Recipe 1: KFC Original Recipe Fried Chicken

Kentucky Fried Chicken is loved across the country and there are many recipes online that try to duplicate the great taste of Colonel Sanders tasty treats. After many tries at preparing the perfect chicken I have learned that there are several factors that have a great influence on your finished product.

1. Use Crisco shortening versus vegetable oil, I find that Crisco tends to do a better job at cooking the chicken.

2. Use a well season flour to coat the chicken before frying. Remember those 11 herbs and spices, they are an important factor in the Colonel's recipe.

Here is a recipe for seasoned flour to get you started, and it is just that. Adjust the recipe as you see fit tweaking ingredients until your happy with the results.

3 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoon garlic salt
2 teaspoons onion salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
1/2 teaspoon dried powdered rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried powdered thyme
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients. I like to double coat my chicken for extra crispy flavor and texture.

Makes 3 1/2 cups of seasoned flour .

6 cups Crisco cooking oil
1 egg, beaten
2 cups milk
2 cups all- purpose flour
4 tbsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp msg (monosodium glutamate)--you can use Accent flavor enhancer
2 frying chickens with skin, each cut into 6 pieces


Pour the oil into the pressure cooker and heat over med. heat to about 400 F.

In a small bowl, combine the egg and milk In a separate bowl, combine the remaining four dry ingredients. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk until fully moistened. Roll the moistened chicken in the flour mixture until completely coated.

In groups of four or five drop the covered chicken pieces into the oil and lock the lid in place. When stem begins shooting through the pressure release, set the timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, release the pressure and remove the chicken to a paper towels or a metal rack to drain. Repeat with the remaining chicken.

Makes 12 pieces

Pressure Cooker 

Colonel Sanders was always experimenting with food at his restaurant in Corbin, Ky., in those early days of the 1930s. He kept adding this and that to the flour for frying chicken and came out with a pretty good-tasting product. But customers still had to wait 30 minutes for it while he fried it up in an iron skillet. That was just too long to wait, he thought. Most other restaurants serving what they called "Southern" fried chicken fried it in deep fat. That was quicker, but the taste wasn't the same.

Then the Colonel went to a demonstration of a "new-fangled gizmo" called a pressure cooker sometime in the late 1930s. During the demonstration, green beans turned out tasty and done just right in only a few minutes. This set his mind to thinking. He wondered how it might work on chicken.

He bought one of the pressure cookers and made a few adjustments. After a lot of experimenting with cooking time, pressure, shortening temperature and level, Eureka! He'd found a way to fry chicken quickly, under pressure, and come out with the best chicken he'd ever tasted.

Today, there are several different kinds of cookers used to make Original Recipe® Chicken. But every one of them fries under pressure, the principle established by this now-famous Kentuckian.