Jeffrey Clem writes…
I worked at KFC in high school, back in 1977-79, when it was known as Kentucky Fried Chicken. We had a minimum of two cooks on duty regularly, with a manager and 2 counter-persons. Maybe "cook" is overstating what we did, but we did cook the chicken. We'd grab the chicken from the walk-in refrigerator, prepare it for cooking by cleaning, washing (in egg/milk mixture) and flouring it and then either pressure-cook or deep-fry it (original or crispy?). We used 2 different thermometers — one for checking the pre-cook temp of the chicken (to make sure it hadn't somehow gone bad in storage) and another for checking the post-cook temp. We also checked random pieces of chicken from a given, freshly-cooked batch by gently peeling back breading/skin and looking at the meat to see if it was white, as opposed to pink.
I tell you all of this because I am not sure where I fell in that recent description you posted from the anonymous gentleman when he discusses how things are done nowadays. I do know that me and my fellow employees really did work our asses off for what was, even then, chicken-feed (pun-intended), but that's what most high-school jobs end up being, so that we'd eventually develop some kind of decent work ethic and learn how to humbly eat shit.
I ate at a KFC recently for the first time in decades and I saw no evidence that any food was prepared on the premises in any way that was even close to what we did back then. At that time, customers could sort of see behind the front menu-wall and heating-units that there were work areas that involved cleaning, washing, flouring and submerging the chicken in hot shortening (it wasn't called grease until it hit the floor and was, therefore, useless to us).
Reading your recent post about Five Guys Hamburgers and KFC brought back some of those memories and I thought I'd self-indulgently share them with you for a little, possibly-valuable background insight as to how it used to be done.
By the way, Five Guys would be perfect if they served milk shakes (and by that I mean real shakes, not the crap most fast-food joint squeeze out of machines).
Yeah…as I said here before, I think someone could make a fortune if they could open a fried chicken restaurant that would serve the exact same chicken KFC served around 1970. At least at the stands I went to, it was moist and fresh and the batter was the ornament for the chicken rather than the other way around. And you could tell it was actually cooked on the premises.
I can think of a lot of things that I think would make Five Guys even better, starting with a smaller size of fries and burger buns that didn't go quite so soggy on you. I am told however by folks who've tried suggesting things that the company is very polite in telling you that they think they know what they're doing and they really don't want or need your suggestions. I still like their cuisine and the simple way they do business. Have I ever mentioned here that the chain does no advertising and offers no discounts? I don't necessarily admire that but I like the way they're willing to stand or fall with their product on word of mouth. Anyway, thanks, Jeffrey.