KFC’s Original Recipe is famously made with 11 herbs and spices.
The blend is associated with Harland Sanders, whose fried-chicken recipe became the foundation of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sanders was refining the recipe by 1940, when he had developed a seasoning mixture and a pressure-frying method that cooked chicken faster while helping it remain moist. The Original Recipe later became the signature product of the franchised chain.
KFC treats the precise formula as a trade secret rather than a patent. A signed copy is reportedly kept in a vault at the company’s Louisville headquarters, alongside 11 vials representing the blend. To protect the formula, different suppliers have historically handled separate portions of the seasoning mixture.
The number 11 describes the herbs-and-spices blend, not every ingredient involved in preparing the chicken. Flour, salt, frying oil, chicken, and other processing ingredients are separate parts of the recipe. Alleged recipe discoveries have appeared over the years, but none has displaced KFC’s canonical “11 herbs and spices” claim.