and this is everything that's in KFC popcorn chicken.

Welcome to "Fast Food Chemistry."

You probably know about the 11 herbs and spices,

but there are over 40 other ingredients

that go into making your popcorn chicken.

Seeing as I can't get ahold of American popcorn chicken,

we wanted to find out exactly what makes it so addictive

by making our own from scratch.

I of course am here to judge on how well Harry does.

It took some digging, but we did manage to find

an official KFC recipe for popcorn chicken,

and we're going to follow it to the letter.

Also, don't try this at home.

So, let's take a look at some of the chemicals

that are going into the chicken.

And when I say into the chicken, I mean into the chicken.

[crew laughing]

The first is carrageenan.

It's part of a mixture which we're actually

going to inject into the chicken itself.

It comes from this, seaweed.

You can buy it dehydrated,

as some people consider it a superfood.

However, if you leave it in water, it will turn into this.

So we're going to wet one on camera.

I mean, yeah, that's not surprising. It's seaweed, right?

I mean, it's supposed to be wet and kind of weed-like.

Still organic.

Oh, Harry, no!

It's crunchier than I was expecting.

And not in a good way.

This seaweed is incredibly useful for jelling and thickening

because it's so mucilaginous.

These properties mean it's used in everything, from sauces

to shoe polish to firefighting foam and even lube.

And we're going to put it in chicken.

While the seaweed itself

is often considered to be a health food,

the extract is supposedly less good for you.

Here are some studies looking

into the possible dangers of carrageenan.

It traditionally comes in two or three different types,

iota, kappa, and less commonly lambda.

Each of them have slightly different properties.

So, by mixing 1 gram of carrageenan

with 100 milliliters of water

and heating it to 70 degrees, you can form a jelly.

So here are the two types of jelly we've made

using the two types of carrageenan.

Uh, and then what, just slap 'em?

Slap 'em out?

[wet flopping]

I really hope you got the sound on that,

'cause that was incredible.

The kappa one seems to be a lot sturdier

and also slightly cloudier in color,

whereas the iota one is the opposite.

It's a little clearer, and it's also extremely liquidy.

I feel like I've just delivered a baby.

Then we have sodium caseinate,

which is another texture-altering substance

and protein supplement.

It comes from milk curds

and is the thing that makes cheese stringy.

Before synthetic PVA took over,

casein glue was used for a lot of things.

It was even strong enough

to hold World War II fighter planes together.

We're going to try and use it

to stick these two pieces of wood together.

It's already pretty sticky.

That's well and truly stuck to the spoon.

I really can't, I don't think I've ever felt

anything like this, to be honest.

At what point does this go in the chicken?

I'm still not clear, and it's really like,

it's already pretty unsettling that we've made

some sort of, like, natural, incredibly powerful glue.

And we all know the real test

as to how sticky something is.

Harry, we use that wall for, like, three different shows!

What are you doing?

Harry: Some of that is not coming off.

And the chicken ingredients are as follows. [clears throat]

Chicken breast with rib meat.

Contains up to 25% of a solution of water,

seasoning, which is soy protein concentrate, salt,

modified food starch, food starch, carrageenan,

onion powder, dehydrated chicken broth,

and spice extractives and sodium phosphates.

That means that up to 25% of your chicken

is actually just water and seasonings.

If you go for the chicken strips, that can be up to 45%.

KFC doesn't specify exactly

how it gets the solution into its chicken.

However, we did find out how other companies do it,

and it's something which I think you all need to see.

This is the Schröder IMAX 350 meat injector,

which might be one of the most upsetting things

I've ever seen.

Hey, Harry, quit being a baby.

Nothing about that was unsettling, OK?

To make sure all our ingredients

are getting into the chicken in a similar way,

we're going to mix all of these together

and then inject it into the breast.

The first ingredient after water is soy protein concentrate.

This will improve the springiness,

the chewiness, and the cohesiveness.

Then we have a series of thickeners and flavorings,

that seaweed we talked about,

which helps the chicken absorb more water,

and some dehydrated chicken broth.

We want to make sure we're following

the ingredients exactly,

so what we're going to do is take some chicken,

make a broth, dehydrate it, rehydrate it,

and then put it back into the chicken.

Once again, we're not doing this in a kitchen.

We're doing it in an office for some strange reason.

The final ingredient is sodium phosphate,

or the bowel cleanser that we mentioned earlier.

Mbowel. How do you say bowel?

Bowel.

Mbowel.

In this case it's used to emulsify

this delicious jelly mixture,

which we're going to inject into our chicken.

OK, this is getting injected.

It looks like you've just taken chicken and blended it.

Shout-out to the IMAX 350. We're doing the best we can.

[syringe slurping liquid]

Oh, the noise.

[liquid squirts] [Harry laughing]

There you go.

It's hard to describe. It's not unpleasant.

I think it's just 'cause there's quite a lot of onion in it.

Come on, inject it. Let's go!

Oh, look at it. Can you see that?

The little bubble.

That is disgusting. Oh, my God.

What are we doing? [crew laughing]

Go on, there you go.

This looks so unholy.

Leon: You got all of that in there!

Harry: Empty.

[sighs] Good lord.

Hey, man, people inject meat with stuff

to make it taste better.

This is common sense, so none of this has surprised me.

I didn't think that footage was that upsetting at all.

Basically 2 fluid ounces of fluid.

I didn't think that chicken as a kind of solid material

would have the room in it to accept 2 ounces of fluid.

Obviously we've had some overflow here,

but a shocking amount of that has gone in.

Replacing with the water, buddy.

Come on, we went over this.

Out with the water, in with the flavored goo.

So, our injected chicken breast

has now been resting in the fridge for one hour

along with the other chicken breast,

which we left untouched.

And we just want to show you the size difference,

because it's pretty wild.

It's just massive. The size of it is huge.

It's gained quite a lot of volume thanks to the injections.

Wow, that's interesting.

It absorbed that stuff like a sponge.

It's, like, twice as big now.

I think I just found a hack for cooking at home, man.

I'm going to start injecting it with stuff.

And the breading ingredients are as follow.

Enriched wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron,

sodium bicarbonate, modified food starch,

autolyzed yeast extract, monocalcium phosphate,

and corn syrup solids.

Breading, baby, let's go!

Now, there are two incredibly similar lists here,

because KFC predusts its chicken

with a slightly different recipe.

They both have a lot of flavoring agents, enriched flour,

and leavening agents to help make the breading rise.

There are two small differences between the coatings.

The first has some more of that

dehydrated chicken broth we made

as well as some autolyzed yeast extract.

This is yeast that's been broken down, usually by heat,

and it's used as a kind of cheaper substitute for MSG.

It's also a key ingredient in a British favorite, Marmite.

There is one item that we couldn't get our hands on exactly,

and that's monocalcium phosphate.

Calcium phosphate comes in three different varieties,

mono, di, and tri.

These are all pretty common additives in food,

the only difference being the phosphorus percentage.

Instead of monocalcium phosphate,

we got dicalcium phosphate,

which in the UK tends to be used as a horse supplement.

The only downside is that it comes

in this handy 4-kilogram tub,

of which we need 1 gram.

4 kilogram!

Nothing makes food taste better than liquefied horses,

is how I understand what a horse supplement is.

Don't correct me.

So, the elephant in the room

when it comes to KFC ingredients

are the 11 secret herbs and spices they use.

It's 11 herbs and spices? Here we go.

11 herbs and spices. We'll go 10.

I'm gonna go, let's go salt and pepper,

paprika,

oregano,

thyme,

garlic powder,

and then therefore onion powder.

Sage?

Oh, yeah, cayenne pepper, good?

We'll put it in there,

'cause we can't even think of 11 at all, so.

OK, we need two more.

Mustard? What do you think about mustard?

Crew member: Coriander. Joe: Coriander?

Let's go coriander.

While KFC, of course, refuses to disclose

the exact herbs and spices used,

a nephew of Colonel Sanders a few years back

discovered an envelope with a recipe written on it.

This included not only the spices

but also the quantities used by KFC.

A lot of people have tried this on the internet,

and they swear by it as an accurate representation of KFC,

so we're going to base our recipe on that today.

The spices in order of amounts are:

paprika, white pepper,

garlic salt, ginger,

mustard, black pepper,

celery salt, salt, thyme,

basil, and oregano.

Holy [beep]!

We were, like, really close!

I do love paprika.

The colonel doesn't want you to know.

Whew!

This is Ultratex, which is a "gluten-free, multi-functional,

highly dispersible instant thickening starch."

It smells like a stable.

[sniffs] Ah.

British flour isn't as enriched as American flour,

so we have to add our own riboflavin and folic acid to ours.

The batter contains water, enriched bleached white flour,

which is niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate,

autola -- autolayaazed,

autolyzed yeet extract.

Yeet. Yeast extract.

Modified cellulose as emulsifiers.