So, turns out KFC has started serving Biriyani recently and I must say I am not that surprised since its well known that most people in India love Biriyani and its only smart from a business point of view to want to cash in on that as well 🙂 But I had decided to stay away from it as I was skeptical about the Biriyani coming from an American fast food chain… But my foodie friend recommended that we try it anyways since its not every day that we see an American fast food chain making an attempt at making anything Indian rather than pushing their own style of food with alterations to the taste to make it more palatable to us… So, I agreed to try it with her and we did the same from the KFC place near the UST Global campus… 🙂
KFC calls it the Biryani Bucket (Biriyani spelled Biryani is obviously the first indication of its Americanness 😛 ) and the menu had four variants ie one vegetarian variant and three Chicken based variants… Among them, we went for the Popcorn Chicken Biryani Bucket and chose the regular size portion and we got it (self service you see 😛 ) as can be seen in the pic above… The menu basically says for each of the Biryani Buckets that it consists of Hyderabadi style Biryani Rice and a Spicy Gravy and then served with the ingredient of our choice, which in this particular case was the so called signature Popcorn Chicken that KFC makes…
Another reason why I had thought about avoiding this is that I had heard some negative reviews not only about taste but also about the portion size, especially about the quantity of the Chicken included… Even the pic KFC displays in their menu seems to validate that concern but as can be seen the pics above, there is no such issue and the quantity of Chicken pieces is definitely good enough for the amount of rice being given which if you ask me reminded me of the quantity thats usually seen served inflight by the airline companies who haven’t stopped serving such food…
Now coming to the taste, I must say that I was indeed very surprised… The rice was quite flavourful with the taste of the Hyderabadi Biriyani masala at a mild level… The Popcorn Chicken that was included was basically their regular Popcorn Chicken itself and not anything specially designed for the Biryani… The accompanying Spicy Gravy turned out be pretty much the Hyderabadi Biriyani Masala paste, that I have seen and this particular one reminded me of the masala paste from ITC brand… I guess they used the same or a similar paste for the gravy, which seemed to be just the paste heated with oil and made into the gravy… It was indeed spicy and to be frank, I would recommend considering and using it like pickle… I felt two problems with this Biriyani… The first problem I felt was that it seemed like the oil they used while making the Biriyani was Palm Oil and I felt quite a strong aroma and taste of the same especially in the gravy… I personally don’t like it and its something which has been proven to be very bad for our health… No idea why KFC would resort to using that, but then again, its quite well known nowadays that Coconut Oil was vilified for decades by American and American influenced medical companies to promote the use of Palm Oil for geo-political reasons… So, I think its no surprise that we see an American company using the same… The second problem is that since the gravy was too spicy for me, I really wished that they also included a Raita or Salad with the Biriyani… If you are somebody for whom both these points are irrelevant, I think you might be able to enjoy this as a nice Hyderabadi style Fried Chicken Biriyani… 🙂
That’s it for now… Other than the Palm Oil usage, I felt that the Biriyani at KFC was quite enjoyable and hence the reason for this post… Do feel free to check it out and let me know in the comments section below…
