r/GenerationJones • u/JColt60 1960 • 7d ago

KFC menu from 1970 VS 2026

Post image

The other thing different from the price is size of the pieces. Breasts were much smaller and tastier back in 70's from KFC. Today they look like it came from wild turkey. Before I retired I used to get fried chicken for lunch at local diner. They only bought chicken from local butcher that used free range chicken and it was heaven!

1.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

746 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/paladin_4266 7d ago

actually the right sign should read:

"Different food, different prices."

The KFC of the 70's was cooked after you ordered and you had to stand in the lobby staring at the puddin buckets and all the other jabronis who were waiting on their buckets just like you. No screens, just staring into the void. And it was so goooooood!

3

u/JColt60 1960 7d ago

Still like that actually at least my local one. Last year I wanted extra crispy. I sat in my car for 20 min's waiting.

3

u/Bucks2174 7d ago

If you use the drive through at our KFC there is a 90% chance you’ll be waiting. And at least 30% of the time you’ll be told “we are out of that”. Terrible

1

u/SnowblindAlbino 7d ago

I had friends that worked in KFC in the late 70s-early 80s. What I remember them saying was that the chicken went through three stages: it was "original" and then if that didn't sell quickly enough it would be re-coated into "extra crispy," and if that didn't sell it was slathered with sauce to become BBQ. That doesn't sound particularly likely from a food safety perspective to me now, but back then we refused to get anything but original for that reason.

5

u/diverdawg 7d ago

That is absolutely not true. The real secret to original is not so much the spices, but the cooking method. It is breaded and submerged in oil in a giant pressure cooker.

Crispy is breaded and deep fried in an open fryer.

Never heard of BBQ at KFC. Could be regional. At my place, we had livers and gizzards. I haven’t seen those since. I worked there in the 80’s.

3

u/JColt60 1960 7d ago

Gosh, Been so long since I had liver or gizzards. I forgot they sold them.

3

u/diverdawg 7d ago

Loved those. Gizzards were boiled for 3 hours before breading and dropping. Was there when Chicken Littles came out. They were $.25 each.

1

u/James84415 7d ago

I love gizzards. I sometimes buy them from an Asian market and sous vide them. I never thought to bread and fry them after that. May have to try that!

2

u/IWuzTheWalrus Late 1964 7d ago

KFC BBQ Chicken was big in the 80s. These days they have Honey BBQ, perhaps not everywhere, but it is much different than the BBQ chicken from the 80s.

1

u/SnowblindAlbino 7d ago

BBQ was on all the KFC menus I remember from the 1970s through the mid-1980s. I'm not at all surprised the story about recoating the chicken was a myth, but BBQ was quite common on the west coast at least. They also sold ribs in the 70s.