46 Fun Facts About Fried Chicken

Which part of a chicken wing is sold as a 'drumette'?

The meaty upper segment is the drumette, so called because it looks like a miniature drumstick; the two-boned middle piece is the flat, and the tip is often discarded.

Southern fried chicken is often said to blend European frying methods with the seasoning traditions of which region?

West Africa is the usual answer: enslaved cooks carried its seasoning traditions into Southern kitchens, though food historians still argue over how much of the dish each side supplied.

Which US state gives its name to a pan-fried chicken dish traditionally served with cream gravy?

Maryland fried chicken is cooked in a covered skillet and served with cream gravy; dressed up as 'chicken à la Maryland', it was offered to first-class diners on the Titanic the day the ship struck the iceberg.

Which fat is traditionally used to fry Southern fried chicken?

Lard was the classic choice: Mary Randolph's 1824 recipe in The Virginia House-Wife, the model for generations of Southern cooks, fried the chicken in 'a good quantity of boiling lard'.

Buffalo wings take their name from a city in which US state?

New York is home to the city of Buffalo, where the hot-sauced wings are usually said to have been first served as a late-night snack in 1964; the name has nothing to do with bison.

Gordonsville, Virginia, calls itself the Fried Chicken Capital for selling chicken to whom?

Train passengers bought it through the carriage windows: Gordonsville was a rail junction, and local Black women, known as waiter carriers, met each train with platters of chicken balanced on their heads.

The founder of which burger chain first made his fortune turning around failing KFC restaurants in Ohio?

Wendy's founder Dave Thomas revived four struggling KFC outlets in Columbus in the 1960s, trimming the menu and trading chicken for radio advertising, then sold his stake and opened his first burger restaurant in 1969.

How many herbs and spices are in KFC's Original Recipe, according to its marketing?

11 herbs and spices is the famous claim; a signed copy of the recipe sits in a vault at KFC's Louisville headquarters, and separate suppliers each blend only part of the mix so that none knows it all.

From what kind of business did Harland Sanders first sell his fried chicken to hungry travellers?

A filling station in Corbin, Kentucky, is where it began: Sanders fed passing motorists in a back room, and the meals proved so popular that he moved across the road to a full restaurant.

In which state was Colonel Sanders actually born?

Indiana, on a farm near Henryville: after his father died, the young Sanders did the cooking for his younger brother and sister while his mother went out to work.

What cooking method did Sanders patent for his chicken, which cooked it faster than a skillet?

Pressure frying was Sanders's breakthrough: in 1939 he adapted one of the new pressure cookers so that chicken cooked in under ten minutes, where his iron skillet had kept customers waiting half an hour.

What was the 'Colonel' in Colonel Sanders?

An honorary state title: Kentucky's governor made Sanders a colonel in 1935, and after a second commission in 1950 he began to look the part, growing his trademark goatee.

Sanders' first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952 outside Kentucky, in which state?

Utah, at a café in the Salt Lake area whose owner asked his sign painter what to call the new dish; they rejected 'Utah Fried Chicken' and painted 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' on the windows.

Which KFC slogan began as a manager's ad-lib?

'It's finger lickin' good' was manager Ken Harbough's retort when a viewer phoned a TV station to complain that franchisee Dave Harman was licking his fingers in the background of an advert.

For how much did Colonel Sanders sell his fried chicken company to investors in 1964?

$2 million bought the business in 1964; Sanders kept the Canadian operations and took a $40,000-a-year salary to stay on as the white-suited face of a company he no longer owned.

Colonel Sanders publicly compared KFC's later gravy to wallpaper paste, prompting what?

An unsuccessful libel suit against him followed, brought by a Kentucky franchisee; the state's Supreme Court threw it out because Sanders had attacked the chain's food in general, not one restaurant.

Which company bought KFC in 1986, when it already owned Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?

PepsiCo paid about $840 million for KFC, then left the restaurant business in 1997 by spinning all three chains off as Tricon, the company later renamed Yum! Brands.

KFC opened its first outlet in mainland China in 1987, in which city?

Beijing got it: the restaurant opened across the road from Tiananmen Square, pioneering Western fast food on the mainland, and China went on to become KFC's largest market.

In Japan, KFC is famously eaten on which holiday, thanks to a long-running 1974 advertising campaign?

Christmas KFC took off with the 1974 'Kentucky for Christmas' campaign, after Takeshi Okawara, manager of Japan's first store, had sold party barrels as a stand-in for turkey.

Fans of which Japanese baseball team threw a Colonel Sanders statue into an Osaka canal in 1985?

Hanshin Tigers fans who resembled each player were leaping into the water, and the statue stood in for bearded American slugger Randy Bass; the 'Curse of the Colonel' took the blame until the team's 2023 title.

Popeyes opened in 1972 in a suburb of which city?

New Orleans is the home city: Al Copeland's first chicken stand in suburban Arabi, Chicken on the Run, flopped, so he added cayenne and Cajun spices and reopened it as Popeyes.

What did founder Al Copeland claim Popeyes was named after?

Popeye Doyle of The French Connection was Copeland's story: he was a fan of Gene Hackman's hard-nosed detective, yet the cartoon sailor went on to appear in the chain's advertising for decades.

Which coffee chain's parent company bought Popeyes for $1.8 billion in 2017?

Tim Hortons' parent, Restaurant Brands International, paid $79 a share; under its ownership Popeyes launched the 2019 chicken sandwich that sold out across the US within weeks.

Why are Chick-fil-A restaurants closed on Sundays?

The founder's Christian faith set the rule: Truett Cathy closed his first diner on Sundays in 1946, having worked seven-day weeks himself, so that staff had a day to rest and worship.

Where did the first dedicated Chick-fil-A restaurant open in 1967?

A shopping mall in Atlanta, Greenbriar, housed the first one; Chick-fil-A then grew through the 1970s by opening in suburban malls, a setting the company says it pioneered for fast food.

Which animals hold the misspelled "Eat Mor Chikin" signs in Chick-fil-A's advertising?

Holstein cows have carried the misspelled signs since The Richards Group created the 'Eat Mor Chikin' campaign in 1995, the joke being that cows want people eating chicken instead of beef.

Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on top of what?

White bread with pickle chips is the classic plate; the chicken itself gets a cayenne-heavy paste straight out of the fryer, which is what turns it red and sets it apart from Buffalo wings.

Legend says hot chicken began when Thornton Prince's girlfriend did what?

She over-spiced his breakfast as revenge for a night out, the story goes; Prince loved it, took it to his brothers, and together they opened the BBQ Chicken Shack, forerunner of Prince's Hot Chicken Shack.

The Korean word 'chimaek' describes fried chicken paired with which drink?

Beer: 'chi' is chicken and 'maek' is short for maekju, Korean for beer. Deep-fried chicken itself is often said to have arrived with the US troops stationed in Korea after the Korean War.

The Japanese word karaage is commonly written with characters that literally mean what?

Chinese deep-fry is the usual reading: the kara is written with the character for Tang China, though it can also be written as 'empty', which is why some take the name to mean frying without batter.

Which chicken-and-biscuits chain was founded in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1977?

Bojangles opened in Charlotte selling Cajun-seasoned chicken and buttermilk biscuits, and won a loyal following in 1989 by staying open when Hurricane Hugo shut most other restaurants in the Carolinas.

Buffalo wings are usually said to have been invented in 1964 at which family-run restaurant?

The Anchor Bar's Teressa Bellissimo is usually credited: wings were then a cheap cut bound for the stockpot, until she cooked a batch as a late-night snack and tossed them in hot sauce.

Besides vinegar-based cayenne hot sauce, what is the other main ingredient of classic Buffalo wing sauce?

Melted butter goes in with the hot sauce; by the best-known account the wings began as a late-night snack and came with celery and blue cheese from the start, a pairing that stuck.

Wells Supper Club in 1930s Harlem made which pairing a late-night favourite of jazz musicians?

Chicken and waffles suited players who finished their gigs too late for dinner and too early for breakfast; the far older Pennsylvania Dutch version tops the waffle with stewed chicken and gravy.

Which fried chicken product is Cornell scientist Robert Baker credited with inventing but never patenting?

The chicken nugget is often credited to McDonald's, but Baker's recipe went out free in a Cornell bulletin in 1963, long before the chain launched its McNuggets.

Chicken-fried steak is usually traced to which European dish?

Wiener schnitzel, brought to Texas by German and Austrian immigrants, is the usual suspect: cooks swapped the veal for beef, and the town of Lamesa claims the dish as its own.

Which Filipino chain, famous for Chickenjoy chicken, began as an ice cream parlour in 1975?

Jollibee began as Tony Tan Caktiong's Magnolia ice cream parlour in Quezon City in 1975; hot meals outsold the ice cream and the shop became a fast-food chain in 1978.

Raising Cane's is named after what?

The founder's yellow Labrador, Raising Cane, got the honour only after a friend talked Todd Graves out of 'Sockeye's', his tribute to the Alaskan salmon fishing that paid for the restaurant.

Church's Chicken was founded in 1952 across the street from which landmark?

The Alamo stood across the street from George W. Church's first takeaway stand in San Antonio; he put the fryers by the windows so customers could watch their chicken cook while they waited.

A New Hampshire restaurant is credited with inventing chicken tenders in 1974 from trimmings of which cut?

The breast: cooks at the Puritan Backroom in Manchester were trimming chicken breasts for other dishes, and rather than waste the offcuts, Charlie Pappas marinated and fried them.

Which fast-food chain's broiled chicken sandwich, launched in 1990, was soon selling a million a day?

Burger King's BK Broiler hit a million sandwiches a day within a month, taking sales from the fried-chicken chains while Kentucky Fried Chicken was still only test-marketing grilled chicken.

Which chicken wing chain was founded in Garland, Texas, in 1994?

Wingstop was founded in Garland, Texas, in 1994 by Antonio Swad, who had started Pizza Patrón eight years earlier, and Bernadette Fiaschetti; it began franchising in 1997.

Chicken Kiev is a pounded chicken fillet rolled around what before being breaded and fried?

Cold butter is sealed inside the cutlet, and once it is fried the first touch of a fork can send a hot jet of it over an unsuspecting diner.

Immigrants from which country are often credited with bringing the habit of frying chicken in fat to the American South?

Scotland gets the credit in the usual telling: Scots fried their chicken where the English boiled or baked it, a theory food historians treat as plausible but unproven.

Fried chicken earned the Southern nickname 'gospel bird' from being served on which day?

Sunday dinner after church was the week's big meal, and a visiting preacher was served first and given the best pieces of the bird, which is how fried chicken became the 'gospel bird'.

What replaced the bread in KFC's 2010 Double Down sandwich?

Two fried chicken fillets stood in for the bun; KFC sold 10 million in under three months after the April 2010 US launch, yet its finance chief still called the sales 'immaterial'.