As you might remember, I ate and reviewed the Impossible Whopper when it first came out, so I felt obligated that I had to try KFC's version of meat alternative. For reference, I was pretty impressed with Burger King's offering. It was salty, and there were a few other differences between that and a normal Whopper, but not so much that I was sure I would have noticed if I hadn't eaten them back to back. So how did KFC do? Well, as much as I tried to come into this with a completely blank slate, I had read stories and seen videos that covered both ends of the spectrum. Gizmodo says it tastes just like KFC chicken. I saw several YouTube videos that claimed it was inedible. As you might expect with that range, neither one of those takes were quite right to my palate. I got the six piece with KFC sauce, which is comparable to Chik-fil-A sauce. The breading does not look like KFC's regular fried chicken or strips to me. It's definitely more synthetic looking to me. The "meat," though, actually does look like chicken. If I didn't know I wasn't ordering real chicken, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference by looking there. Mouthfeel was a weird story, though. Biting into the nuggets felt very dense. At once point I wanted to call it rubbery, but that's not quite right. It was just very dense and didn't have the right amount of give. That definitely didn't feel like chicken. But, once I chewed it for a bit, it actually did turn into a very convincing imitation of chicken. I'm not sure if that was a function of the breading being bad or if the "meat" itself needed broken up to get the right texture, but it was definitely an interesting note on eating these. As far as taste is concerned, it did not do as well imitating chicken as Burger King did imitating beef. It definitely was not as salty as the Impossible Whopper, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'm not trying to be disparaging with that comment. I literally am not sure if more salt would have helped. It definitely had a taste, but I kept debating to myself how much it actually tasted like chicken. Chicken is famously bland on its own anyway, so maybe this was all by design, but it just seemed a bit off. Not inedible by any stretch, but I don't think you are going to sneak these by anybody as "normal" KFC fare. The sauce definitely helped matters. That's true of any chicken nuggets, I think, but it was to a different level here. It also seems to have left a bit of a weird aftertaste in my mouth, even after eating the fries that came with the combo. So, there's that. So, would I recommend these? At the end of the day, no, I don't think I can fully recommend these. I like the thought behind these sorts of items and I applaud places for trying, especially fast food restaurants. But I don't think these were all that successful in what they were trying to do. I would be interested to try them again in some traditional KFC original recipe breading, but as they are, feel confident you can pass these up without missing anything. |
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