The year was 2010. KFC’s Double Down sandwich was unleashed to the masses. The country did not know whether it was intended as a practical joke. That a sandwich would employ fried chicken as buns was, on its face, too absurd to be taken for real. Where KFC underestimated was that America often takes parody and subsumes it into legitimacy. The Double Down became a very real, very successful thing.
Around that time, I thought to myself: What can top the ridiculousness of the Double Down? I began brainstorming: The most delicious part of KFC is the seasoned crisp skin of its Original Recipe chicken. Growing up, KFC was special treat food, and that 11 herbs-and-spices flavor is one I fondly associate with childhood.
So what about a sandwich comprised entirely of chicken skin? And thus, the KFC Skinwich™ was born, my attempt at satirizing satire:
That was 2010. Life went on. I got married, became a father. Years passed, I grew up. Then I became editor of a food website. Somewhere in the recess of my brain, a tiny dormant brain cell wormed its way to the forefront (I’m pretty sure this is how brains work). And then it whispered to me: “Kevin, make me again. You will be filled with regret. You will hate yourself. But think of how much you love turning stupid shit into page views. Will somebody please think about the page views?!”
Last night, I made it again. And I ate it. It was, in every sense, a fat sandwich. A sandwich of fat. It’s simultaneously flaccid and crisp and chewy, as if a truck bomb of salt and MSG detonated in your mouth. It tastes exactly what you’d expect a sandwich with an 8-piece bucket worth of chicken skin shingled between bread would taste like. It has the flavor density of fried chicken factorial.
There is only one proper way of eating this, and that is as the French do with whole ortolan birds—beneath a white cloth to shield your shame from God.
KFC Skinwich™
Feeds/kills one
- One 8-piece bucket of KFC Original Recipe chicken, thighs and breasts only
- Potato bun
- Mayonnaise
- Pickles
Slather mayonnaise onto potato bun and add a few slices of pickles. Then, carefully remove the skin—in one piece, if possible—of the four chicken thighs and four breasts. Shingle pieces of skin between bun. Recite passages from the Book of Revelations. Eat immediately.