KFC 11 Herbs and Spices Seasoning Copycat Recipe
The blend itself, in proportions that actually work, with the two ingredients that carry it and the one nobody wants …
Cooking KFC at home, and what its menu costs
A pressure fryer, a seasoned flour, and the most argued-about spice blend in food.
AI-generated editorial illustration created for food.fast; not a product photograph from KFC.
The KFC recipes on this site
Not every menu item has a recipe here, and that is deliberate - We write a page when there is something genuinely worth saying about how to make the thing.
KFC Coleslaw Copycat Recipe
Chopped to rice-grain size rather than shredded, dressed sweet and sharp, and left overnight. Fifteen minutes of work.
KFC Gravy Copycat Recipe
A properly dark roux, chicken stock and a genuinely startling amount of black pepper. Fifteen minutes, and the colour…
KFC Hot Wings Copycat Recipe
A thin, hard, heavily spiced coating on a small wing. Different from a buffalo wing in every respect that matters.
KFC Mashed Potato Copycat Recipe
Deliberately softer and smoother than a British mash, seasoned to be eaten with gravy rather than alone. Twenty-five …
KFC Original Recipe Fried Chicken Copycat
Buttermilk brine, a double dredge with a rest, and controlled shallow frying. Honest about the one thing a home kitch…
KFC Popcorn Chicken Copycat Recipe
Small pieces, a heavily seasoned dredge and a very short fry. The whole recipe is about not overcooking something tha…
KFC Zinger Burger Copycat Recipe
A boneless thigh, a cayenne-loaded dredge and plain mayonnaise. The heat is built into the crust, which is the whole trick.
What KFC food actually tastes of
White pepper is the note you cannot place. More than any other single ingredient, white pepper is what makes seasoned flour taste like KFC rather than like fried chicken. It is musty, slightly fermented and completely different from black pepper. Do not substitute.
The crust is a double-dredge with a wet rest. Flour, then buttermilk, then flour again, then ten minutes standing on a rack so the coating hydrates into a paste. Fry it dry and it falls off; rest it and it fuses.
MSG is in the original and it is not optional if you want the original. It is sold as Accent or as plain monosodium glutamate and it is what turns a well-seasoned crust into a savoury one. If you would rather not use it, a teaspoon of nutritional yeast plus a little more salt gets perhaps 70 per cent of the way, and the recipe says which line to change.
About KFC
KFC is the chain where the home cook has the biggest genuine advantage and the biggest genuine handicap, in the same recipe.
The handicap is equipment. Original Recipe chicken is cooked in a commercial pressure fryer at around 15 psi, which raises the boiling point inside the meat and cooks a bone-in thigh through in nine or ten minutes without drying it. You cannot do that in a domestic pressure cooker - putting hot oil in a sealed consumer appliance is genuinely dangerous and this site will never tell you to. What you can do is brine, then shallow-fry at a controlled temperature, and get within touching distance.
The advantage is freshness. KFC's seasoning is a dry blend that sits in a warehouse; yours is ground this morning. Toast the peppercorns and the coriander seed yourself and the copy is not a compromise, it is better.
What KFC charges, from the menu we hold
162 priced options across 117 menu sections, as last recorded in United States. Prices move and vary by outlet, so treat these as a reference point rather than a quote.
Half the menu sits between $3.79 and $14.99. Here is the whole spread:
| Position | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest priced item | $1.29 | |
| Middle of the menu | $7.99 | |
| Dearest priced item | $61.99 |
KFC changes its prices without telling you. We read this menu once a month and keep the reading – have the changes emailed to you, free, one click to stop.
Every reading we hold is on the KFC price history. The full list is on the KFC menu page, and the 8 items we have rebuilt at home are listed here.
What KFC charges in 6 countries
The same item, priced from each country’s own menu and converted to one currency so the columns can be read against each other. KFC sets prices per market, so a gap here is the chain’s pricing rather than an exchange rate artefact – and the widest gap on this list is Zinger® Burger, which costs $7.51 in the dearest market and $2.06 in the cheapest.
| Item | 🇬🇧 GBP | 🇦🇺 AUD | 🇮🇪 EUR | 🇳🇿 NZD | 🇭🇰 HKD | 🇹🇭 THB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $7.28 | $6.31 | $7.51 | $6.67 | $4.52 | $2.06 |
Only items KFC prices in at least 5 of the markets we hold are listed, because a row with three figures in it is a gap rather than a comparison.
What KFC sells nearly everywhere
Ranked by how many of the markets in our price data carry the item with a published price. This is computed from the menu tables, so it reflects what the chain actually sells rather than what it advertises.
| Menu item | Markets priced | Recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Zinger Burger | 5 | KFC Zinger Burger Copycat Recipe |
| Gravy | 3 | KFC Gravy Copycat Recipe |
| Coleslaw (Regular) | 3 | - |
| Party Bucket | 3 | - |
| Zinger Stacker | 3 | - |
| Mashed Potato (Regular) | 2 | - |
| Zinger® Burger Box Hot & Crispy™ | 2 | - |
| Original Recipe Chicken | 2 | KFC Original Recipe Fried Chicken Copycat |
| Zinger® Crunch Burger™ Box Hot & Crispy™ | 2 | - |
| Sweet Chilli Dipped Bites | 2 | - |
| Family Feast | 2 | - |
| 6 pcs Egg Tarts | 2 | - |
Build your KFC order, see what it costs
Tick what you would actually order. The total runs as you go, and where we have built the item at home you will see both figures side by side - 2 of the items below have a fully documented copycat recipe on this site.
Other chicken chains
What else people compare KFC against, and what we hold for each.
KFC is a trademark of its owner. food.fast is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by KFC. Recipes on this page are our own interpretations, not the company’s formulas.