FRYIN' ON A WING & A PRAYER LI DAD 'DISCOVERS' KFC SECRET RECIPE
NewYorkPost
July 20, 2009
A Long Island KFC devotee who ditched his Wall Street job in a quest to unravel the food court's
best-kept secret believes he's finally figured out Colonel Sanders' 11 herbs and spices.
And now he's gotten a major book house to publish the recipe.
Ron Douglas spent years experimenting with different techniques in an attempt to reproduce KFC's Original Recipe.
At one point, he said, he grew so desperate that he tried to bribe a cook at the chain.
"[He] wouldn't tell me," Douglas said with a laugh.
But while trying to nail down KFC's ingredients, he discovered that there were lots of people online trying to duplicate other recipes from some of the nation's most popular food purveyors, such as Applebee's, The Cheesecake Factory and Denny's.
So Douglas, who lives in Glen Cove, decided to start a Web site devoted to copycat recipes. He
relied on his discriminating taste buds and a growing community of amateur foodies.
It was such a hit that he ditched his job as a finance manager at JP Morgan in 2007 to manage
the Web site full-time. He also began hiring part-time chefs to work out dozens of replicate recipes
from popular restaurant chains.
With his online following growing, Douglas self-published a book of do-it-yourself chain eats, which
sold 50,000 copies at $19.99 a pop. His success eventually impressed a cookbook editor at Simon & Schuster. The publishing house released his book "America's Most Wanted Recipes" -- featuring the
KFC recipe -- last week.
Cracking the KFC mystery was always a high priority for Douglas, a married father of two who loves
to cook.
"It became like a science project for us," he said.
The one published in his new cookbook is his sixth attempt at the top-secret recipe.
"Nobody knows what those 11 herbs and spices are. But if you taste my chicken, you would find the flavor very similar to KFC," said Douglas.
A Post reporter who tasted his recipe described Douglas' fried chicken as "the best KFC I ever had"
and said the crispy skin was an exact match with the fast-food joint.
Douglas doesn't hesitate when asked what's the best part of his new career.
"It's great watching my kids grow up," he said.
jennifer.fermino@nypost.com