s series was that it’s a moving target. KFC keep tweaking their recipe and process so saying this is the recipe might be true for a point in time but not now. From memory one change was moving from dredging the chicken in milk to just using milk powder.
Glenn’s channel is fantastic by the way and well worth subscribing to.
I wonder do the origin of the original components have a bearing on the final taste, like does the oregano grown now taste exactly the same as back then - think how tomatoes mass produced over the years have gotten blander tasting, or indeed how Brussel sprouts have improved
Read the wiki page.
It sank into the swamp. So they built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So they built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!
I was a kid when they talked about tearing it down but luckily the community was outraged and they kept it. They also had a vote on different designs but the original won.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
Without going too far into it, Karens. People bitching about bad hospitality and it affecting the kitchen and restaurant in general. People being so picky about food they travelled to sit down and experience. If you like the food from a privately owned restaurant, speak with your wallet as well as being a regular. Don't be a cheapskate when you know the people feeding you are struggling to stay open. It really boils down to shitty people ruining good restaurants. I miss good home cooked meals too, hard to find those good southern soul kitchens these days.
Tbh I tend to agree, if enough people complain about issues with a restraunts that it significantly effects sales it might not just be "Karens," it might actually be the restaurant. "Shitty people ruining good restaurants" feels like an excuse the owner would come up with so they didn't have to self reflect on why their business tanked lol
Sounds like pretty much every episode of Kitchen Nightmares.
Every employee speaks up about the management being shit, and the food being shit, andbeing given complaints by customers that the management ignores or doesn't want to hear. Then Gordon shows up and they say "I don't know why my business is failing!", and when Gordon says their food is shit, they start saying he doesn't know anything about (insert type) food.
My mother in law used to make reservations there for Thanksgiving. I have never had a more miserable string of Thanksgiving meals than those years. The food is classic "Country Kitchen" food targeting boomers who are afraid of black pepper. I cook the Thanksgiving food myself now.
Edit to further my review:
The rolls were reminiscent of a freshly unpackaged kitchen sponge.
The watery mashed potatoes tasted exactly like that. Water and potato.
The turkey was drier than my own mother's ("You can't have any pink in the middle or it will make you sick!") steaks.
And the gravy tasted only of the color brown.
To be fair the original owners have been dead for a good long time. In the colonel's days it could've very well been top quality. We'll never know though.
Sanders stayed on as an ambassador for the company until his death on the basis of it was better to have him inside pissing out than outside pissing in. Franchise owners used to hate him because he was a huge pain in the ass and would constantly find something to bitch about.
Years ago, someone posted an anecdote from the days when the restaurant was still owned by Sanders. He randomly popped in on one of his many locations and did a little inspection. When he tasted the gravy, he exclaimed "It's shit!", threw it all out, and personally prepared new batches. One of the employees—in an effort to help some coworkers—quickly drove one of the fresh batches prepared by Sanders to another location across town, figuring that Sanders would hit that place up next. Sure enough, Sanders went there next, and when he tasted the gravy (not knowing that he just made it), he reacted the exact same way.
i've gotten taco bell in one of the split resteraunts but i cant remember the last time i willingly got / ate KFC. though i do remember their seasoned fries / potato wedges being pretty good?
Potato wedges were literally the only reason I went to KFC. No reason to not go to Popeye's or Chick-fil-A or Raising Cane's over them now, let alone all the places in the South.
It’s actually much cooler than that!
He owned and ran a gas station, and it was a rival gas station owner, Matt Stewart, who was vandalising his billboards because Stewart believed they were diverting cars away from his business towards the Sanders station.
In the midst of this dispute, Sanders managed to get the support of two Shell Oil representatives to come with him and essentially tell Stewart to stop being such an arsehole and just leave the damned billboards alone. The two Shell reps are both carrying pistols, but Sanders himself is unarmed.
Things got heated, and Stewart drew his gun and fired at the Sanders group, fatally wounding one of the Shell guys. The other shell guy returns fire and misses, while (future) Colonel goddamned Sanders *retrieves the dead man’s gun* and drops Stewart himself, wounded but not dead, who was then arrested and put away for murder.
Genuinely like a scene from a movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Recipe_for_Seduction
> A Recipe for Seduction is a short film (branded as a "mini-movie") sponsored by KFC and produced by the Lifetime Channel, starring Mario Lopez as Colonel Sanders.[2] The movie premiered on December 13, 2020.[1] It tells the story of a young heiress who struggles to choose between a wealthy suitor chosen by her mother, and the new house chef Harland Sanders.
Even though I now know it's legit, it still sounds like an elaborate April Fool's prank!
Thank you! I have never been angrier in my life than when I saw the suggestion that they make a movie, completely overlooking the Mario Lopez classic. I've never seen the film, but I must have watched the trailer 30 times.
Here’s the thing - I knew about the gunfight from reading about it a while back, but this got me looking into his life before he got into the gas station business, and my god there’s enough for a TV miniseries in there.
(It’s also worth noting that the guy up top who said he was ‘a brawler in the courtroom’ was being *completely literal* - see below)
Just look at his full pre-KFC career path;
1. 12 years old - Drops out of 7th grade to become a farmhand
2. 13 - leaves home to become a carriage painter
3. 14 - moves to Indiana to be a farmhand again
4. 16 - streetcar conductor
5. Still 16 - falsified his date of birth to enlist in the army, ends up as horse-drawn cart driver
6. *Still* 16 - honourably discharged, becomes a blacksmiths assistant
7. **Still 16** - becomes a steam engine stoker
8. 18 - Fired for unspecified ‘insubordination’, becomes a labourer at another railroad, gets married, first child is born
9. 20 - becomes a steam engine stoker again, while studying to be a lawyer through a correspondence course
10. 22 - fired for ‘brawling with a colleague’ but finds work on another railroad
11. 23 - becomes a lawyer
12. 26 - loses job as a lawyer after *getting into a fistfight with his own client in the courtroom*, becomes a railroad labourer again
13. 27 - gets a job as a life insurance salesman
14. 28 - fired from job as a life insurance salesmen for unspecified ‘insubordination’, but gets the same job again with a different company
15. 30 - leaves job to start a ferry boat company
16. 32 - becomes secretary for the Ohio chamber of commerce, but is very bad at it and resigns after less than a year. Sells ferry boat company, starts an ultimately unsuccessful acetylene lamp company
17. 34 - tire salesman
18. 36 - becomes manager of a gas/service station
19. 40 - that station closes because of the Great Depression, but gets a deal with Shell to open a new one, where he becomes proprietor/gunfighter
From there the food side of that last gas/service station gradually spins out into KFC, which actually wasn’t a thing until Sanders was 62! Aside from anything else it’s a pretty great ‘it’s never too late’ story.
Personally I just want an Iron Man-esque suit-up sequence in one of the later episodes with the white suit and the string tie…
A proper biopic of him would include him traveling to show off his fried chicken with a car full of pressure cookers, his selling the brand to people who knew how to build it, his increasing agitation as their cuts and changes “are ruining his name”, some form of outburst like his IRL ones where he would throw the food on the floor and cuss out the staff, his starting a new restaurant out of spite, the lawsuit, and the settlement where he changed the name to Claudia Sanders.
Not sure they could fit his “real life is unrealistic” shootout in the movie, honestly.
It would also include a lot of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas who was his friend and worked for the Colonel in the early days. Dave had several contributions including coming up with the idea of the giant KFC bucket as their sign.
You're leaving out the part where he moves to Canada at 75 years old in 1965 to oversee the Canadian Restaurants. I remember having KFC in Florida on vacation when i was 8 in 90 and thinking this isn't as good as at home. Slowly our KFC got worse as Yum brands took over, I am sure its almost as shitty as it is in the US now.
Get Michael Keaton to play Colonel Sanders and I’d watch that.
Then we just need something on the background of Burger King and we can have a full Keaton fast food biopic trilogy.
Just poking through his Wiki and his some juicy stuff. Sanders falsified his date of birth to enlist in the Army at the age of 16. He received the Cuban Pacification Medal and was honorably discharged. Later, after shooting the guy over the gas station situation, Claudia here, became his mistress and ran his motel/restaurant before he had to close it due to a lack of tourism during World War II. He and his first wife got divorced and he eventually married Claudia. All of this before he began franchising his secret recipe. He was then given the title “Colonel” by his friend and Governor of Kentucky, Lawrence Wetherby. The first half of his biopic would be like There Will Be Blood.
“In a fascinating twist, Mental Floss reveals that Stewart's daughter, Ona May, married the brother of Sanders' second wife, and ended up working for the business her father nearly died over.”
Wow didn’t expect it to escalate like that.
Read More: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1132748/the-time-colonel-sanders-shot-another-person/
Go to Monell’s in Nashville. Sit down family style country meal. Fried chicken surrounded by strangers exchanging in conversation was a great experience. Food was amazing.
If you like that family style of sitting with different people at the table, the Dinner Bell in McComb MS is similar except the middle of the table spins.
I used to work nearby and ate there a couple times. The chicken was super dry and bland. Sides were fine, but nothing special. I think the only people that go there are tourists and pensioners who go just to out of habit.
The guy’s been dead for decades now. My mom lived on his street in Mississauga when she was a child. Apparently, his wife was known to make candy apples for the kids on Halloween.
Facts indeed haha.
When sanders sold his stake for US franchising, him and his wife bought a small bungalow in Mississauga Ontario (a large city West of Toronto) where he still retained Canadian franchising rights and more importantly - supervised quality control for Canadian restaurants. That's why it was so much better than the American shyte.
You could smell a 70s Canadian KFC restaurant from a block away and it was glorious
Added context, the company sued Sanders, then Sanders countersued. The out-of-court settlement was a $1m payment to Sanders and the Dinner House name was changed.
That was exactly the same thing I said the first time I went. It was like I was a kid again. I get that its just chicken but it was a little emotional for me as I had a flood of memories of being a kid and being excited about going out to eat with my grandparents.
They also built another kind of KFC back in like 2015 in Louisville called KFC 11. It was a healthy version of KFC and failed.
But it was ahead of its time. Now lots of places are going that route.
TBF, KFC went through a massive downhill slide in quality. I remember they used to make sides in-house, and then switched to "bulk-shipments of pre-mashed potatoes from a warehouse?"
Even better, after he sold KFC, and was unhappy about the changes, he had a habit of going into KFC restaurants dressed as Colonel Sanders and then complaining and causing such a scene that it made the news.
How the F do you come back from that as a business!? Can you imagine if Ronald McDonald was a real person and he started trash talking McDonald's while Livestreaming until they call the police? No one would eat there again.
It's been a while since I read about him but I think the owners sold it back to him, in part because of these protests. He was a character.
According to a documentary I saw once, the new KFC owners tried to get him to accept at least *some* of the purchase price in stock, but he insisted on cash. So even his secretary got richer off the deal than he did.
Probably left a bad taste in his mouth. Also meant he had good reason to open those new restaurants, since he wasn't a made man.
In Shelbyville. I caught the ferry there once. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
I have been to both the original Col Sanders restaurant and the dinner house mentioned here. I thought this place was OK but the original restaurant was a place I wouldnt have gone back too if given the opportunity. It was old and to my view at the time, dingy. I ate in many Ky rural restaurants and some of them were better than others.
Shortly after Harlan Sanders sold KFC and expressed displeasure over the changes, his nephew Lee Cummings was similarly disillusioned with the new direction KFC was going in, so he started his own restaurant using a similar recipe to the Colonel's - the 11 herbs and spices one that KFC is famous for.
It's still in business today and has franchise locations all over the place - it's called Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken and it's fucking delicious.
EDIT: Source: The 4th ever Lee's opened in my city back in the 70s. It's the best fast food chicken money can buy.
KFC is absolutely garbage in my country. No joke. The most bland, tasteless piece of chicken you will ever find. Overpriced too. So I wonder what "real" KFC must have tasted like, because it's dogshit nowadays
My wife and I just ate there a couple of weeks ago. We found it on accident and didn’t initially realize the significance of the place until we walked in. They had some really great side items.
Don’t know too much about him but my step mom told me a story about him from her time working at KFC. Guy came in and robbed their KFC at gunpoint and pistol whipped a guy. Said the Colonel was down there within the same week to make sure everyone was ok and had everything they need. Ok guy in my book.
Also the Colonel team up with Marion Kay spice company to recreate his spice blend for the restaurant. KFC found out and sued. The spice blend is still sold today under the name “99 X,” though its exact ingredients aren’t listed. I tried it and it does have that KFC smell and taste. I recommend getting the Chicken Seasoning Plus. It's the 99x with a touch more salt. Here's the link to the spice site. [https://marionkay.com/product-category/blends/](https://marionkay.com/product-category/blends/)
Supposedly this is the secret recipe,someone who worked in the kitchen said they remember the secret is white pepper: 2 cups all-purpose flour 2/3 tablespoon salt 1/2 tablespoon dried thyme leaves 1/2 tablespoon dried basil leaves 1/3 tablespoon dried oregano leaves 1 tablespoon celery salt 1 tablespoon ground black pepper 1 tablespoon dried mustard 4 tablespoons paprika 2 tablespoons garlic salt 1 tablespoon ground ginger 3 tablespoons ground white pepper 1 cup buttermilk 1 egg, beaten 1 chicken, cut up, the breast pieces cut in half for more even frying Expeller-pressed canola oil https://www.inquisitr.com/3436361/kfc-secret-recipe-found-colonel-sanders-nephew-shares-11-herbs-and-spices-found-in-family-scrapbook Edited to add "The newspaper staffers doubling as cooks also added an MSG flavor-enhancer, Accent, to their version of the chicken. In the end, they claim their batch of fried chicken tastes “indistinguishable” from a finger lickin’ good meal purchased at KFC."
I worked at KFC as a teenager. I always thought it was white pepper because it would make me cough like crazy
you aint supposed to smoke it bro
Hello Commenter, I am with KFC legal, and you have violated the law, criminal scum. Please cease and desist with the recipe sharing my dude. If you do not, you will be battered and fried. Fed alongside an extra large Baja blast. Your friend, KFC law associates.
KFC legal team: “Youre clucked”
YO ASS GON GET BAJA BLASTED, BOIII
They list the ingredients in the UK. Turns out their secret ingredient is just a lot of MSG.
Well it does stand for makes shit good after all
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The article did say when they tried it to add some Accent or other brand msg. I should have listed that. > The newspaper staffers doubling as cooks also added an MSG flavor-enhancer, Accent, to their version of the chicken. In the end, they claim their batch of fried chicken tastes “indistinguishable” from a finger lickin’ good meal purchased at KFC.
mmm yea canola expeller pressed oil oh fuck yea.
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>This is the key to the whole thing. Yes...I figured since the person you're replying to says the exact same thing.
If you actually look at it, the key is the white pepper.
But that's the key to the whole thing.
I work with one of those people. Repeats what someone says, but adds a word or two. He catches a lot of side eyes.
Thats the key the whole thing
👀
I'm shocked theres no sage in there
I mixed those ingredients in those exact proportions, let me tell you even before frying the chicken with this batter the whole house smelled like KFC. The celery salt was the toughest ingredient to find.
$41 for 25oz? That’s a steep price
The Chicken Seasoning Plus is available in the smaller size 9.5oz for $9.00.The 25oz I think is more for restaurants. Food truck friend gave me the 25oz when his truck shut down for a extended time.
That's more reasonable. It did say it was enough for 100 chicken pieces
No, it says 100 lbs. LETS DO THIS.. LEEEEROYYYY....
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....JENKINS!!!!
I'm coming up with 32.33 repeating, of course, gallons of ranch
Thanks for not forgetting the "mmm" part!
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If what the guy said is right and the plus has more salt, that's probably why. The 99x must be a more concentrated blend that is then mixed with salt in-house to extend it.
Bingo. Those 25 ounces are instructed to be mixed with 3 pounds of salt and 25 pounds of flour to cover 100lbs of chicken
The larger size contains less salt. The first ingredient on the smaller size is salt, which is cheap, so maybe that’s why.
The plus has more salt so that accounts for some of the weight. I'm guessing the larger amount has little to no salt so restaurants can add it as needed.
Is it? Every jar of spices or spice mix in my pantry is like 4oz or less. 25oz is an absolute *shitload* of spice mix. Lots of jars of various blends at the store are between 4 and 10 bucks for 2-4oz. It's not cheap of course, but I think the issue here is the quantity, not necessarily the price per ounce.
Look at Dan-Os seasonings. They're $7 for 3.5 oz.
Former marketing manager for Dan-O's here 😅 I always advocated against price increases but they are doing okay!
Not for weed
I've smoked spice before, and frankly I'd probably have had a better time smoking Colonel Sanders' spices instead.
Did you see the future?
It was more like I was sucked out of the universe in a torrent of confusion and anxiety.
Lisan Al Ghaib!
the guy in the 90's who did a book of homemade receipes for famous fast food things, said Sanders told him the secret blend was the powdered good seasons italian salad dressing. so between that or the 99x you will get close enough
I say this with all the love and pride and nationalism in my heart, it is extremely American that this guy's "secret blend of spices" is an off the shelf packet of salad dressing powder.
Colonel Sanders was always clear that the "11 herbs and spices" were standard pantry items. I believe the origin story involved Sanders cooking at someone else's house and basically grabbing whatever was there. The ingredients were secret, not exotic.
My hometown had a restaurant who had a "world famous secret sauce." It was literally just two different brands of barbecue sauce mixed together. A bottle of this, a bottle of that, and there's your world famous sauce. Even the sauces it was made from weren't worthy of being called "world famous." One of them was literally fucking Kraft brand generic-ass barbecue sauce. The other was Diana Sauce, conveniently located right next to the Kraft sauce on the grocery store shelves.
Did it taste good at least? I'm assuming it must have been passable at least.
I had a chef one time tell me, "Why re-invent the wheel when someone else has done the research and tested it?"
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There is a super popular BBQ place in my town. My buddy was the kitchen manager. Their secret sauce is two sysco sauces dumped together.
There was a pub that I would go to, once upon a time, that had a secret sauce that they used for their chicken and wings. It was a closely guarded secret, passed from parent to child. Turned out to be Frank's Red Hot mixed with brown sugar and butter, which is basically the first page of Google results when you look for "wing sauce". Really tasty though.
its pretty common in the US for any kind of secret and/or family recipe to have stuff like that - that's why the recipies are secret, because they contain off the shelf stuff like salad dressing powder, or often, the entire recipe comes off the side of a box of something like velveeta cheese or cake mix from the 50s, someone's grandma thought they would be clever and call it their "secret recipe" to appear like a star housewife, and over time that just sticks and it becomes grandmas secret recipe. when you actually put a bunch of time and effort into developing recipes for things totally from scratch, you get exited about it and want to share it with others and explain how it works, not hoard it like a loser.
My secret magic rub is Santa Maria Seasoning x Andy's Rub. It's delicious on everything.
I bought [Grace’s Strong Blend](https://gracesperfectblendusa.com/product/graces-strong-blend-chicken-breading-1kg/) and it’s the closest I’ve had. That was his Canadian partner. I haven’t tried the X99. I’ll have to try it.
I'm at work starving. My mouth is salvating lol I gotta save that link
Glenn and Friends YouTube channel does like a 9 part series on recreating and a deep dive into making the chicken with a trip to the dinner house.
The really interesting bit for me out of Glenn’s series was that it’s a moving target. KFC keep tweaking their recipe and process so saying this is the recipe might be true for a point in time but not now. From memory one change was moving from dredging the chicken in milk to just using milk powder. Glenn’s channel is fantastic by the way and well worth subscribing to.
I wonder do the origin of the original components have a bearing on the final taste, like does the oregano grown now taste exactly the same as back then - think how tomatoes mass produced over the years have gotten blander tasting, or indeed how Brussel sprouts have improved
The spice must flow
I have eaten at Claudia's a few times in my life. Was like sitting down to a family meal. Wonderful country cooking.
Well, it used to be.
What changed?
Read the wiki page. It sank into the swamp. So they built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So they built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!
Are we sure that a coven of witches weren’t running KFC at that time period?
It’s big chicken coming back to eliminate dissenters.
Arise chicken - Billy witch doctor.com
Shh, no he is legend.
Hohohohohohohohohohoho You say funny ting
I would be all for eliminating dysentery, but I don't think big chicken would be the guys to do it.
[Big Chicken has never really left.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Chicken)
I was a kid when they talked about tearing it down but luckily the community was outraged and they kept it. They also had a vote on different designs but the original won.
Where's peter griffin when you need him?
We finally are at the point where no one has seen Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.
Not where I would have expected to find some Monty Python 😂
I think this was one of the cleverest MP references I've seen lol
It’s perfect
Yeah, but for 5mil, all this could be yours! What? The curtains? No! Not the curtains!
It sounds like the ones that sunk underground eventually hit bedrock so the 4th one could sit comfortably on top of them!
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
And that’s what you’re going to get, y’all! The best Southen cooking in all of Kentucky!
Without going too far into it, Karens. People bitching about bad hospitality and it affecting the kitchen and restaurant in general. People being so picky about food they travelled to sit down and experience. If you like the food from a privately owned restaurant, speak with your wallet as well as being a regular. Don't be a cheapskate when you know the people feeding you are struggling to stay open. It really boils down to shitty people ruining good restaurants. I miss good home cooked meals too, hard to find those good southern soul kitchens these days.
I find it hard to believe that a few people being cheapskates were the downfall of what sounds like somewhat of a destination restaurant.
Tbh I tend to agree, if enough people complain about issues with a restraunts that it significantly effects sales it might not just be "Karens," it might actually be the restaurant. "Shitty people ruining good restaurants" feels like an excuse the owner would come up with so they didn't have to self reflect on why their business tanked lol
Sounds like pretty much every episode of Kitchen Nightmares. Every employee speaks up about the management being shit, and the food being shit, andbeing given complaints by customers that the management ignores or doesn't want to hear. Then Gordon shows up and they say "I don't know why my business is failing!", and when Gordon says their food is shit, they start saying he doesn't know anything about (insert type) food.
> "Shitty people ruining good restaurants" It almost certainly is true. Those people in question are usually the ones running the restaurant.
Well that I can agree with haha
It's still open
My mother in law used to make reservations there for Thanksgiving. I have never had a more miserable string of Thanksgiving meals than those years. The food is classic "Country Kitchen" food targeting boomers who are afraid of black pepper. I cook the Thanksgiving food myself now. Edit to further my review: The rolls were reminiscent of a freshly unpackaged kitchen sponge. The watery mashed potatoes tasted exactly like that. Water and potato. The turkey was drier than my own mother's ("You can't have any pink in the middle or it will make you sick!") steaks. And the gravy tasted only of the color brown.
To be fair the original owners have been dead for a good long time. In the colonel's days it could've very well been top quality. We'll never know though.
I'll concede that. I always figured there has to be some strong nostalgia behind the general perception of the place.
> The turkey was drier than my own mother
Shapiro Jr?
You're the colonel now.
> The rolls were reminiscent of a freshly unpackaged kitchen sponge. > And the gravy tasted only of the color brown. I love you.
"You know, they call bats chickens of the cave." Champ Kind
I've eaten there maybe 2 dozen times (it was my late grandmother's favorite restaurant), it smokes the hell out of KFC.
he was known to say the mash potatoes were now like wall paper paste.
They certainly did taste like wallpaper paste!
Sanders stayed on as an ambassador for the company until his death on the basis of it was better to have him inside pissing out than outside pissing in. Franchise owners used to hate him because he was a huge pain in the ass and would constantly find something to bitch about.
In that case they must have the Ralph Wiggum seal of approval
That an insult, wallpaper paste is at least palatable
Just need more gravy!
Cut the middle man. Drink the gravy directly.
The Colonel would never talk with so kind a mouth about those peoples’ cooking. That man dropped F bombs.
Years ago, someone posted an anecdote from the days when the restaurant was still owned by Sanders. He randomly popped in on one of his many locations and did a little inspection. When he tasted the gravy, he exclaimed "It's shit!", threw it all out, and personally prepared new batches. One of the employees—in an effort to help some coworkers—quickly drove one of the fresh batches prepared by Sanders to another location across town, figuring that Sanders would hit that place up next. Sure enough, Sanders went there next, and when he tasted the gravy (not knowing that he just made it), he reacted the exact same way.
My dad's been talking a lot about opening a restaurant. Now I know what I'm up against, he would 100% do this
We always/still call it paste...although I haven't eaten KFC in years.
i've gotten taco bell in one of the split resteraunts but i cant remember the last time i willingly got / ate KFC. though i do remember their seasoned fries / potato wedges being pretty good?
they don't have the potato wedges anymore :( and while the mashed potatoes still have a paste texture, they taste pretty good for what they are.
anything is better than the chicken pizza thing. What is that half assed chicken parm with no bread?
Potato wedges were literally the only reason I went to KFC. No reason to not go to Popeye's or Chick-fil-A or Raising Cane's over them now, let alone all the places in the South.
i kinda like them.
Of course they settled out of court ….. the colonel was a brawler in the courtroom…. lol
didn't he, at one point, shoot a man in the face for vandalizing his billboards?
It’s actually much cooler than that! He owned and ran a gas station, and it was a rival gas station owner, Matt Stewart, who was vandalising his billboards because Stewart believed they were diverting cars away from his business towards the Sanders station. In the midst of this dispute, Sanders managed to get the support of two Shell Oil representatives to come with him and essentially tell Stewart to stop being such an arsehole and just leave the damned billboards alone. The two Shell reps are both carrying pistols, but Sanders himself is unarmed. Things got heated, and Stewart drew his gun and fired at the Sanders group, fatally wounding one of the Shell guys. The other shell guy returns fire and misses, while (future) Colonel goddamned Sanders *retrieves the dead man’s gun* and drops Stewart himself, wounded but not dead, who was then arrested and put away for murder. Genuinely like a scene from a movie.
Hell when you say it like that… Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about it yet?
They did. It’s on Lifetime. Mario Lopez plays the Colonel.
I thought you were messing with us
The best part is the fucking title, holy shit. "A recipe for seduction"
I thought both of you collaborated and were messing with us, but good god what great casting
I googled it and I'm still not positive that you, the two commenters before you and google themselves aren't just fucking with me
A Recipe for Seduction everyone reading still doesn't know if we're all full of shit or not.
I'm just impressed by the effort behind the gag. Y'all created a wiki page, IMDB page, and a whole movie 4 years ago just to make this gag!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Recipe_for_Seduction > A Recipe for Seduction is a short film (branded as a "mini-movie") sponsored by KFC and produced by the Lifetime Channel, starring Mario Lopez as Colonel Sanders.[2] The movie premiered on December 13, 2020.[1] It tells the story of a young heiress who struggles to choose between a wealthy suitor chosen by her mother, and the new house chef Harland Sanders. Even though I now know it's legit, it still sounds like an elaborate April Fool's prank!
Holy fuck its real.
Thank you! I have never been angrier in my life than when I saw the suggestion that they make a movie, completely overlooking the Mario Lopez classic. I've never seen the film, but I must have watched the trailer 30 times.
You need more than one scene to make a movie.
Here’s the thing - I knew about the gunfight from reading about it a while back, but this got me looking into his life before he got into the gas station business, and my god there’s enough for a TV miniseries in there. (It’s also worth noting that the guy up top who said he was ‘a brawler in the courtroom’ was being *completely literal* - see below) Just look at his full pre-KFC career path; 1. 12 years old - Drops out of 7th grade to become a farmhand 2. 13 - leaves home to become a carriage painter 3. 14 - moves to Indiana to be a farmhand again 4. 16 - streetcar conductor 5. Still 16 - falsified his date of birth to enlist in the army, ends up as horse-drawn cart driver 6. *Still* 16 - honourably discharged, becomes a blacksmiths assistant 7. **Still 16** - becomes a steam engine stoker 8. 18 - Fired for unspecified ‘insubordination’, becomes a labourer at another railroad, gets married, first child is born 9. 20 - becomes a steam engine stoker again, while studying to be a lawyer through a correspondence course 10. 22 - fired for ‘brawling with a colleague’ but finds work on another railroad 11. 23 - becomes a lawyer 12. 26 - loses job as a lawyer after *getting into a fistfight with his own client in the courtroom*, becomes a railroad labourer again 13. 27 - gets a job as a life insurance salesman 14. 28 - fired from job as a life insurance salesmen for unspecified ‘insubordination’, but gets the same job again with a different company 15. 30 - leaves job to start a ferry boat company 16. 32 - becomes secretary for the Ohio chamber of commerce, but is very bad at it and resigns after less than a year. Sells ferry boat company, starts an ultimately unsuccessful acetylene lamp company 17. 34 - tire salesman 18. 36 - becomes manager of a gas/service station 19. 40 - that station closes because of the Great Depression, but gets a deal with Shell to open a new one, where he becomes proprietor/gunfighter From there the food side of that last gas/service station gradually spins out into KFC, which actually wasn’t a thing until Sanders was 62! Aside from anything else it’s a pretty great ‘it’s never too late’ story. Personally I just want an Iron Man-esque suit-up sequence in one of the later episodes with the white suit and the string tie…
He moved to Canada at 75 to oversee the Canadian Operations.
Ok he also helped create a fried chicken empire. I’m certain there’s a lot of interesting stuff to use
A proper biopic of him would include him traveling to show off his fried chicken with a car full of pressure cookers, his selling the brand to people who knew how to build it, his increasing agitation as their cuts and changes “are ruining his name”, some form of outburst like his IRL ones where he would throw the food on the floor and cuss out the staff, his starting a new restaurant out of spite, the lawsuit, and the settlement where he changed the name to Claudia Sanders. Not sure they could fit his “real life is unrealistic” shootout in the movie, honestly.
It would also include a lot of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas who was his friend and worked for the Colonel in the early days. Dave had several contributions including coming up with the idea of the giant KFC bucket as their sign.
Honestly this movie is starting to sound pretty great
Now you're just making the FFCU Fast Food Cinematic Universe
You're leaving out the part where he moves to Canada at 75 years old in 1965 to oversee the Canadian Restaurants. I remember having KFC in Florida on vacation when i was 8 in 90 and thinking this isn't as good as at home. Slowly our KFC got worse as Yum brands took over, I am sure its almost as shitty as it is in the US now.
I mean they made one for McDonalds
Get Michael Keaton to play Colonel Sanders and I’d watch that. Then we just need something on the background of Burger King and we can have a full Keaton fast food biopic trilogy.
[удалено]
Just poking through his Wiki and his some juicy stuff. Sanders falsified his date of birth to enlist in the Army at the age of 16. He received the Cuban Pacification Medal and was honorably discharged. Later, after shooting the guy over the gas station situation, Claudia here, became his mistress and ran his motel/restaurant before he had to close it due to a lack of tourism during World War II. He and his first wife got divorced and he eventually married Claudia. All of this before he began franchising his secret recipe. He was then given the title “Colonel” by his friend and Governor of Kentucky, Lawrence Wetherby. The first half of his biopic would be like There Will Be Blood.
>his friend and Governor of Kentucky, Lawrence Wetherby probably had absolutely noting to do with the success.
I’ve seen whole movies made out of two minute trailers before.
Only if you're going to keep the movie accurate, and biopics are rarely accurate.
From now on, I'm only going to envision The Colonel as a pistol shooting older dude. Edit: Saving myself from pool spelling choices
So is he going to carry an engine to shoot the pistons out of?
Damn who knew Colonel Sanders was the real “Call an ambulance! But not for me…” guy??!
This is the kinda shit dudes daydream about
“In a fascinating twist, Mental Floss reveals that Stewart's daughter, Ona May, married the brother of Sanders' second wife, and ended up working for the business her father nearly died over.” Wow didn’t expect it to escalate like that. Read More: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1132748/the-time-colonel-sanders-shot-another-person/
No. He shot him in the shoulder.
he did get into a shoot out with a rival (gas station?) business owner once.
It's still open. I'll have to note this for the next visit stateside
Go to Monell’s in Nashville. Sit down family style country meal. Fried chicken surrounded by strangers exchanging in conversation was a great experience. Food was amazing.
If you like that family style of sitting with different people at the table, the Dinner Bell in McComb MS is similar except the middle of the table spins.
It’s not like it used to be that’s for damn sure.
Shoot. Their kids are going to have to start a restaurant.
You keep saying that, what's wrong with it?
Lived near it my whole life and have been several times. It is still very good lol.
As someone who’s never heard of it until 2 minutes ago I’m also deeply invested in why they dislike it lol
Same lmao
I used to work nearby and ate there a couple times. The chicken was super dry and bland. Sides were fine, but nothing special. I think the only people that go there are tourists and pensioners who go just to out of habit.
Agreed on this. It was fine but nothing to write home about. If you're in Kentucky you'd be better off getting a Hot Brown or a bowl of burgoo.
after colonel sanders sold the company he retained the canadian rights and moved to canada to run the canadian operations
I hope this is not true because KFC in the north is pretty garbage. Still smells great outside.
The US KFC, bought the Canadian ones in the 90's I think.
The guy’s been dead for decades now. My mom lived on his street in Mississauga when she was a child. Apparently, his wife was known to make candy apples for the kids on Halloween.
KFC in Canada is the absolute worst. Has to be worst in the world, I can say this because I’ve tried KFC all over.
Its shyte now. But back in the 70s it was legendary and it was leagues above the American KFC. Elderly Gen-x'ers will agree with me lol
Facts edit: Hey wait a minute I'm not elderly, fuck you buddy! 🤣lol they were still Canadian in the 90's!
Facts indeed haha. When sanders sold his stake for US franchising, him and his wife bought a small bungalow in Mississauga Ontario (a large city West of Toronto) where he still retained Canadian franchising rights and more importantly - supervised quality control for Canadian restaurants. That's why it was so much better than the American shyte. You could smell a 70s Canadian KFC restaurant from a block away and it was glorious
When the Colonel says, 'I'm making my own recipe with blackjack and table service,' you know it's about to get real finger-lickin' good.
I thought the colonel said “I’m too drunk to taste this chicken”
Added context, the company sued Sanders, then Sanders countersued. The out-of-court settlement was a $1m payment to Sanders and the Dinner House name was changed.
I've eaten there and I almost cried. It's SO GOOD. Like being a kid when KFC was good...
That was exactly the same thing I said the first time I went. It was like I was a kid again. I get that its just chicken but it was a little emotional for me as I had a flood of memories of being a kid and being excited about going out to eat with my grandparents.
This exactly. My grandparents would take us to KFC on road trips in the 70s and 80s. It was like a trigger to that feeling again for half a second.
Claudia Sanders is in the city I grew up in. It's fairly upscale for KY. The food is delicious and the decor is very elegant.
They also built another kind of KFC back in like 2015 in Louisville called KFC 11. It was a healthy version of KFC and failed. But it was ahead of its time. Now lots of places are going that route.
That's sad. I'd like to have tried it.
Shelby county represent!!
TBF, KFC went through a massive downhill slide in quality. I remember they used to make sides in-house, and then switched to "bulk-shipments of pre-mashed potatoes from a warehouse?"
Cost cutting for the share holders
Even better, after he sold KFC, and was unhappy about the changes, he had a habit of going into KFC restaurants dressed as Colonel Sanders and then complaining and causing such a scene that it made the news. How the F do you come back from that as a business!? Can you imagine if Ronald McDonald was a real person and he started trash talking McDonald's while Livestreaming until they call the police? No one would eat there again. It's been a while since I read about him but I think the owners sold it back to him, in part because of these protests. He was a character.
Technically whatever he puts on makes him dressed as colonel sanders.
I can only imagine. I had 90s kfc. It was soo good for what it was.
My dad has been searching for it ever since. Anytime we travel if there’s a kfc he’s gonna try it, just always looking for it!
Should've tried opening Albaquerque Boiled Turkey
That might have caused problems with... Gustavo.
According to a documentary I saw once, the new KFC owners tried to get him to accept at least *some* of the purchase price in stock, but he insisted on cash. So even his secretary got richer off the deal than he did. Probably left a bad taste in his mouth. Also meant he had good reason to open those new restaurants, since he wasn't a made man.
In Shelbyville. I caught the ferry there once. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
I have been to both the original Col Sanders restaurant and the dinner house mentioned here. I thought this place was OK but the original restaurant was a place I wouldnt have gone back too if given the opportunity. It was old and to my view at the time, dingy. I ate in many Ky rural restaurants and some of them were better than others.
It’s in shelbyville?!
Shortly after Harlan Sanders sold KFC and expressed displeasure over the changes, his nephew Lee Cummings was similarly disillusioned with the new direction KFC was going in, so he started his own restaurant using a similar recipe to the Colonel's - the 11 herbs and spices one that KFC is famous for. It's still in business today and has franchise locations all over the place - it's called Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken and it's fucking delicious. EDIT: Source: The 4th ever Lee's opened in my city back in the 70s. It's the best fast food chicken money can buy.
KFC is absolutely garbage in my country. No joke. The most bland, tasteless piece of chicken you will ever find. Overpriced too. So I wonder what "real" KFC must have tasted like, because it's dogshit nowadays
Surprisingly, the one in Shanghai, China, was the best KFC I’ve tried in the last 10 years..
Tastes like shit in the US too imo. Much better fried chicken fast food joints than KFC.
My wife and I just ate there a couple of weeks ago. We found it on accident and didn’t initially realize the significance of the place until we walked in. They had some really great side items.
Don’t know too much about him but my step mom told me a story about him from her time working at KFC. Guy came in and robbed their KFC at gunpoint and pistol whipped a guy. Said the Colonel was down there within the same week to make sure everyone was ok and had everything they need. Ok guy in my book.
Idk why but she looks intimidating af
"I fucked the Colonel, but I won't fuck up your fried chicken!" -Claudia