Pak’nSave admits its AI-generated KFC recipe was wrong

Supermarket billboards promised an ‘easy’ and ‘delicious’ homemade KFC recipe. After inquiries from The Spinoff, it was quickly changed.

It was a tantalising offer, promoted on billboards around the country and detailed prominently on the website for the country’s biggest supermarket, Pak’nSave. It promised “the easiest and most-delicious” fried chicken was available to anyone with store-bought poultry, 11 basic herbs and spices – and an air fryer. 

Launched in September and prominently promoted since the beginning of October, Pak’nSave’s home-made KFC recipe seemed off from the jump. It doesn’t use brine and contains no flour. It calls for barely any oil, and includes more than three tablespoons of salt. It also called for chicken to be baked, not deep-fried.

“Crazy … the lack of flour is really concerning,” is how The Spinoff’s resident foodie Charlotte Muru-Lanning describes that recipe. “It sounds so dry.” In-house KFC addict Madeleine Chapman also seemed worried, calling it “half-arsed”. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that was just … negligence in copy-pasting a mix of other recipes,” she says.

The Spinoff takes fried chicken seriously and the thought of making KFC at home was too tempting to pass up. But when we attempted Pak’nSave’s fried chicken recipe, our local Pak’nSave didn’t stock all of the ingredients, and the results didn’t look right, and didn’t taste right. 

Even Pak’nSave admits its recipe was a bit shit: after inquiries from The Spinoff, it quietly amended its recipe on Monday afternoon. A spokesperson admitted it used AI to create that recipe, and said the campaign has now ended.

This isn’t the first time an AI-generated recipe has caused trouble for the supermarket giant. In 2023, it launched the AI-powered Savey Meal-bot to help users craft quick dinner recipes; The Guardian reports it suggested users try an “Oreo vegetable stir-fry” and ant-poison and glue sandwiches.

The KFC recipe drama started on Ponsonby Rd when I spotted a giant yellow billboard depicting a bag of frozen chicken drumsticks and 11 herbs and spices. That Pak’nSave ad suggests anyone with a hankering for the Colonel’s secret recipe could simply buy those ingredients and try cooking KFC at home. 

This is part of a wider campaign targeting McDonald’s, Subway and Pizza Hut, promoting home-made “makeaways” like bacon and egg muffins, meatball subs and margherita pizzas, with recipes for each available on Pak’nSave’s website.

It’s Pak’nSave’s attempt to scoop up some of the $1.1bn that Restaurant Brands says New Zealanders spent on takeaways in the first three months of 2026 – money that the supermarket’s financially stressed parent company Foodstuffs definitely needs.

But it’s the specificity of the KFC billboard – and its recipe, which seems to borrow from a purported 2016 leak of Colonel Sanders’ famously secretive ingredients – that captured the attention of me, Reddit, and many others.

Is spoiling a recipe OK? Apparently, it is. Recipes cannot be copyrighted, and Bodo Lang, Massey University’s marketing expert, admits the billboard is “clever”. “The campaign has already generated considerable word of mouth, both online and offline,” he says. 

But an aggressive marketing campaign needs its ingredients to stack up. Pak’nSave’s actual fried chicken recipe lists exacting amounts of each herb and spice it says you’ll need to perfect home-made KFC, plus a three-step cooking method.

Back in 2021, Auckland’s fried chicken king Alex George, from Peach’s Hot Chicken, told me a six-hour buttermilk brine was a crucial step for fried chicken perfection. You also need flour, or cornflour, if you like your fried chicken extra crispy.

Pak’nSave’s recipe suggests skipping all of this. “Defrost chicken … combine all the herbs and spices in a bowl … mix in the raw chicken until fully coated,” and, “spray lightly with oil,” is the full extent of the supermarket’s suggested cooking method.

Worse: some Pak’nSave supermarkets don’t even stock all of the ingredients. I couldn't find celery salt or white pepper at my nearest outlet. (A Foodstuffs spokesperson says: “We can’t guarantee every ingredient will be stocked at every store.”)

Chefs work with what they’ve got, so I bundled nine of the 11 herbs and spices into a bowl, threw in the chicken pieces and mixed it all together. Then I placed the chicken in an air fryer, sprayed it with oil then cooked it, turning each piece over at approximately the half-way point, as advised.

It looked bad when I mixed it, then burnt when I cooked it. When I served it to people I love and care for, that’s when the insults started. My kids wouldn’t touch it, and wisely so: everyone who tried it believed this to be the saltiest thing they’d ever tasted. No one had seconds. 

The Spinoff sent inquiries to Foodstuffs on Monday morning to ask if anyone had taste-tested its recipe. By late afternoon, its recipe had been amended to include one cup of plain flour or cornflour. It also advised mixing the flour with the herbs before coating the chicken. 

In a statement, a spokesperson said the recipe was developed using “publicly available information about KFC’s 11 herbs and spices, with AI used to help determine the quantities”. 

As for the recipe, “You’re right to flag the missing flour – this was an oversight in our version of the recipe, and we’ve since had it corrected”. That spokesperson also said: “The campaign has now ended.”

A spokesperson for KFC said it “admires” the effort Pak’nSave put into its campaign: “We’re taking it as a compliment.”

As for Pak’nSave’s attempt to reveal KFC’s recipe, you can feel the sarcasm dripping off KFC’s statement, just like oil off a decent piece of fried chicken: “If you tried that recipe at home and learnt some things are best left to the Colonel, you know where to find us.”