The Art of Pan-Frying: A Guide to Crispy Cutlets

When it comes to cooking, one of the most satisfying dishes is a crispy cutlet. But what makes a cutlet truly special? It's all about the pan-frying process. To start, you'll need a heavy large skillet or a Dutch oven. The key is to use a shallow amount of oil, about a quarter inch deep, as this will allow for even cooking and prevent the cutlet from becoming too greasy.

To determine if your oil is ready, perform the "Panko test." Simply drop a small piece of panko breadcrumbs into the oil and observe its reaction. If it doesn't immediately start to sizzle, the oil is not hot enough. This is an important step, as undercooked oil can lead to uneven cooking and a greasy finish.

Once your oil has reached the correct temperature, you're ready to begin frying. Place the cutlet in the pan and press down across its surface with a spatula or spoon to ensure even contact with the hot oil. The thinner the cutlet, the more critical it is to monitor its cooking time, as it will cook faster than thicker pieces. A good rule of thumb is to fry the cutlet for 2-3 minutes per side, depending on its thickness.

As you wait for your cutlet to finish frying, take a moment to prepare the slaw that will complement its crispy exterior. Simply slice thinly using a mandolin or sharp knife, and chop scallions into small pieces. The dark green parts of the cabbage will be reserved as a garnish at the end.

The slaw is made up of purple cabbage, napa cabbage, kimchi, and scallion. Chop the cabbage into thin shreds and slice the dark green parts into smaller pieces for later use. Finely chop the kimchi to create a dressing that will melt away into the slaw mixture. The liquid from the kimchi is packed with flavor and can be used in salad dressings or as a marinade.

To add depth to the slaw, a small amount of rice vinegar and sugar are added to balance out its bold flavors. The scallion pieces are then broken up and mixed into the cabbage, creating a crunchy and refreshing accompaniment to the crispy cutlet.

Now that your ingredients are ready, it's time to make the final touches. A condiment made from gochujang mayo will elevate the dish to new heights. Gochujang is a Korean chili paste with a sweet and spicy flavor profile that pairs perfectly with the savory taste of pork. Simply mix gochujang with mayonnaise until smooth, and adjust the seasoning as needed.

To assemble the dish, slice the fried cutlet into long strips and serve with a dollop of gochujang mayo on top. For an added touch, drizzle the mayo in a zig-zag pattern across the plate. Garnish with scallion slices and a sprinkle of crispy fried shallots, if desired.

When you take your first bite of this crispy cutlet with kimchi slaw and gochujang mayo, you'll be rewarded with a symphony of flavors and textures that will leave you wanting more. The combination of crunch, savory, sweet, spicy, and fresh is nothing short of magic, making this dish a true standout in the world of culinary delights.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's very crispy in this pork today we are making a crispy pork cutlet with kimchi slaw and on top is a gochujang mayo it's pretty easy and quick making a cutlet is the most involved part of it but on the other side you have this no cook side dish so it kind of evens it out to make it actually feel like pretty weeknight friendly the first thing that you do whenever you make a cutlet of any protein is pound it to be as thin as possible the hallmark of a cutlet is that it's like golden brown and crispy and very thin it needs to be quite thin so that it cooks quickly and you don't have to worry about the insides being under once the outsides get to your perfect golden brown doneness we're using boneless pork chops but you could use chicken thighs or breasts the reason why you stick your meat between these plastic layers is that it kind of like provides you some separation between the tulle that you're using to pound the meat and the meat itself tell everyone around you that you're sorry you're making a racket and then just go to town on it so we're at about quarter inch thickness nice big flat and craggy on the edges and you can also do this like earlier in the day stick them in the fridge and then when it's time for dinner get everything else ready to go i've decided that my pounding the cutlet song is work by rihanna so now we are going to start our breading procedure and i think the easiest way to do that with like a cutlet is to just use pie plates or cake pans because they're like nice and shallow but also like very wide and the standard procedure for breading is just flour then eggs and then we're going to do panko panko is the ultimate bread crumb it's a japanese bread crumb it's got this really gorgeous light and crispy texture it coats the meat really nicely and it fries really readily because you've got all these gorgeous little crags and surface area for it to crisp up and then the most important thing is you have to season every part of this process we're going to season the pork and then we're going to season each of the pieces of the breading just do a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper you've heard it before i'm going to say it again dry hand wet hand this is how you bread dry hand wet hand the flower is just creating this like dry base it means that the coating is going to stick to the protein really well and then that goes into panko pat pretty thoroughly gorge okay shaking off that excess this is in the september print issue of bon appetit and there's two dishes that use panko as the breading but one uses cheez-its so really like anything crispy crunchy will make a great cutlet coating all right so now we are all coated and we're gonna head to the stove to get these frying so i've got a big cass iron skillet here you can use any sort of like heavy large skillet you could use a dutch oven we're not deep frying we're shallow frying which means about a quarter inch of oil in the pan is all you need something you can do to see if your oil is ready is pick off a little piece of your panko and drop it in and if it doesn't immediately start to sizzle your oil's not hot enough all right we good yeah look at that sizzle this happens pretty fast like about two ish minutes per side something that i like to do too is just press down across the cutlet to make sure everybody gets contact the pan the nice thing about it being so thin is that you really only have to look at the visual cubes when the outside is crispy and golden brown the inside will be done you can see it gets a little bit more crispy on the outside so that's just another reason why you gotta press usually the second side does a little better than the first it's kind of like first pancake syndrome immediately season your cutlet the other thing is you want to be sort of playing with your heat because the longer that your oil is sitting over the heat the hotter it's going to get it's just going to get hotter and hotter and hotter yum look at that i'm moving your cutlets or anything that you fry onto a sheet pan with a wire rack that inside of it is the best way to ensure that it stays really crispy because they have that air flow coming from all directions they can sit there for a minute we don't have to get working on them immediately we're going to go back and make our slaw so now we're going to prepare our slaw which is made up of purple cabbage napa cabbage kimchi and scallion so i'm just going to go at these like kind of from an angle here and thinly slice the dark green parts are going to be for our garnish at the end so for cabbage you can thinly slice this with your knife easy peasy you could use a mandolin which is what i'm going to do so you get those like really fine shreds so we're just going to cut out our little core here you want to make sure you have a flat edge because anything that isn't flat is just not going to get caught on the blade see how like delightfully light and crispy this is last part is our kimchi so we're just going to finely chop our kimchi you want the kimchi to essentially be a dressing and kind of like melt away into that mixture the liquid that your kimchi has been fermenting in is so deeply flavorful and you should not throw this away it's great in salad dressings great in marinades we've got a little bit of rice vinegar as well to amp up that brightness and then just a little pinch of sugar that is going to really balance the like salty funkiness yum so you really got that the scallion pieces in there breaking it up and you're just dressing your cabbage with all that kimchi yeah um so you can also do this first set it aside it will hold up great for a couple of hours so now we're going to make our condiment which is gochujang mayo gochujang is the same ingredient that is in kimchi as well that's this korean pepper paste this is much more sweet heat and it turns it this gorgeous color so now we're all ready and we're going to plate this up first thing is i'm going to cut my cutlet i like these long strips are slaw juicy and delicious and then what you could do is just dollop your mayo right on top and have it as a dipper and like that's totally fine and delightful but i am going to be a little bit extra upturn a ziploc bag in a cup and then you're just gonna nip off the edge here and then we're gonna do a nice little mayo drizzle on our pork yum and then finish with green scallions this is the crispy pork cutlet with our kimchi slaw and our gochujang mayo rach you want to come eat with me wow yeah that's so pretty ready yes oh my god the sauce matches your nails oh my god and my jumpsuit we didn't even coordinate with it i love a cutlet that's so crispy and i really love like how savory the gochujang mayo is and then you get such a great amount of crunch from the cabbage that's a perfect bite so that's high praise coming from you there's nothing like a super thin super crispy piece of protein but to make it really sing you have to bump it up with a bunch of really bold flavors and that's where the kimchi and the gochujang is coming in to just make that cutlet feel like a party in your mouthit's very crispy in this pork today we are making a crispy pork cutlet with kimchi slaw and on top is a gochujang mayo it's pretty easy and quick making a cutlet is the most involved part of it but on the other side you have this no cook side dish so it kind of evens it out to make it actually feel like pretty weeknight friendly the first thing that you do whenever you make a cutlet of any protein is pound it to be as thin as possible the hallmark of a cutlet is that it's like golden brown and crispy and very thin it needs to be quite thin so that it cooks quickly and you don't have to worry about the insides being under once the outsides get to your perfect golden brown doneness we're using boneless pork chops but you could use chicken thighs or breasts the reason why you stick your meat between these plastic layers is that it kind of like provides you some separation between the tulle that you're using to pound the meat and the meat itself tell everyone around you that you're sorry you're making a racket and then just go to town on it so we're at about quarter inch thickness nice big flat and craggy on the edges and you can also do this like earlier in the day stick them in the fridge and then when it's time for dinner get everything else ready to go i've decided that my pounding the cutlet song is work by rihanna so now we are going to start our breading procedure and i think the easiest way to do that with like a cutlet is to just use pie plates or cake pans because they're like nice and shallow but also like very wide and the standard procedure for breading is just flour then eggs and then we're going to do panko panko is the ultimate bread crumb it's a japanese bread crumb it's got this really gorgeous light and crispy texture it coats the meat really nicely and it fries really readily because you've got all these gorgeous little crags and surface area for it to crisp up and then the most important thing is you have to season every part of this process we're going to season the pork and then we're going to season each of the pieces of the breading just do a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper you've heard it before i'm going to say it again dry hand wet hand this is how you bread dry hand wet hand the flower is just creating this like dry base it means that the coating is going to stick to the protein really well and then that goes into panko pat pretty thoroughly gorge okay shaking off that excess this is in the september print issue of bon appetit and there's two dishes that use panko as the breading but one uses cheez-its so really like anything crispy crunchy will make a great cutlet coating all right so now we are all coated and we're gonna head to the stove to get these frying so i've got a big cass iron skillet here you can use any sort of like heavy large skillet you could use a dutch oven we're not deep frying we're shallow frying which means about a quarter inch of oil in the pan is all you need something you can do to see if your oil is ready is pick off a little piece of your panko and drop it in and if it doesn't immediately start to sizzle your oil's not hot enough all right we good yeah look at that sizzle this happens pretty fast like about two ish minutes per side something that i like to do too is just press down across the cutlet to make sure everybody gets contact the pan the nice thing about it being so thin is that you really only have to look at the visual cubes when the outside is crispy and golden brown the inside will be done you can see it gets a little bit more crispy on the outside so that's just another reason why you gotta press usually the second side does a little better than the first it's kind of like first pancake syndrome immediately season your cutlet the other thing is you want to be sort of playing with your heat because the longer that your oil is sitting over the heat the hotter it's going to get it's just going to get hotter and hotter and hotter yum look at that i'm moving your cutlets or anything that you fry onto a sheet pan with a wire rack that inside of it is the best way to ensure that it stays really crispy because they have that air flow coming from all directions they can sit there for a minute we don't have to get working on them immediately we're going to go back and make our slaw so now we're going to prepare our slaw which is made up of purple cabbage napa cabbage kimchi and scallion so i'm just going to go at these like kind of from an angle here and thinly slice the dark green parts are going to be for our garnish at the end so for cabbage you can thinly slice this with your knife easy peasy you could use a mandolin which is what i'm going to do so you get those like really fine shreds so we're just going to cut out our little core here you want to make sure you have a flat edge because anything that isn't flat is just not going to get caught on the blade see how like delightfully light and crispy this is last part is our kimchi so we're just going to finely chop our kimchi you want the kimchi to essentially be a dressing and kind of like melt away into that mixture the liquid that your kimchi has been fermenting in is so deeply flavorful and you should not throw this away it's great in salad dressings great in marinades we've got a little bit of rice vinegar as well to amp up that brightness and then just a little pinch of sugar that is going to really balance the like salty funkiness yum so you really got that the scallion pieces in there breaking it up and you're just dressing your cabbage with all that kimchi yeah um so you can also do this first set it aside it will hold up great for a couple of hours so now we're going to make our condiment which is gochujang mayo gochujang is the same ingredient that is in kimchi as well that's this korean pepper paste this is much more sweet heat and it turns it this gorgeous color so now we're all ready and we're going to plate this up first thing is i'm going to cut my cutlet i like these long strips are slaw juicy and delicious and then what you could do is just dollop your mayo right on top and have it as a dipper and like that's totally fine and delightful but i am going to be a little bit extra upturn a ziploc bag in a cup and then you're just gonna nip off the edge here and then we're gonna do a nice little mayo drizzle on our pork yum and then finish with green scallions this is the crispy pork cutlet with our kimchi slaw and our gochujang mayo rach you want to come eat with me wow yeah that's so pretty ready yes oh my god the sauce matches your nails oh my god and my jumpsuit we didn't even coordinate with it i love a cutlet that's so crispy and i really love like how savory the gochujang mayo is and then you get such a great amount of crunch from the cabbage that's a perfect bite so that's high praise coming from you there's nothing like a super thin super crispy piece of protein but to make it really sing you have to bump it up with a bunch of really bold flavors and that's where the kimchi and the gochujang is coming in to just make that cutlet feel like a party in your mouthit's very crispy in this pork today we are making a crispy pork cutlet with kimchi slaw and on top is a gochujang mayo it's pretty easy and quick making a cutlet is the most involved part of it but on the other side you have this no cook side dish so it kind of evens it out to make it actually feel like pretty weeknight friendly the first thing that you do whenever you make a cutlet of any protein is pound it to be as thin as possible the hallmark of a cutlet is that it's like golden brown and crispy and very thin it needs to be quite thin so that it cooks quickly and you don't have to worry about the insides being under once the outsides get to your perfect golden brown doneness we're using boneless pork chops but you could use chicken thighs or breasts the reason why you stick your meat between these plastic layers is that it kind of like provides you some separation between the tulle that you're using to pound the meat and the meat itself tell everyone around you that you're sorry you're making a racket and then just go to town on it so we're at about quarter inch thickness nice big flat and craggy on the edges and you can also do this like earlier in the day stick them in the fridge and then when it's time for dinner get everything else ready to go i've decided that my pounding the cutlet song is work by rihanna so now we are going to start our breading procedure and i think the easiest way to do that with like a cutlet is to just use pie plates or cake pans because they're like nice and shallow but also like very wide and the standard procedure for breading is just flour then eggs and then we're going to do panko panko is the ultimate bread crumb it's a japanese bread crumb it's got this really gorgeous light and crispy texture it coats the meat really nicely and it fries really readily because you've got all these gorgeous little crags and surface area for it to crisp up and then the most important thing is you have to season every part of this process we're going to season the pork and then we're going to season each of the pieces of the breading just do a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper you've heard it before i'm going to say it again dry hand wet hand this is how you bread dry hand wet hand the flower is just creating this like dry base it means that the coating is going to stick to the protein really well and then that goes into panko pat pretty thoroughly gorge okay shaking off that excess this is in the september print issue of bon appetit and there's two dishes that use panko as the breading but one uses cheez-its so really like anything crispy crunchy will make a great cutlet coating all right so now we are all coated and we're gonna head to the stove to get these frying so i've got a big cass iron skillet here you can use any sort of like heavy large skillet you could use a dutch oven we're not deep frying we're shallow frying which means about a quarter inch of oil in the pan is all you need something you can do to see if your oil is ready is pick off a little piece of your panko and drop it in and if it doesn't immediately start to sizzle your oil's not hot enough all right we good yeah look at that sizzle this happens pretty fast like about two ish minutes per side something that i like to do too is just press down across the cutlet to make sure everybody gets contact the pan the nice thing about it being so thin is that you really only have to look at the visual cubes when the outside is crispy and golden brown the inside will be done you can see it gets a little bit more crispy on the outside so that's just another reason why you gotta press usually the second side does a little better than the first it's kind of like first pancake syndrome immediately season your cutlet the other thing is you want to be sort of playing with your heat because the longer that your oil is sitting over the heat the hotter it's going to get it's just going to get hotter and hotter and hotter yum look at that i'm moving your cutlets or anything that you fry onto a sheet pan with a wire rack that inside of it is the best way to ensure that it stays really crispy because they have that air flow coming from all directions they can sit there for a minute we don't have to get working on them immediately we're going to go back and make our slaw so now we're going to prepare our slaw which is made up of purple cabbage napa cabbage kimchi and scallion so i'm just going to go at these like kind of from an angle here and thinly slice the dark green parts are going to be for our garnish at the end so for cabbage you can thinly slice this with your knife easy peasy you could use a mandolin which is what i'm going to do so you get those like really fine shreds so we're just going to cut out our little core here you want to make sure you have a flat edge because anything that isn't flat is just not going to get caught on the blade see how like delightfully light and crispy this is last part is our kimchi so we're just going to finely chop our kimchi you want the kimchi to essentially be a dressing and kind of like melt away into that mixture the liquid that your kimchi has been fermenting in is so deeply flavorful and you should not throw this away it's great in salad dressings great in marinades we've got a little bit of rice vinegar as well to amp up that brightness and then just a little pinch of sugar that is going to really balance the like salty funkiness yum so you really got that the scallion pieces in there breaking it up and you're just dressing your cabbage with all that kimchi yeah um so you can also do this first set it aside it will hold up great for a couple of hours so now we're going to make our condiment which is gochujang mayo gochujang is the same ingredient that is in kimchi as well that's this korean pepper paste this is much more sweet heat and it turns it this gorgeous color so now we're all ready and we're going to plate this up first thing is i'm going to cut my cutlet i like these long strips are slaw juicy and delicious and then what you could do is just dollop your mayo right on top and have it as a dipper and like that's totally fine and delightful but i am going to be a little bit extra upturn a ziploc bag in a cup and then you're just gonna nip off the edge here and then we're gonna do a nice little mayo drizzle on our pork yum and then finish with green scallions this is the crispy pork cutlet with our kimchi slaw and our gochujang mayo rach you want to come eat with me wow yeah that's so pretty ready yes oh my god the sauce matches your nails oh my god and my jumpsuit we didn't even coordinate with it i love a cutlet that's so crispy and i really love like how savory the gochujang mayo is and then you get such a great amount of crunch from the cabbage that's a perfect bite so that's high praise coming from you there's nothing like a super thin super crispy piece of protein but to make it really sing you have to bump it up with a bunch of really bold flavors and that's where the kimchi and the gochujang is coming in to just make that cutlet feel like a party in your mouth\n"