Milanesa

A cutlet, a crust and a lemon wedge. Works the same whether the meat in the fridge is chicken or pork, takes one pan, and the only step that needs patience is the one where you walk away.

Total time: 20 min
Serves: 4
Made: 6 times · rated 5/5

Ingredients

For the cutlets

700 g boneless chicken breast or pork loin
salt, to taste
black pepper, freshly ground

For the breading

60 g (½ cup) all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
2 cloves garlic, finely grated
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1½ cups unseasoned breadcrumbs
¼ cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated

To fry and serve

2 tbsp olive oil, plus more as needed
2 tbsp sunflower oil, plus more as needed
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Equipment

heavy skillet, 26 cm (10 in) or wider
wire rack, for draining

Instructions

Cut the meat into cutlets. Chicken breast is butterflied — sliced most of the way through horizontally and opened like a book; pork loin is simply cut into slices about 2 cm thick. Lay each piece between two sheets of baking paper and pound it out to an even 1 cm (⅜ in). Even matters more than thin — a cutlet of two thicknesses burns at one end while the other is still raw. Season both sides with salt and pepper.
Set up three wide, shallow dishes: the flour in the first; the eggs in the second, beaten with the garlic, parsley and a pinch of salt; the breadcrumbs in the third, tossed with the Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Take each cutlet through all three in order — flour first, shaking off everything loose, then egg, letting the excess drip back, then crumbs. Press the crumbs on firmly with the flat of your hand rather than sprinkling them over — this is what makes the coating stay on in the pan. Lay the finished cutlets on a tray in a single layer.
Heat the oven to 95 °C (200 °F) and put the wire rack over a baking sheet. Heat the olive and sunflower oils together in the skillet over medium heat until a crumb dropped in sizzles immediately.
Fry the cutlets two at a time, 3–4 minutes a side, until deep golden. Do not crowd the pan — cutlets touching each other steam rather than fry, and the crust goes soft. Move each batch to the wire rack for a moment, then into the low oven while the rest cook. Top up the oil between batches.
Serve straight away, with the lemon wedges to squeeze over.

Notes & tips

From the source.

The rack is not optional if you care about the crust. Draining on paper towel traps steam underneath and softens the bottom of every cutlet.
Pork wants a slightly thicker cutlet than chicken and a slightly gentler heat; both are done as soon as the crust is coloured, which at 1 cm is before they can dry out.
If you have the time, resting the breaded cutlets 10–15 minutes before frying helps. The coating draws in moisture from the egg and sets against the meat. It is not necessary — skipping it is what keeps this a twenty-minute dinner — but it is the free improvement if the timing happens to allow it.
The cutlets can also be breaded several hours ahead and kept uncovered in the fridge on their tray, which is the same effect taken further.
Frying is medium heat, not high. The crumbs colour long before the meat is cooked if the oil is too hot, which is the most common way this goes wrong.

Variations

A la napolitana — the standard Argentine turn. Top the fried cutlets with tomato sauce, a slice of ham and mozzarella, and melt it under the grill.
Milanese-style, with a salad on top — pile dressed rocket, quartered cherry tomatoes and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano over the hot cutlets. This is how the source recipe serves it.
Panko in place of the breadcrumbs gives a coarser, lighter, shatteringly crisp crust.
Gluten-free and low-carb — almond flour replaces both the flour and the crumbs. That version behaves differently enough in the pan to be its own recipe; see the related one.

My notes

What actually happened when this was cooked.

Six times now, chicken and pork both. It has turned into a default rather than something that gets planned.
The rest after breading gets skipped. Straight from the breading tray into a hot pan is what keeps this to twenty minutes, and pressing the crumbs on hard in step 3 does the work the rest was there to do.

Source

Adapted from Domenica Marchetti's Restaurant-Style Chicken Milanese at The Mediterranean Dish, which is the Italian reading of the dish. Generalised here to take chicken or pork, seasoned as a milanesa is — garlic and parsley in the egg, lemon at the table — and scaled to four. Quantities and method are the author's own; nothing here is a transcription.