Kentucky Fried Chicken £4.99 Meal Deal

My friend came back from a shopping trip with this bag of goodies and was all like “I bet you can’t make anything out of THIS.”

Challenge accepted!

So what’s inside the er, ‘packet’?

Ain’t that a thing of beauty! Chips, 1 chicken leg, 2 pieces of chicken from a bit of chicken anatomy that I have no idea even existed, 1/2 liter of Pepsi.

And how does it all taste?

Succulent, moist, well balanced, delicious, inspiring. These are words I would not use to describe a KFC 3 piece meal deal for £4.99. Whereas soggy, limp, greasy, salty, tragic, granular, are all just words.

Anyway, what am I going to do with all this delectable goodness?

After much original thought and not because Saturday Kitchen was on TV I decide to make a Szechuan inspired stir fry which I kick off by deconstructing the Meal Deal…

First I break up the skin, bones and chicken (FYI I can’t believe how greasy this stuff is):

But what about the Pepsi I hear you cry? Well, I reckon I’m going to make a sweet reduction made from the bones and the soft drink:

Yeah, I know, inspired genius.

And with the skin I decide to make crispy chicken scratchings by placing them into my professional chef’s oven at 180c for 20 minutes…

And with the chips I create a sophisticated piece of conceptual art:

*cough*

So lets meet the rest of team Szechuan stir fry:

1 tsp ground Szechuan pepper, a lemon, tbl spn soy sauce, tsp chutney (for ginger edge), mange tout, green beens, a shallot, 2 cloves garlic, tsp black onion seeds, hot chili oil.

Moving swiftly on… after 20 mins I check back with my sweet reduction:

Erm, which tastes exactly how you would expect chicken bones and reduced Pepsi to taste i.e pretty f*cking unique.

Well hey ho I press on with my amazing KFC Far Eastern Tasting Experience by frying the shallot, garlic, onion seeds and pepper in a searing hot wok:

Woking (ahahaaa!) very fast I add the vegetables, soy sauce, lemon juice and Pepsi reduction and stir furiously for about 45 seconds, altering the balance by adding more lemon juice:

The last step is to assemble my incredible KFC Szechuan stir fry on a bed of jasmin rice and to crown it all with a crispy KFC chicken skin crouton I’ve just taken out the oven:

All hail!

And how does it taste?

Well well well! The combo of everything together, especially the baked skin, is really nice; very umami, sweet, sour, aromatic! On the slightly negative side it certainly has a powerful kick and if you were to try this at home I would maybe use half a tsp of pepper and go easy on the chili oil too; and be careful with the lemon juice because it’s maybe a wee bit sour. But overall, I’m really happy with my reconstructed-deconstructed-KFC-£4.99-meal-deal Szechuan stir fry!

But what do you think? Have you tried reduced Pepsi or other soft drink reductions with your food? Are you a big fan of KFC? Then why not head over to the facebook page and tell other food geeks about it!…

And if you have 10 seconds to spare and haven’t done so already, could you fire over here and vote for me cos I need to get to the free bar at the awards gig, er, or so I have been told…

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