Chicken Katsu

I really like black olives.  Don't judge me.

Chicken katsu, known as tonkatsu when prepared with pork, is a very satisfying meal and super easy to make.  As long as you have raw chicken breasts, flour, egg, panko bread crumbs, copious amounts of canola oil, and a healthy respect for hot oil, it'll be smooth sailing.  Did you know that oil doesn't actually boil?  Between roughly 160-250C (325-475F), oil will reach a smoking point and produce a blue smoke.  (Neat!!)  At this point, the oil loses its flavor and nutritional value, so when deep frying, it's good to use an oil with a high smoke point.

Anyway, to make delicious chicken katsu, put the flour, eggs, and panko into three separate dishes:

Try to make as much of a mess as possible

Using either whole chicken breasts or slices, prepare them by dipping them into the flour, then egg, then panko crumbs.  Set them aside until your oil is hot and ready, then start frying!

And then, fairly quickly, they'll come out looking like this!

But if you load too many little nuggets into the fryer at once, your stovetop might look like this:

A lesson well learned

Adjustments / Substitutions

I totally forgot to rub the cutlets in salt and pepper before giving them the flour, eggs, crumbs treatment, but the panko crumbs were flavorful enough without it.  Plus, all the yummy taste came from the delicious tonkatsu sauce.

Next Time

I would be careful not to overfill the vat of bubbling oil, because that is crazy scary.  I think I could've got away with using a bit less oil, but it's still important to make sure that the pieces of chicken are totally covered.  Finally, the tonkatsu sauce called for dijon mustard, but this made it have a little too much bite for my very wimpy taste buds.

Source:
      Chicken Katsu: www.allrecipes.com - saukraiiko

      Tonkatsu Sauce: www.seriouseats.com