A fast-food pork chop? No way! That’s what I was thinking yesterday when Philip sent me a message saying he saw a new Hardee’s advertisement with a pork chop and gravy on a biscuit. Today, the folks at Hardee’s contacted me with details. This new breakfast item features a boneless, breaded pork chop, covered in sausage gravy, served on one of the chain’s ‘Made From Scratch’ biscuits. It sells for $2.99 and is also available in a combo meal for $4.59 that includes hash rounds (small circular hash browns) and beverage. It’s actually the company’s second version of a pork chop sandwich.

“We first introduced a Pork Chop Biscuit a few years ago and, even though we stopped selling it last year, we still get many requests from people asking us to bring it back,” said Brad Haley, Hardee’s Executive Vice President of Marketing. “And, since we had many reports from our restaurants that people were ordering a side of our famous sausage gravy to dip the biscuit in – which I usually do myself, by the way – we decided to re-test it with sausage gravy already on it and it was more popular than ever. So, I guess the old saying among our test kitchen people is true: The only way to make it better is to add gravy to it!”

Let’s get right to this — The buttermilk biscuits at KFC are excellent assuming they haven’t been sitting around too long. KFC bakes them fresh at each store. Contrary to some posts I’ve seen on the web, the popularity of these biscuits has NOT caused KFC to start shipping frozen, fully cooked biscuits, to be microwaved or reheated. It’s true the dough itself is frozen after being mixed, then shipped to the stores, but the biscuits are still baked fresh, from that dough, in each store, in a real oven.

Light and fluffy, yet they still have a certain heft to them, so in addition to great gravy dunking, they also have the strength to scoop out a nice amount of mashed potatoes to come along for the ride. They crumble and break apart just like a home-made biscuit. There is a thin, slightly-hard outer layer, which leads to warm and fluffy inner layers, and a moist inside. They have a nice, ‘lite’ buttery taste, that’s good enough to eat on it’s own, but truly shines when dipped in KFC’s brown gravy.

Each store bakes the biscuits several times throughout the day, as needed. When you get them fresh and hot, they are delicious, and they dip, dunk and crumble almost perfectly. There are times when I’ve received stale, cold biscuits, and that’s the one caveat. When you have 1000’s of locations, with 1000’s of employees each doing things a little different, it’s impossible to have fresh hot biscuits at all hours of the day and night. But overall they do a good job, and I would say 80% of the time I’m quite satisfied, and I get them every-time I visit a KFC location.

I’ve always liked the Buttermilk Biscuits from KFC, and that hasn’t changed after many years. They are a must-have item if you are eating there. Whether you are having a plated meal or a bucket of chicken, it wouldn’t be complete without them. The 3.5 grams of Trans Fat is a bit of a worrisome issue, but hopefully they will find a way to bring that down, or eliminate it altogether. To their credit, many of KFC’s items are now much lower in trans-fat, and they are moving in the right direction.

Price: $0.69 each / 4 for $2.19 — Website: KFC.com

Fast Food Critic Score: A

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Nutrition Facts - Buttermilk Biscuit from KFC. 1 biscuit serving.

Calories - 220
Calories from Fat - N/A
Total Fat - 11 grams
Carbs - 24 grams
Saturated Fat - 2.5 grams
Trans Fat - 3.5 grams
Cholesterol - 0 milligrams
Sodium - 640 milligrams