KFC's ZERO Chicken Burger is a ?

 

Tasting KFC’s first meatless burger available in Malaysia

By Lee Yu Kit

The last time I stepped into a KFC was in 2019, in the town of Maran, en route to Kuantan. I was on a cycling trip with the longest, hottest section still ahead on the open road. It was after lunch time on a swooningly hot day. Most of the restaurants and coffee shops had closed, but there was an air-conditioned KFC open.

What I remember about that meal was that it had rice and fried chicken. The air-conditioning was blessedly cool within the restaurant.  We blinked in the bright sunshine after the meal, smiled bravely for selfies, mounted our saddles and started out on in the sultry heat on the second leg of our journey to Kuantan.

I didn’t step into another KFC until Feb 9, 2021, in rather altered circumstances. The Covid19 pandemic had affected the world in unprecedented ways. For the time being, dine-ins were disallowed. The KFC counter was strangely quiet.   It was the first day of KFC’s introduction of its Zero-Chicken Burger in Malaysia, said burger being its first meatless burger sold the country, following an apparently unstoppable trend sweeping the food world in plant-based meat alternatives. The Zero Chicken Burger has been available in Singapore before this.  

The Zero Chicken burger uses a meat-substitute patty said to be “high in protein, high in fibre, low in saturated fat, and contains no cholesterol’. It’s made by a company called Quorn, which has been producing a meat substitute from the 1960s, well before the darlings of the meat alternatives, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, made their debut.

Quorn has been available in supermarkets for decades, producing a range of meat-free alternatives: sausages, nuggets, meat pies, burgers, fish, among others, using mycoprotein, derived from fungi fermented in large vats. The result is a highly versatile, high-protein paste.

I’d bought and cooked Quorn sausages before. You can read of my impressions here: http://yukits.blogspot.com/2020/08/meat-free-quorn-vegetarian-sausages.html

The burger was presented in a snappy, attractive, green and white banded carboard box.

Within the box, the burger (RM12.99, RM15.99 in a Combo with fries and drinks) fit into the palm of the hand, smaller than I expected.  It didn’t look anywhere as luscious as the pictures, but that’s not unexpected; there’s advertising and there’s reality. 

A single fried patty with shredded lettuce was sandwiched between the two halves of the rather deflated looking bun. Brown barbeque sauce leaked from the burger onto the Colonel Sanders-decorated paper bag it was wrapped in.

The patty itself looked dry, so first impressions weren’t very inviting.  Biting in, the main thing I tasted was the barbeque sauce, piquant and strong-tasting, which pretty much set the tone for the overall burger experience. The bun didn’t belie appearances; it had no discernable character, no bite, no spine, little texture – it was, in other words, blank space, a filling meant to complete the idea that this was a burger, which necessarily includes a bread patty.

The meat alternative patty didn’t make an impression either, with a homogenous, somewhat pastier texture than I expected, with any flavour it possessed being drowned out by the brown barbeque sauce. The lettuce? Wilted looking. I scarfed down the rest of the burger without any sense of anticipation. It was a stomach filler, but nothing more.

Although the meatless chicken burger idea is laudable in coaxing meat eaters away from consuming meat (and the disproportionate resources it consumes compared to plant-based meat, as well as no chicken being sacrificed), the Zero Chicken Burger doesn’t present a strong case for switching over. It’s well-conceived and well-packaged, but the final product is hardly inspiring. It’s disappointing for what it could have been, but is not.

To console myself, I toasted a couple of slices of sourdough bread, spread them over with fresh avocado, fresh red onion, sprinkled with a little pepper. Fragrant, warm and inviting. Now that’s my idea of a sandwich.