Chef Jamie Gwen shares tips on breading and coating meats and vegetables. - Breading uses a technique called dredging, which means lightly coating food with flour, cornmeal or breadcrumbs for frying.
- There is a wet-hand/dry-hand technique in breading. It's very important because you want the food to be crisp and crusty on the outside and tender and juicy inside. Start by dredging the meat in the flour (salt and pepper the meat to taste before coating it with the flour), coating both sides and shaking off any excess. The hand you use in this process is your dry hand.
- Then put the floured meat into an egg wash with the other hand (figure A). An egg wash is just a couple of eggs beaten in a bowl, to which you can add a little water, a teaspoon at a time, so it won't be too thick.
- Lay the egg-coated meat into a plate of breadcrumbs and use your dry hand to pat the crumbs onto the meat. If you use the same hand for the dry and wet, they will get gooey and the breading won't adhere to the meat. Shake off the excess crumbs -- you don't want too many crumbs in the pan when you're frying meat.
- You can coat the meat in the breadcrumbs (figure B) twice if you prefer -- it makes for a thicker crust.
- Place the breaded item on a plate covered with waxed paper. Refrigerate for approximately 20 minutes before frying (this helps the coating adhere better).
- Chef Jamie likes to make her own breadcrumbs. You can use any type of bread (figure C). You can save leftover dinner rolls or the ends from a loaf of sandwich bread. Save the bread in a brown paper bag or in an open plastic bag -- you want air to get to them but no mold to form. Cube the bread into smaller pieces, spread them on a cookie sheet and let dry for 6 to 8 hours. Process in a food processor until crumbly, then store until ready to use.
- Besides frying, you can also bake or broil foods that you bread. Chef Jamie likes to spray a cooking sheet with nonstick spray first, then place the breaded item on the cookie sheet (figure D) and spray the tops again (this is a great low-fat technique for cooking breaded items).
- You can also use Japanese panko crumbs (figure E), which are rice-based (as opposed to wheat-based) and make a wonderful crisp crust with a lot of crunch.
- Dredging is a way of adding extra flavor to food. There are several options you can use when seasoning your homemade breadcrumbs:
All-purpose, self-rising or cake flour flour - Cream of Wheat (makes a nice thin, crisp crust)
- Semolina flour (a very fine-grained flour -- needs to be seasoned heavily with salt and pepper )
- Soy flour (great alternative, healthier alternative to the white flours)
- As an alternative to the egg mixture, combine soft tofu (figure F) and soy milk. (Make sure the tofu is soft or silken -- medium or firm tofu won't work because they don't have a high enough liquid content.) Mash and stir with a fork, making sure you get a nicely blended mixture (or put it in the food processor for a creamy consistency).
- There are many incredible flavors that you can substitute for breadcrumbs, such as cornflakes, salted pretzels, potato chips or coconut.
- You can use the back of a pan to crush crumbs. Just put the crumbs in a plastic bag.
- Add seasonings to basic breadcrumbs: fresh herbs, red-pepper flakes, salt and pepper, etc.
- There's a difference between breading and flouring. When you bread an item, you use the basic breading technique of flour, egg and then the breadcrumbs. Flouring aids in frying -- you just dip meat in flour to give the skin a crisp crust.
- If you don't want to deep-fry a breaded item, you can saute it in a little bit of oil in a pan and finish it off in the oven.
Web site resources for breading: Breaded Pork Chops from Food TV.com My Favorite Veal Chops from Food TV.com Turkey Cutlets Milanese from Food TV.com Banana Fritters on a Stick from Food TV.com We at DIY believe all of the recipes from DIY Cooking are accurate and reliable, but since we have not tested them personally, we can claim no responsibility if the desired results are not achieved.
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