KFC's new Cheesy Bacon Bowl features their
KFC Famous Bowl (Popcorn Chicken, cheese, gravy, corn atop a bed of mashed potatoes) topped with a generous sprinkle of bacon bits. You know, because bacon makes everything better.
It's available for a limited-time for the promotional price of
$3.99 but I got mine free courtesy of KFC.
They also gave me a nifty spork that they stuck a KFC sticker on so I used it to chow down on the Cheesy Bacon Bowl. It's a spoon, a fork, and a knife in one!
Does bacon make the Cheesy Bacon Bowl better than the original? Why yes, yes it does. The bacon features quite prominently with a nice smoky flavor. Unfortunately, the KFC Famous Bowl was already a salt monster at over 2000mg of sodium you could really taste and bacon only adds to that. There's a point where something is so salty that some more salt isn't as noticeable and maybe KFC hit that here.
Each of the six major ingredients contain a fair amount of salt but the most salty items, besides the bacon, were the pieces of Popcorn Chicken and the gravy. The gravy came in moderation though but the chicken was pretty abundant; great for you wallet but it'll turn your tongue into a desert. I would say the Popcorn Chicken is the key offender. I would like to see less salt in the batter and some of the Colonel's more iconic seasonings instead.
I would actually be fine with having no chicken at all in the bowl; I think the bacon makes for a good substitute anyway and it's not called the "Cheesy Bacon Chicken Bowl". To make for a better eating experience, I removed some popcorn chicken and made myself a chicken biscuit:
Overall, I liked the different flavors and textures, it was just ruined by the excessive saltiness.
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Nutritional info not available but shouldn't be far off from the KFC Famous Bowl's numbers.
