KFC is the cordon bleu king of takeaway food

Yesterday was a weird day for me: I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or, less evocatively, KFC, as it has been for the last long while.

Not big news perhaps, except for the fact that I had not tried the stuff for around 12 years. But I had decided to bite the bullet and compare KFC, Big Mac, and Burger King. After always maligning them, should I not at least try them again? Perhaps things had improved. Well, how stupid am I?

One bite later, at Burger King, I had the answer I already had before the dreadful bite. McDonalds? There are no words. After these two moments of crud-eating, I could not imagine that anything could lower the bar further. Thankfully, test number three lifted my spirits immensely, even if some conflict was involved. I mean, I don't want to like KFC. Really, I want to say very bad things about them.

But, amazingly, KFC is 100 notches above the other two.

If you are going to go the trashy drive-thru route, then KFC is the one. Forget their burgers, the bread is the same marshmallow joke as the others, but the actual chicken pieces? Totally delicious, in a savoury-equivalent-of-the-doughnut sort of way. Anyone who eats those hot-wings (definitely the best thing on the menu) and says they are cr*p is either eating them under water or vegan.

In fact, the only really bad thing about KFC is the way the chickens are raised. Full-on battery all the way, that goes without saying. But then, is the chicken you eat at 90% of all local restaurants any different? No, it is not. That I can absolutely promise you.

What about the iffiness of supporting big multinationals? Well, yes, I hear you. And I scratch my head in confusion as I take photos of my home-grown Sunday lunch on my ever so slightly multinational iPhone. Oh, it is all so complicated. Believe me, I am not saying free range isn't better. It bloody well is. All I am saying is there are plenty of people selling battery chicken with way less flavour for way more cash.

If you yearn for the drool-inducing spicy salty fleshy dream that is southern-fried chicken, but cannot bear to sink your teeth into the antibiotic and growth-hormone-ridden flesh of a battery chicken, then making the stuff at home is a quite feasible option. There are hundreds of sites professing to give you the "real" KFC recipe, but really, it's never going to taste exactly the same (du-uh). The best version I found was by the great Felicity Cloake, who always gets everything right. For her ''Best Fried Chicken" recipe, go to www.theguardian.com/life and style and check her column entries. Well worth it.