In short, this is a fried pork cutlet recipe I wrote for a friend; it's an amazing, easy, and simple homemade version.
Materials
Steps for making a thinly sliced fried pork chop
A piece of pork tenderloin weighing about 300g is needed. Fresh tenderloin can be sliced directly. If it's frozen, it's recommended to soak it in water to thaw, as this will improve the texture. Because it's quite thin, we'll slice it diagonally to create larger, thinner slices that cook more easily when frying.
The thinner the pork tenderloin, the more you should slice it at an angle; this will make it thinner as well.
Slice the pork chop at an angle, making the first cut at one corner, then making cuts about one centimeter apart. This angled slicing technique will result in slices that are approximately 0.8 cm thick, very thin.
After slicing, it will look like this. Then, use a meat tenderizer or the back of a cleaver to pound both sides to break the tendons and soften the meat.
The left side shows the pounded meat, and the right side shows the unpounded meat. It's quite obvious that the pounded meat is softer. If using a meat tenderizer, one round of pounding on each side is enough; however, the back of a knife should be used for more pounding.
Next, put the pounded pork into a large bowl (about the size of a flour bowl is fine), add 30g of cornstarch, 5g of salt, and one egg, and mix well. Add pepper and chili powder (optional) at this point, and mix well again. It should look something like this after mixing.
The picture isn't quite clear enough, so I'll insert a video. A consistency slightly thicker than this is also fine; whether it's thicker or thinner, it will still explode, just with a different texture.
Find a larger bowl and put in the breadcrumbs. The bowl should be as large as possible; I used a large soup bowl because you need to press the breadcrumbs down when coating the bread, and if the bowl is too shallow, the breadcrumbs will easily overflow.
Take a piece of pork chop coated in batter and dip it into breadcrumbs, coating both sides. Then sprinkle some more breadcrumbs on top and press it down to ensure even coating. Once coated, place it in the breadcrumbs while we heat the oil.
Wrap and press the dough back and forth several times to ensure even coating and a crispy texture after frying.
Heat oil until it reaches a depth of about 3cm, enough to submerge the pork chops without them touching the bottom of the pan. A small deep fryer is recommended as it saves oil. The oil won't be very dirty; after frying, you can drain it and use it for stir-frying. The breadcrumb crumbs soaked in the oil can be used to make fried pork crackling rice balls or simply mixed with rice.
Add the pork chops when the oil temperature is around 160℃. To check if the oil is hot enough, drop a small amount of batter into the pan; if it floats quickly, the oil is hot enough.
Fry them like this for 2-4 minutes, until golden brown. They cook very quickly; they're almost done when the surface feels crispy and crunchy when you pick them up with tongs.
Golden and crispy!
After taking them out, place them on a rack to drain the oil. This way, they won't be soaked in oil when you eat them later.
You can cut it roughly or leave it whole, sprinkle some sea salt, pepper, garlic salt, or chili powder, pepper powder, or seasoned salt to taste, and it's ready to eat!
A tip for thinly sliced fried pork cutlet
This is a very, very, very simple method that I personally use. You can use this method for pork chops or chicken chops. Just replace the pork tenderloin with chicken breast. The rest of the method is exactly the same. This is a recipe I wrote for a friend. It's a pure, simple, quick home-style recipe. It may not be authentic in any way, so please don't say anything is wrong or anything like that.
