@EristiCat

1 year ago

I cooked for the Colonel in 1966-1967. The product was excellent. It was cooked in individual pressure cookers about 2 or 3 times larger than a home pressure cooker. Each one held two cut up chickens. You could easily lift them with two hands. We used genuine Crisco, quality flower and a made in the store milk and egg dip from prepackaged materials so more or less a fresh milk and egg dip. Temperatures were kept on the money as was cooking time. Oil was thrown out when it was worn out, when you are cooking with it you can tell. During peak dining times it was hard work, there might be 8 pots going continually in my store, in bigger stores I would not be surprised if there were 16 going. With the quality of ingredients and the care put into cooking each pot the cooked chicken was literally finger licking good. It was beautiful to look at, fully breaded, golden brown, pretty much all the breading stuck on like it was glued in place. Because it was pressure cooked it was beautifully crispy outside and still moist and tender inside. One day we got a new shipment of "oil" and new "flour" they wanted us to try as an experiment. Obviously, an experiment to save money. We tried the new stuff and could tell as soon as it came out of the pots that it was terrible. On a scale of 0 - 100 with the real stuff being 100 it would have been about a 70. We reported back and that was the end of it. That was long long ago, and I've watched over the years as the product quality has declined. Not working there anymore I can't say with any authority what the cause is other than what would be the obvious things to conclude, they are using crappy ingredients to save money and they have switched to those gigantic pressure tubs to cook in. The final product usually looks like it was made by people who literally don't give a crap about product quality. Breading is falling off, it's greasy and undercooked and often tastes like the oil has been in use far too long. On their best day what they produce is perhaps an 80 compared to what we put out back in the 60's.

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