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When I cook fried chicken, my friends sometimes claim it tastes like peanut butter--especially after it sits for a while after cooking. Why?

I know I'm not the only one who has encountered this phenomenon because this Burger King commercial features a man who was quoted saying the BK chicken sandwich tastes like peanut butter after he microwaved it.

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    Fried in peanut oil?
    – moscafj
    May 2, 2017 at 22:14
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    A roux, which is flour and fat cooked together to thicken soups or sauces, can have a nutty aroma while cooking. Fried chicken is usually floured, and cooked in fat. So, I suppose there could be some correlation there. I can’t imagine the peanut butter flavor being that strong, though. Interesting phenomenon. May 2, 2017 at 23:12
  • @moscafj Best comment ever
    – paparazzo
    May 3, 2017 at 3:00
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    Not fried in peanut oil. When the chickens cooked. Bonless tenders. Its a Simple marinated in butter milk and breade in flour and pepper chicken when uts cooked it tastes fine but when it sits for a bit it gets to tasting like peanut butter.
    – user57430
    May 5, 2017 at 15:57
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    I'd be tempted to ask whether the guy in the commercial has cleaned his microwave recently, and whether he uses peanut oil or (more likely) eats a lot of Chinese food. However, that doesn't answer the question about your own fried chicken; the formation of nutty aromas in a roux might explain it, especially if you aren't frying it completely, and the crust remains moist instead of crisp and dry. Jun 5, 2017 at 19:21

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I like to eat some Asian food for the sole reason it's made with peanut oil. So it's taste like peanut butter but have different texture.
In the case of BK I would say that it's more of a metaphor because people from USA love their peanut butter and it's taste.

Anyway. If you make your chicken without peanut oil or spices that resemble in taste peanut butter maybe it's the chicken itself? I've bought a few times chickens that was feed with fish flour. And guess what - they tasted like fish (not the best thing in the world). Chickens feed with corn have yellowish color and have a cornflakes taste.
So maybe chickens that have been feed with something peanuty?

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  • I've linked the relevant commercial in an edit to the question. It doesn't appear to be a metaphor. They quote a tweet that seems to unfavorably compare the chicken to peanut butter.
    – Preston
    Jun 5, 2017 at 14:48
  • Maybe that why people always say things "taste like chicken"?
    – tsturzl
    Jun 6, 2017 at 4:14
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    @PrestonFitzgerald It seems the accusation was that microwaved BK tasted like peanut butter. So probably reheating the whole thing bring the taste to similar to PB. Jun 6, 2017 at 8:15

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