Chicken Cutlets

This recipe comes my one of my current cookbook love affairs: America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook.  It's filled with step by step pictures and plenty of tips for each recipe.  It's a great book for learning every cooking technique you will ever need in your home kitchen.

Chicken Cutlets
From America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook

Ingredients

4 slices of white bread, crusts removed, torn into small pieces
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut off tenderloin and slice breasts in half (this will make 4 thin pieces of chicken and 2 tenderloin pieces)

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
3/4 cup flour

2 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.
2. Place bread in a food processor and pulse until evenly fine texture.
3. Set up your coating stations: flour, egg, bread crumbs with parmesan cheese, each in a separate plate.
4. Coat chicken pieces in this order: flour, egg, breading.  Place on a wire rack and let sit for 5 minutes.
5. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet until shimmering.  Cook chicken until golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side.  Don't crowd the pan, cook in batches if necessary.
6. Place cutlets on a paper towel lined plate to drain off excess oil.  Eat up!

My food processor is a self propelling mechanism, so it doesn't always do the finest job.  That is why my bread crumbs are a little chunky.

Allowing the coating to sit for a few minutes before frying helps it stick to the chicken.

The oil should reach about halfway up each piece of chicken.  Check out that nice golden brown coating all crisped up!

I served some pesto pasta salad on the side.  These were some damn good cutlets if I do say so myself.  I was excited to successfully make my own bread crumbs for the first time.