Air-Fryer Hen Katsu Recipe

Hen katsu is a simple dish to love. Juicy rooster cutlets coated in an especially crisp layer of golden-brown panko bread crumbs, served with a sweet-and-savory tonkatsu sauce and a side of crisp shredded cabbage and steamed white rice, make for a simple and delicious weeknight meal. Whereas every our fundamental rooster katsu and our katsu sando recipes identify for shallow frying in effervescent oil (and produce delicious outcomes), we wanted to see if we could produce comparable ends in an air fryer—our favorite gear for shortening cook dinner supper time and crisping all types of meals.

We found that the air fryer subtracts the annoyance of deep frying whereas delivering utterly good, you-probably-can’t-tell-the-difference-from-deep-fried outcomes. With the help of an air fryer’s extremely efficient convection fan (because of an air fryer, as you may already know, is just a supercharged mini convection oven), we’re able to get katsu-style rooster that has juicy, tender meat encased inside a light-weight, shatteringly crisp panko crust in a fraction of the time—and with a lot much less mess—than fried variations. This easy air-fryer mannequin of katsu comes collectively in about half-hour, and in addition you need solely a handful of elements to make it.

The cutlets are nice with the fundamental katsu pairings of shredded cabbage, rice, and selfmade tonkatsu sauce or a store-bought sauce just like the very good Bull-Canine mannequin sauce. Nonetheless don’t stop there: We moreover love incorporating the crisp cutlets into sandwiches, serving them with almost any kind of salad, or with simple sides like air-fryer broccoli and air-fryer potatoes. Listed below are various concepts for golden and crisp panko-crusted rooster katsu in your air fryer.

Solutions for Crisp Air-Fryer Hen Katsu

Pound the rooster into skinny cutlets. Every boneless skinless rooster breast or thighs will work correctly on this recipe, though they have to be dealt with just a bit in any other case. Boneless, skinless rooster thighs require a bit a lot much less prep than the rooster breasts; merely use a meat pounder or the underside of a heavy skillet to pound them inside a zipper-lock bag until they are a good quarter-inch thick. Merely stay away from mindless bludgeoning when pounding, as this may set off tears and holes inside the meat—use company nevertheless gentle pressure, specializing within the uneven spots.

Complete rooster breast halves are too huge for this recipe (significantly considering the massive chickens you uncover on the grocery retailer currently), so sooner than pounding them skinny, you’ll first wish to separate each breast into two cutlets. It’s simple to do—for many who’ve not at all accomplished it sooner than, merely observe this step-by-step data for simple strategies to decrease rooster breasts into cutlets. As quickly as break up, the breasts could also be pounded just like the rooster thighs.

Briefly dry-brine the rooster sooner than cooking. On account of it tends to dry out, rooster—significantly lean breasts—truly benefits from a moist or dry brine. Treating the meat, each by soaking it in a saltwater decision (wet-brining) or by salting it and letting it rest (dry-brining), will set off its protein development to interrupt down just a bit bit, which in flip prevents the rooster from releasing moisture when cooked. Kenji examined and established in his rooster katsu recipe that dry-brining the rooster, even for less than a transient time, is worth it. ( We generally want dry brining to moist brining because of it is additional setting pleasant and that holds true for this recipe.)

You in all probability have time to salt your rooster and let it rest for various hours, by all means accomplish that, nevertheless we found that even solely a 15 minute resting time yielded rooster that was juicier and better seasoned in every chew than unbrined rooster.

Is unbrined rooster unhealthy? No, not by any means, and for many who’re in a rush to get dinner on the desk, you might skip this step. Nonetheless for many who skip the brine altogether, we’d strongly counsel skipping lean rooster breasts and using fattier rooster thighs, which are a lot much less inclined to drying out.

Stick with the fundamental breading technique. We use the fundamental three-bowl dredging technique to ensure the rooster is evenly coated with panko sooner than cooking. Dry (flour), moist (egg), dry as soon as extra (panko) is the order of operation to make sure the panko stays glued to the rooster. Don’t be tempted to skip the preliminary flour dredge. The flour is rather like the primer of the breaded-and-fried-cutlet world—it creates flooring for the egg to cling to, which in flip helps the outer panko layer adhere correctly to the rooster, so that you simply stay away from a cooked cutlet with an uneven, patchy coating.

Oil your panko. Since we aren’t deep frying the cutlets in an enormous vat of scorching oil, we have now to enhance the breaded cutlets’ capability to crisp and brown evenly at every stage potential. Coating the panko bread crumbs with a tablespoon of neutral oil like canola or vegetable oil sooner than dredging promotes browning and crisping.

Add some cooking spray and flip the cutlets for a well-browned crunchy coating. The success of this recipe is determined by its capability to mimic classically prepared katsu’s crispy and browned deep-fried outcomes. Oiling the panko as described above is one step to attaining this. The alternative key step is to frivolously spray the tops of the rooster with cooking spray after you place the rooster inside the preheated air-fryer basket. The sunshine coating of the cooking spray is solely enough to strengthen browning with out giving the rooster the off canned-oil style which will embrace overzealous use of cooking spray.

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