KFC fakeaway: what actually makes fried chicken taste like that

The spice blend is one of the better-known trade secrets in food, and no, the recipe circulating online is not confirmed to be it. Anyone presenting a blend as the genuine article is guessing confidently.

This matters less than it sounds. Blind-test fried chicken and people identify it by texture and salt far more than by a specific spice.

A salt solution, or buttermilk, changes the meat itself — it holds water through cooking, so the chicken stays juicy at temperatures that would otherwise dry it.

Skip this and you are relying entirely on the coating to carry the dish, which is why under-brined fried chicken tastes like seasoned crust wrapped around plain meat.

Flour with starch gives a crisper, lighter crust than flour alone. Adding a little of the wet mix into the dry and rubbing it through creates the craggy surface that fries into shards.

Rest the coated pieces before they go in so the coating hydrates and grips. Straight from dredge to fryer is how coating ends up in the oil instead of on the chicken.

Too cool and the coating absorbs oil and goes heavy. Too hot and the crust colours before the inside is done. A thermometer is worth more here than any spice blend, and adding too many pieces at once drops the temperature enough to ruin a batch.

If you are baking or air-frying instead, the Food Standards Agency has practical guidance on acrylamide and browning — go golden, not dark.

Commercial fried chicken is often pressure-fried, which cooks faster at a lower oil temperature and keeps more moisture in. Domestic pressure cookers are not designed for hot oil and should not be used for it.

So accept a slightly different texture and win on freshness and salt instead.

DishCopy is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to this company in any way. The name is used here only to describe the kind of food this guide is about, which is ordinary editorial reference.

We do not have their recipe and we are not claiming to. Everything above is a reconstruction from what is publicly observable — the style of dish, the architecture of its flavours, and the techniques any cook can use.