Fried Chicken Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
49 free Fried Chicken trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fried chicken has a longer and stranger history than the bucket suggests, and this quiz covers all of it: the 1747 cookbook with the first recorded recipe, the enslaved cooks who made it a Southern staple, the roadside filling station where a 50-year-old Harland Sanders perfected his method, the accident of spite that supposedly created Nashville hot chicken, the Buffalo bar that turned throwaway wings into a Super Bowl ritual, and the 2019 sandwich war that sold Popeyes out of chicken. Easy questions ask how many herbs and spices are in the Original Recipe and why one big chain shuts every Sunday; harder ones get into chain founders, Japanese holiday traditions, Korean yangnyeom and the Cornell professor who invented the nugget. It works for a food-themed pub quiz round, a National Fried Chicken Day party or anyone who has strong opinions about brining. The questions run from casual eater to serious food historian. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the dish, the chains and the people behind them, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which part of a chicken wing is sold as a 'drumette'?
The meaty upper segment next to the shoulder
A drumette is the meaty upper segment of a chicken wing, next to the shoulder; the middle section is the flat or wingette, and the tip is usually discarded.
Q 02Southern fried chicken traces its origins to European deep-frying and the palm-oil-fried chicken of which region?
West Africa
West African cooks battered and fried chicken in palm oil with their own seasonings, techniques enslaved people brought to the American South.
Q 03In which decade was the expression "fried chicken" first recorded?
The 1830s
The phrase 'fried chicken' is first recorded in American English in the 1830s; it became a regular feature of American cookbooks in the 1860s and 1870s.
Q 04Which fat is traditionally used to fry Southern fried chicken?
Lard
Lard is the traditional frying fat for Southern fried chicken; corn, peanut, canola and soybean oils are common substitutes, and a buttermilk soak is often used first to tenderise the meat.
Q 05Which cut of a fried chicken contains the most fat per 100 grams?
The wings
Wings, being mostly skin and batter over very little meat, carry the most fat per 100 grams of any fried chicken piece; breast is the leanest cut.
Q 06Which Virginia town bills itself as the "Fried Chicken Capital of the World"?
Gordonsville
Gordonsville, Virginia, calls itself the Fried Chicken Capital of the World: in the 19th century local Black women sold fried chicken through train windows at its rail junction.
Q 07Which Ohio town gives its name to a style of fried chicken created by Serbian immigrants?
Barberton
Barberton chicken is served with hot sauce, vinegar slaw and fries in the same restaurants that have made it since the 1930s.
Q 08How many herbs and spices are in KFC's Original Recipe, according to its marketing?
11
KFC advertises 11 herbs and spices; Sanders said they included salt and pepper and the rest 'stand on everybody's shelf', and the written recipe was locked in a vault in Louisville.
Q 09In which state is North Corbin, where Colonel Sanders first sold fried chicken from a filling station?
Kentucky
Kentucky's North Corbin station came rent-free from Shell in 1930, and he first served travellers at his own dining table.
Q 10In which state was Colonel Sanders actually born?
Indiana
Indiana, near Henryville, in 1890; he was cooking for his siblings by the age of seven after his father died.
Q 11What cooking method did Sanders patent for his chicken, which cooked it faster than a skillet?
Pressure frying
He finalised the method in July 1940 at age 50; the Broaster Company later marketed the same idea as broasting.
Q 12Sanders received his honorary colonel's commission in 1935 from which governor?
Ruby Laffoon
Governor Ruby Laffoon made Sanders a Kentucky colonel in 1935; Governor Lawrence Wetherby recommissioned him in 1950, after which he adopted the goatee, string tie and white suit.
Q 13Where did the first franchise of Sanders' chicken recipe open in 1952?
South Salt Lake, Utah
Q 21Fans of which Japanese baseball team threw a Colonel Sanders statue in a river in 1985?
The Hanshin Tigers
The Curse of the Colonel held that the Tigers would not win the Japan Series again until the statue was recovered; it was pulled from the Dotonbori canal in 2009.
Q 22Popeyes opened in 1972 in a suburb of which city?
New Orleans
Al Copeland opened Popeyes in Arabi, a suburb of New Orleans, in 1972; his first attempt, Chicken on the Run, had failed within months before he relaunched it as Popeyes Mighty Good Chicken.
Q 23Founder Al Copeland claimed Popeyes was named after which character?
The first franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952 at one of the city's biggest restaurants; the owner's sign painter Don Anderson coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Q 14Which franchisee introduced KFC's bucket in 1957 and trademarked "It's finger lickin' good"?
Pete Harman
Pete Harman, the Salt Lake franchisee, launched the bucket in 1957, 14 pieces of chicken, five bread rolls and a pint of gravy, and registered 'It's finger lickin' good'.
Q 15For how much did Sanders sell his chicken company to John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack Massey in 1964?
$2 million
Sanders sold the company for $2 million in 1964 plus a lifetime salary, keeping the Canadian operations; Brown and Massey sold it on to Heublein in 1971 for $285 million.
Q 16Sanders publicly described KFC's later gravy as "sludge" with a "wallpaper taste", prompting what?
An unsuccessful libel suit against him by the parent company
Heublein lost the 1975 case; Sanders had also been known to push disappointing food onto the floor during surprise restaurant visits.
Q 17In what year did Kentucky Fried Chicken officially adopt the shorter name KFC?
1991
1991's change was, its US president admitted, meant to distance the chain from the unhealthy connotations of the word fried.
Q 18Which company bought KFC from R. J. Reynolds in 1986 and later spun it off into Yum! Brands?
PepsiCo
PepsiCo already owned Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and the three chains still share a parent in Yum! Brands.
Q 19KFC opened its first outlet in China in November 1987, in which city?
Beijing
KFC's first Chinese outlet opened beside Tiananmen Square in Beijing's Qianmen district in November 1987, the first Western fast-food chain in the country.
Q 20In Japan, KFC is famously eaten on which holiday, thanks to a long-running 1974 advertising campaign?
Christmas
Christmas KFC took off with the 1974 'Kentucky for Christmas' campaign, after Takeshi Okawara, manager of Japan's first store, had sold party barrels as a stand-in for turkey.
Detective Popeye Doyle from The French Connection
Copeland said the name came from Detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, released the year before; the chain nonetheless licensed the cartoon sailor as its mascot for years.
Q 24Which owner of Tim Hortons and a big burger chain bought Popeyes for $1.8 billion in 2017?
Restaurant Brands International
Restaurant Brands International, owner of Burger King and Tim Hortons, paid $1.8 billion, or $79 a share, for Popeyes in 2017.
Q 25Why are all Chick-fil-A restaurants closed on Sundays?
Founder Truett Cathy's belief in honouring the Sabbath
Founder Truett Cathy's belief in honouring the Sabbath closes every store; the devout Southern Baptist said it honoured God, and stores also shut on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving.
Q 26Where did the first dedicated Chick-fil-A restaurant open in 1967?
A shopping mall food court in Atlanta
A shopping mall food court in Atlanta, at Greenbriar Mall; before that the sandwich had been licensed to more than 50 outlets, including Waffle House and the Astrodome's concession stands.
Q 27Which animals hold the misspelled "Eat Mor Chikin" signs in Chick-fil-A's advertising?
Holstein cows
Holstein cows have carried the misspelled signs since The Richards Group created the 'Eat Mor Chikin' campaign in 1995, the joke being that cows want people eating chicken instead of beef.
Q 28Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on top of what?
Slices of white bread with pickle chips
Nashville hot chicken is brushed with a cayenne-and-lard paste after frying and served on slices of white bread with pickle chips, which soak up the spicy fat.
Q 29According to legend, hot chicken was invented when Thornton Prince's girlfriend did what?
Cooked him a fiery breakfast as revenge for a late night
Prince liked it so much he and his brothers opened the Bar-B-Que Chicken Shack in the 1930s; his great-niece still runs Prince's today.
Q 30Which conflict's aftermath introduced deep-fried chicken to South Korea via the US military?
The Korean War
Fried chicken reached Korea with the US troops stationed there after the Korean War; it took off in the 1970s once cooking oil was widely available, and chimaek pairs it with beer.