Whether or not it’s for schnitzel, rooster fried steak, or a superbly fried rooster thigh, almost each meat-eating, severe residence cook dinner has experimented with three-step breading a cutlet of some selection or one other. Perhaps they’ve even tried knocking that down to 2 steps, skipping the flour and utilizing solely the egg and breadcrumbs, as is usually performed for a veal milanese or milanesa de res.
However in the event you’re like me, making that stage of mess simply isn’t one thing you’re eager to do fairly often. There are all of the bowls that don’t match within the dishwasher. There are the invariably gloopy fingers, even in the event you’re utilizing a fork or three. Irrespective of how completely happy the ensuing cutlets make everybody, you hesitate to make them once more any time quickly, a reluctance shared by whoever is caught cleansing the kitchen.
Enter: flash-fried cutlets, made with a easy one-step breading methodology. They’re impressed by silpancho, a dish my sister, Leah Su Quiroga (a former Chez Panisse head chef), discovered in her husband’s hometown of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Silpancho, the city’s signature dish, is a comforting plate of rice, fried potatoes, and a brilliant skinny, fried beef cutlet, topped with salsa and a fried egg (or two).
Most silpancho makers press — or pound — the meat instantly into high-quality breadcrumbs, and a few even use floor meat reasonably than a real cutlet. Stunning, I do know. No flour or egg required? Doesn’t the breading simply slide proper off the meat?
Seems, it doesn’t. Certain, in the event you’re breading one thing slick or dry — say, mushrooms, onions, or zucchini slices — you’re going to wish that flour and egg. However that’s not essentially the case with meat, particularly if it’s pounded paper skinny — or simpler but, floor.
Within the years since we discovered tips on how to make silpancho, we’ve been urgent meat instantly into breadcrumbs frequently. We choose utilizing floor meat, which makes it simpler, sooner, and cheaper. Plus, it’s exceptionally versatile. You need to use any sort of floor meat you need, even together.
To make the cutlets, all it’s important to do is pour an excellent layer of breadcrumbs onto a flat, rimmed floor (a baking sheet is nice, however I choose one thing sufficiently small to pop into the dishwasher, like a flat plate with an outer lip). Roll slightly meatball, set it on the breadcrumbs, and flatten it as skinny as you possibly can with out it falling aside. Press some breadcrumbs on prime or flip it over to coat either side. To avoid wasting time (and keep away from dirtying a mixing bowl), we simply sprinkle slightly salt and pepper on the breaded cutlets earlier than frying. (You could possibly season whereas flattening, however you then run the chance of oversalting the breadcrumbs as you’re employed by your whole meat.) Then a fast shallow fry and also you’re performed. We’re keen on serving them merely, alongside a brilliant salad. They’re additionally nice in a sandwich with a fried egg, crisp lettuce, and one thing pickley, or, recalling conventional silpancho, served with rice, a fried egg, and salsa. The children devour them any which approach — together with chilly, straight out of the fridge — so long as ketchup is concerned.
To make the cutlets Asian type, use half floor pork and half crumbled tofu, together with some grated onion and salt and pepper. (You’ll want one mixing bowl for this model.) Or, as an alternative choice to tofu, use thawed riced cauliflower, which is my favourite solution to sneak extra greens into my youngsters. These take slightly extra care to bread, and also you’ll need to hold them a bit thicker in order that they don’t crumble. As an alternative of urgent them into breadcrumbs on a plate, I press the cutlets between two barely cupped fingers stuffed with breadcrumbs (panko guidelines right here). Impressed by our favourite Japanese katsu eating places, we serve them with a plate of steaming short-grain white rice, finely shredded inexperienced cabbage, and a giant dollop of pink sauce (mayo meets ketchup or sriracha).
So put your three bowls away. This one easy methodology gives you many terrific meals!
Cammie Kim Lin is a writing professor at New York College and co-author of (Critical) New Cook dinner: Recipes, Ideas, & Strategies,
Molly DeCoudreaux is a meals photographer based mostly in San Francisco.