Behold KFC’s newest menu item: Bacon, pepper jack and Swiss cheese and Colonel’s sauce, all sandwiched between two Original Recipe fillets.
It’s only available in Providence, R.I., and Omaha, Neb.
If the sandwich is successful in those cities, it’ll pop up on menus elsewhere.
Read more about this here.
Do you think the Double Down needs to travel to Austin?
KFC chicken twister
An 11-year-old Australian girl, Monika Sumaan, claims that she developed brain damage after eating a KFC chicken twister (fried chicken strips in a pita wrap) when she was 7. She is suing KFC-operator YUM! Restaurants Australia for $10 Million.
According to WalletPop.com, her lawyers claim that the fast food chain gave her a salmonella-contaminated chicken twister, which caused Monika to develop salmonella encephalopathy and salmonella septicemia. This rare form of salmonella eventually brought on intellectual disability, spastic quadriplegia and liver dysfunction.
Monika ate part of a chicken twister and shared some with her parents and older brother on October 4, 2005, in Villawood, a suburb of Sydney. The whole family became ill, but Monika collapsed. The Sumaans were all rushed to the hospital by ambulance, where medical specialists found that they all had a common strain of salmonella.
Monika Sumaan, before contracting salmonella
Monika’s lawyers claim that their food poisoning came from the Villawood KFC’s unhygienic practices, such as dropping chicken on the floor, picking it back up and serving it to customers. They said that Monika’s current disabilities are a result of the “disturbing” and “unsettling” practices at the restaurant.
Yum! Restaurants Australia spokesman Nick Bryden claims that KFC wasn’t the cause. According to FOXNews.com, Bryden said that “KFC’s supplier also confirmed that routine tests showed that the chicken supplied to the store contained none of the alleged strain of salmonella.”
All of this comes in the wake of other Sydney-area KFCs being fined $73,125 by the State Government due to breaches of food hygiene laws, after an investigation by the Food Authority.
Read more about this here: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/08/03/kfc-chicken-twister-causes-brain-damage-says-11-year-old-sui/
The Colonel and his empire might be cooked.
At least that’s the rumor, and it’s all due to finance manager Ron Douglas. The Long Island, New York man claims he’s almost figured out Kentucky Fried Chicken’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices the restaurant uses to season its chicken.
According to MSNC, Douglas, 34, has spent years attempting to reproduce KFC’s Original Recipe. He started by gathering clues on the Internet, experimenting in his kitchen and at one point even attempted to bribe workers at KFC for the recipe.
“They don’t know the recipe. The seasoning comes all prepackaged,” Douglas said.
But after years of trial and error, Douglas claims to have the secret to KFC’s successful fried chicken: The secret recipe that keeps millions coming back.
“We’ve done taste tests, and a lot of people can’t tell the difference,” Douglas said. “It’s very close.”
Of course, KFC has dismissed Douglas’ replication recipe.
“Plenty of people have tried to duplicate the recipe over the years, but there is still only one place to get authentic Original Recipe Chicken - at a KFC restaurant,” spokesman Rick Maynard said.
The KFC Web site says Sanders told no one the recipe until right before he died in 1980. Currently, the original recipe is kept in a safe in the company’s Louisville headquarters.
Douglas said he hasn’t got in any trouble with the chicken chain, and he doesn’t expect that he will.
“The recipes are my own — I use the names as a reference point so people know what they’re eating,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m not taking away business from these big chains.”
Besides, Douglas says, people need chicken, even during a recession.
“I think the recession has really been good for me,” he said. “People want to eat these delicious meals without spending all the money. The demand is huge, and maybe this will lead to a cooking show. Now the sky’s the limit.”
That doesn’t deter Douglas, though. To display his efforts, Douglas created RecipeSecrets.net, which has recipes from many famous fast food chains, including Cracker Barrel’s sweet potato casserole, Outback Steakhouse’s coconut shrimp and Macaroni Grill’s chicken cannelloni.
He also has a new book, “America’s Most Wanted Recipes,” which was published recently by Simon and Schuster.
The book includes more than 200 recipes that copy the specialties of large restaurant chains including Olive Garden, the Cheesecake Factory and Red Lobster.
The Young Republicans convention was held in Indianapolis last weekend, and the local Republican blog Hoosier Access sat down with RNC Chairman Michael Steele for a good talk.
During the question and answer session, an audience member asked, “Regarding your inclusion of the diverse populations of the Republican party, what is your plan moving forward?”
Yes, it wasn’t the most articulate way to ask the question — how about how is the party going to lure new members? — but Steele’s answer wasn’t much better.
“My plan is to say “Ya’ll come,” Steele said with a Southern accent. He then added “I got the fried chicken and potato salad,” after hearing someone say “I’ll bring the collard greens.”
From from the Huffington Post:
Yes, that’s right. To lure African-Americans into the GOP, Steele is offering “fried chicken and potato salad.” Since he mentions Republicans should also be reaching out to the LGBT community, I wonder what stereotype he’s going to offer us? Buttplugs and Birkenstocks?
We decided to fry our own chicken. We’ve tried before: It was a disaster. The batter wouldn’t stick, we used crappy boneless, skinless frozen chicken breasts and the oil burnt our chicken. 
So we went all out this time and got mega-prepared. We went to Walmart and got all of the ingredients of Food Network whore Alton Brown’s fried chicken.
After coming home, we decided that his recipe was kind of freaky and West coast because you have to use Hungarian paprika and marinade your chicken in buttermilk the night before and pan-fry the chicken. So we went a little more southern and combined Paula Dean’s fried chicken recipe (excerpt: “Add enough hot sauce so the egg mixture is bright orange”) and another generic, Googled fried chicken recipe.
We got home all pumped and shortly after realized that our whole, cut-up Wal-mart chicken was green-splotched and smelled like a dead person. Oh, and it expired three weeks ago. MAKE SURE YOUR WALMART-BOUGHT CHICKEN IS NOT EXPIRED. So, after thorough hand-washes, Tyler sped to Fiesta mart and bought a spotless, fresh Tyson whole chicken.
We set a small bucket of vegetable shortening to medium heat, then assembled our dry mixture in a pan. It was:
In a separate bowl, we poured and stirred the wet mix:
Vegetable shortening melted and slightly boiling, we took a drumstick, drenched it in the wet mix and patted it around in the flour. Then, we plopped it into the frying oil.
We noticed the batter wasn’t very thick, and we adore Willie Mae’s in New Orleans. The restaurant makes a wet-batter fried chicken, so we decided to combine the wet and dry mixes together.
Our sticky, wet batter conglomeration required countless additions of a “little more flour” and a “splash of water” and blah blah blah to make it actually stick to the chicken and not runnily glop all over fingers and the counter.
We kept the dark meat pieces in for about 14 minutes (they take longer to cook) and the white pieces in for about 11 minutes. We cut open each piece to make sure the meat wasn’t pink.
End the end, the dry-batter drumstick looked the most normal—Church’s-style, crispy and thin batter—while the wet-batter pieces ended up looking like Asian-fried chicken—thick, smooth and abundant batter. Both were good for different reasons.
For our last piece, we decided to drench the batter in Tabasco and cayenne pepper, and hat piece ended up tasting like a hot wing. Except more badass.
We feasted out that night and went into a fat coma.
A good friend of mine posted this site on Reddit, the social news Web site. In the interest of chicken transparency, and because the comments weren’t spam, which we get about five a day, here are the two comments the link got:
1. From Paulaner:
Terrys Soul Food on E 6th is really good for fried chicken. Also this chicken and waffles sounds amazing.
2. From adrianmonk:
Once upon a time, I heard that the fried chicken at the convenience store at Lamar Place and Lamar (which is near Threadgill’s, just north of Denson) was really good. But that was years ago.
EDIT: The one on the north side of Lamar Place, not the gas station on the south side. Also, I think I am idly rambling. I have no idea if the chicken there is actually any good or not, or even whether the place still exists.
Austin fried chicken is up and clucking. Check back often for updates!
