Hi! I’m Betty, welcome to Betty’s Kitchen. Today, we’re making Kentucky Fried Popcorn Chicken like I promised. Yesterday, we did a little field trip. We went to Corbin, Kentucky which had the home of KFC, well the home of the original KFC which was called Sanders Café after Colonel Harland Sanders, and he called his chicken Kentucky Fried Chicken. In recent years, it’s been known as KFC and you don’t hardly even think of the Kentucky and the fried part anymore. You just think that the type of chicken you’re getting is KFC. But it did begin in a small café in Corbin, Kentucky and I thought I would show you that, and this T shirt shows you that I was there. And also, I brought back the amount of popcorn chicken that I did not eat which was this much. It’s really not my thing too much to eat in that fashion and I’ll tell you why. If you cut into a piece of this popcorn chicken, you’ll see that there’s very little chicken and there’s a lot of coating. And that’s not bad, it’s just that that coating soaks up a lot of grease and you’ll find that you’re eating really a lot of grease in a box like this. KFC in anyway is just my favorite taste. It dictates that I would like to have less grease in my chicken. So we’re going to make it with less grease.

Now, the traditional Kentucky Fried Chicken was made using a pressurized fryer, that was on of the big promotional factors, I think, at the time. And also, it was made with 11 secret herbs and spices and the recipe was locked away in a vault and remains there. Maybe it has been moved one or two times. But that’s the story. So you’re wondering, what are these 11 special herbs and spices? I have read a little bit about the herbs and spices and I am just using my own judgment in some cases here. But I’m going to give you a blend of spices which involved 11 of them and you can take it or leave it. In fact, after the colonel died, the recipe supposedly was changed so that the flavorings were only salt, pepper and monosodium glutamate. These have been performed on the chicken and supposedly, the results give those three flavorings. I’m not saying that that’s it.

I’m going to take what I have out here. I’m not going to take the time to pour them in my little dish but I’ll take care of that in just a minute. I have one tablespoon of paprika, ½ tablespoon of onion salt, and then I have ½ teaspoon of all the rest. Whatever I have out here might not be that size of measuring container, but ½ teaspoon of celery salt, ½ teaspoon of rubbed sage, ½ teaspoon of garlic powder, ½ teaspoon of allspice, ½ teaspoon of oregano, ½ teaspoon of chili powder, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, ½ teaspoon of sweet basil and ½ teaspoon marjoram.

So I’ll take care of collecting all of these and blending them altogether. The chicken that I’m going to use, you’ll se right here, I have some nice chicken tenders. These are just chicken strips that you can buy at your grocery usually in this form, and that just makes it easier for me because I’m making popcorn chicken. Now, I will have more chicken and less coating. So I’ll probably cut something like that. That’s one piece and then maybe the next piece might be like this and then like this, and just continue on. So let me take care of the work that I need to do. I need to get this into popcorn pieces which are going to be large popcorn pieces which are going to be large popcorn pieces. I need to get all my spices mixed together and then I’ll see to that.

I’m coming over here to the stove and I have an iron skillet. I’m going to pour in some peanut oil. So I have a quarter of a cup here and I’m just looking at it because I mainly do this by eye sight. I usually would put a little more than that but this is all I have there. That will be fine. And I got to cover the bottom. And then we’ll try this on and turn down to low. I would normally make it medium or medium high, but since I’ve got a little talking to do over here before I get to that, I don’t want to get burned so I’m getting that heated up slowly.

Over here, you could see I’ve got the chicken into chunks that will serve as popcorn chicken. I have mixed around all of the herbs and spices. They should be pretty homogenous. And then I have flour for coating. I just put one cup of flour into a zip lock bag and I’ll leave it open at the top because I’ll be putting pieces in here to shake. Now as far as coating this, I have two pounds of chicken there and you’ll just take what you think will satisfy you in terms of the spiciness. If you want it kind of mild, then just like half of it and I think that’s probably good. If you want it super spicy, then you could use all of it. But make sure that gets to all of the chicken, and that’s why—when I had to cook the chicken, the section is set, that one will stay out. But anyway, the rest of these are getting coated with the herbs and spices and then we will just put a bunch at a time into our bag and then I’ll shake this and come over here. Now, I don’t think that this is really hot yet so let me go away for a minute, let this get hot and then we’ll put those in.

We’ll take just a little bit of flour and see if it sizzles in the skillet like this, then you’ll know your skillet is ready for you to put the chicken in. So bring it up a couple of paces, as many as you want, shake them off and into the bag and then place them individually and it should sizzle like that. So I’m going to continue to do this. I have two pounds worth of chicken. I like to get a single layer along the bottom, and also to be able to turn it over. And then when that happens, I’ll take it to the oven to let it finish off. This will not take long because it’s not a full chicken breast like I usually make, but these will cook up really fast. So if I had to do them in two sessions, it really wouldn’t be that long or you could use two skillets.

But you can see, this is kind of the way it goes and I can see already that some of those could be turned over. And I’ve gotten down to the bottom of those so let me grab a fork here and we’ll just do a little testing. You would see the bottom, once it is brown, then turn it over, turn your heat down to low so they don’t blacken, we don’t want that. And actually, you don’t really have to go to the oven with these. You can do these totally on the top of the stove and they will brown up. I think that’s what I’ll do with these. I have the oven prepared and ready at 400, so if you have really big pieces, it’s going to take them awhile to cook through, then do that. Otherwise, just cook both sides until they’re brown, make sure to cut into them with a knife that you see white meat, nothing pink, and they will be done and ready to take out. So I’m going to come back and show you the finished product in a minute.

I did two skillet full of these popcorn chicken and I’m just finishing up putting this on the plate. You know, I just have it drained on a paper towel because you don’t want any of that oil to be served that is unnecessary. So we have them done as healthily as possible for fried food. But I did fry them completely, I did not put them in the oven, they’re not oven baked, they are actually skillet fried. And if you want to see one of them inside, it’s mainly chicken. It’s not all crust. But I did have my husband test one out, he ate one and said that the flavoring balance was just right. For the two pounds that I had, the half of all that I told you to put in was just right so can go over that. If you want it hotter, then you can put more in. If you want something really mild, put less in. But I think that you’re going to like this dish.