Sign up to FREE email alerts from Mirror - celebs Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

KFC is shrouded in secrecy when it comes to it's recipes but BBC One documentary The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop has shed light on how they make their gravy.

BBC One doc The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop has taken another in-depth look at KFC and claims the company uses five-day-old chicken as part of their gravy.

After the rapeseed oil - which is used to fry the chicken - is used four to five times before being recycled, the chicken scraps at the bottom of the fryer are then remixed to make the gravy.

(Image: BBC)

"It's funny because it doesn't actually look that appetising," said one member of staff.

"A lot of customers actually like our gravy, so it must work."

The chicken dregs are then added to the Colonel's secret gravy mixture and it is said the business make over a million and a half tonnes each year.

Also in the doc it is claimed that the company wastes three tons of food a year... per branch.

There are over 800 branches in the UK and the cameras followed KFC's attempts to tackle the huge amounts of cooked chicken they have to throw away on a daily basis.

In Glasgow, restaurant manager Mark struggles to keep the homeless away from scavenging in his bins in search of waste food.

It is said that the bins are emptied every other day and in the documentary Mark is seen sending people away.

"They can't be eating that, it's been there for a couple days," he said.

(Image: BBC)

One passerby said he saw people who were "absolutely starving going through the bin and eating even chicken that was still on the bone and half a burger."

One employee said: "Just think of all the starving children!"

"We put all of this outside and we don't know where it goes. We know nobody eats it."

Meanwhile, in Brixton, the documentary showed a pilot scheme which is trialled in Britain to combat the waste.

It involved a charity worker agreeing to take home all the waste chicken to feed the disadvantaged from the community.

The doc also stats that two thirds of KFC's UK workforce of 24,000 are aged under 25 and for some it's their first job after school.

(Image: BBC)

Viewers on Twitter were shocked at the amount of food waste.

One viewer said: "All that waste @KFC_UKI those poor chickens short, sad lives and now in the bin. Absolutely disgusting. Raging. #BillionDollarChickenShop"

For more read the BBC site.