A modern 32 Ounce Bag proposal

I take 1 TBS white pepper, 1 TBS black pepper, 2 tsp msg and 1 tsp salt. MSG and salt combined and 1/2 added to white pepper and 1/2 added to black pepper. Grind with pestle and mortar. If preferred, sift the larger black pepper pieces out and add them later to the "blended" black pepper, msg and salt. Let the two peppers meld half a day. Mix those together and let meld, for some time. This is today's KFC recipe. I will take selected herbs and spices, in my order, and do the same with them. They will be 1 1/2 tsp herbs, and 1/2 tsp spices. The msg/salt blend will then be divided to cover the herbs and spices, proportionally.

There, you can never say I gave you nothing.

Pressure cooking. I don't detect much note, if any, today, but I do recognize today's peppery taste. What I have tried to express is that the pepper, msg and salt melding makes a more flavorful seasoning than just throwing it in nilly willy. I'm not sure if extracts are thrown in, but if they are, and internet testimonials are correct, then they don't put enough in. They have reduced KFC to the lowest denominator. If you take your favorite choices for the remainder of the "OR" and prepare them the same way, then the pepper shines, as the note, with the back tongue aftertaste that merges into the universal taste. I copied that phrase from early on when the KFC pioneers began this quest. I look at it like this. The pepper and salt are most of the whole. The minor flavors fill the gaps and create the one Universal taste. If the minors are too heavy, and stand out in taste, then the balance is off. If someone says I can taste this or I can taste that, then the balance is off. Face it, if pepper, msg and salt are the major part of the recipe, then their taste can not be diminished, or overshadowed. They can only be enhanced to rise to a higher quality.......the note. To this end I am dedicated. I have nothing, well almost nothing, better to do. Determining that vial K is cardamom was eye opening to me because it verified that my chili seasoning DOES have the note, the back of the tongue aftertaste that blends with the medley of chili peppers I use. People who have eaten my chili lick the bowls.

That is the dilemma. I feel rushed for time, as I am not a young chick any longer . Yves and I earnestly sought that one ingredient that would complete the "note". We tried everything. I never found coriander, nutmeg, mace or any of the other aromatics to be that ingredient. Cinnamon is so powerful, it could only work in conjunction with other elements. But which ones? The big bite in my chili, as anyone who cooks chili knows, is cumin. I sit often and think about that KFC whiff I got when I was young and riding my bicycle downtown, or what you got as you approached a box of KFC. Again, the only things close to that experience are thanksgiving dinner, and Mexican restaurant parking lots. So what is it? I'm still looking. As I once posted on TCK, CHS's shoe size or social standing in the community did not help me get there.

I guess, as one who has tried everything, in multiple settings, that none of the "known" ingredients tried lifted the flavor profile where it needed to be. Make chili without cumin and tell me about this balance. Cumin is the key to chili, and one ingredient, either alone, or in union with others is the key to KFC. I've yet to see that magical mix that defines the original KFC. One secret ingredient is what TCK was searching for when they came up with vanilla.

Look at it this way. I have experimented with many elements, and settled on some, and excluded others. We are missing something. If you recollect what KFC said about the Settles recipe, they indicated that we would be surprised about the actual ingredients in the OR. Show me the proper mix, and I'll settle down. I'm not certain that sage, onion and celery, turkey dressing seasonings, aren't the key. But I'm an open book.

On the record. our treatment of salt in the "balance" has been greatly minimalized.