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You won’t find many vegan options at KFC, but you can still enjoy the taste at home with this copycat recipe!
This is a long post, soclick here to jump straight to the recipe if you don’t want to read the whole thing.
When we were kids, we spent plenty of nights eating KFC for dinner. Even though we both came from families that cooked regularly, some nights KFC was simply more convenient – and a guilty pleasure – so that’s what we ate. It’s been ages since we’ve eaten real KFC, but we’re still nostalgic for it every once in awhile. That’s why we thought it would be fun to create a vegan version of a classic KFC meal. We also thought it might be helpful toother vegans out there who are trying to satisfy their fast-food cravings.
For a long time, KFC was offering a specialcalled the “Family Feast.” It now appears to have been replaced bythe “$20 Fill-Up™,” whichwe think is alaughably tacky and shameless name, so we decided to stick with Family Feast for our copycat recipe. The Family Feast isessentially the ultimate KFC family dinner. Itbasically consists of: 1 large bucketof fried chicken,mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits,and coleslaw.
Creating Realistic Vegan “Fried Chicken”
The hardest part of this recipe to veganize was obviously the fried chicken. We could have just bought a bag of Gardein strips and called it a day, but as good as they are, they don’t really look or taste like real KFC. We wanted to make our “chicken” from scratch and get it as close to real KFC as we could.
A piece of fried chicken essentially consists of three parts: the chicken meat, the skin, and the batter. So that’s what we had to recreate. We used our basic chick’n-style seitan recipe for the meat; for the skin, we used spring roll wrappers; and for the batter, we used our veganized version of thecolonel’sOriginal Recipe® seasoned with 11 herbs and spices.
The combination of those three elements worked well to create a very life-like fried “chicken breast.” If you wanted to take things a step further, you could alsouse thick wooden skewers to create “bones” for drumsticks. Above and beyond anything else, though, it’s the batter that really makes the recipe convincing.
If making your own faux chicken from scratch sounds like more work than you want to do, you could still just opt for buyingGardien, seitan, tofu, or anyother chicken substitute you like, and simply batter and fry it the same way we did to get a more authentic fried chicken look and flavor.
Enjoy!
Vegan Copycat “KFC Family Feast”
Yield: 7 - 9 pieces of "chicken," large mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, and 6 biscuits.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten
- 1 cup veggie broth
- 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 2 tsp onion salt
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp celery salt
- 1/2 tsp sage
- 1/2 tsp garlic granules
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/2 tsp oregano
- 1/2 tsp basil
- 1/2 tsp marjoram
- 2 cups flour
- 4 flax eggs (4 tbsp ground flax mixed with 1 cup water)
- Rice paper sheets
- Oil for frying
- 4 tbsp vegan butter
- 5 tbsp flour
- 1/2 tsp sage
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic
- 2 cups veggie broth
- 5 large potatoes, peeled and quartered
- 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 cup cashew cream
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 6 cups shredded cabbage (I used a combination of green and red cabbage)
- 2 large carrots, shredded
- 1/3 cup onions, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup mayo
- 1/2 cup cashew cream (1:1 soaked cashews blended with water)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
- We used the Minimalist Baker's recipe
For the "chicken"
Breading
For the gravy
For the mashed potatoes
For the coleslaw
For the Biscuits
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, stir together the wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and cumin. Slowly add in the veggie broth, oil, and apple cider vinegar and stir to form a dough.
- Knead the dough for about 2 minutes.
- Break dough into small pieces and pull them to shape them into 8-10 flat discs that resemble chicken breast.
- Bake seitan pieces in an oven safe dish for 20 minutes on each side.
- In a shallow dish, combine flour and spices for the breading.
- Remove seitan from oven and cool before coating.
- Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. I used a small pan and filled it about half way with oil so that the pieces could deep fry. But you could just as easily fry them in a shallow pan.
- Now it's time to prep the chicken for frying.
- Take a piece of rice paper and soak it in a bowl of water for about 1 minute until it's soft.
- Roll a piece of seitan in the soft rice paper like a burrito, covering each side of it.
- Dredge through the flour mixture once, then in the flax egg mixture, then back in the flour mixture. You should have a nice even coating around the seitan piece. You can add more water if the egg mixture is too thick.
- Once the oil is hot, carefully fry each piece of coated seitan until golden brown on each side.
- Drain excess oil on a paper towel.
- In a small saucepan, melt vegan butter over medium-low heat.
- Once melted, whisk in flour and brown for a minute or two.
- Add sage, pepper, garlic and veggie broth and continue to whisk until the flour dissolves.
- Bring to a boil slowly, stirring continuously and cook for 10 minutes until thick. You can add more water if it becomes too thick.
- In a large pot over medium heat, cover potatoes with water and bring to a low boil.
- Cook potatoes until fork tender.
- Drain and return back to pot.
- Mash in the rest of the ingredients for the potatoes and fluff with a fork.
- Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate until ready to eat.
For the fried "chicken"
For the gravy
For the mashed potatoes
For the coleslaw
Notes
We like making seitan from scratch, but you can save yourself some time by simply purchasing it from the store. You could also use a brand name chicken substitute as your base, like Gardein or Beyond Meat.
We've received a couple of comments from readers saying the baked seitan is too hard and/or dry for their liking. If you like a softer, moister texture, we suggest adding an inch of water or veggie broth to your casserole dish to keep it moist in the oven, or boiling the seitan instead of baking it.
If you're gluten sensitive, you can use a gluten-free chicken substitute, like tofu, along with a gluten-free flour for the breading to make the fried chicken. You can also use a gluten-free flour for the gravy and biscuits; however, we can't guarantee the biscuits will turn out well if you don't use AP flour.
UPDATE 08/25/16: KFC's original secret recipe has been leaked by a man related to the author. We were pretty close, but as you can see, we got a few things wrong. The original 11 herbs and spices (allegedly) are:
Salt,Thyme,Basil,Oregano,Celery Salt,Black Pepper,Dried Mustard,Paprika,Garlic Salt,Ground Ginger, andWhite Pepper
http://veganfoodlover.com/vegan-kfc-recipe/
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Morgan Currie saysI don’t see wheat gluten listed in the recipe, how much does it take?
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