How to Cook with Breadcrumbs

Featured Pro: Curtis Stone
Category: Cooking
Time: 3:56


CURTIS STONE: Hey, I’m Curtis Stone, and I’ve got a great GMC Trade Secret which is going to save you from getting in a mess next time you want to make some breaded anything, whether it’s breaded chicken breasts or pork cutlets or even some vegetables.

Over here I’ve got some dried what they call panko breadcrumbs, which are the Japanese style, really super-crispy, which I think is great for deep-frying. You buy them in the grocery store.

The next one is the standard. This is the dry breadcrumb that you get in a pack at the grocery store, or you can make it yourself. Now, the way to do it is to let your bread go really stale so it’s really hard. Then throw it into one of these guys, blend it up, and you’ll end up with that.

There’s a third option. This is fresh bread. Now, what you do is you get your food processor and you just throw it all in, just like that. And then you just whiz it around just for a minute or two. And you’ll see what happens is it turns into crumbs really quickly.

Now, the reason I love using fresh breadcrumbs is you could cut up some fresh herbs and put them through that, so you get a beautiful green color. You could also grate some cheese, which is what I’m going to do. I’ve got some parmesan. Let me just break into this. And when you cook it, what happens is you get this beautiful combination of the golden color of the cheese and the crispiness of the cheese, but also the beautiful flavor that it brings, mixed with the fresh breadcrumbs.

So let me grab some eggs. I’m just going to crack just a few. What you really need is to get a decent quantity that’s going to completely cover whatever it is you’re coating. So take your eggs and just mix them with a fork, and then you’re pretty much ready to go. Okay, and let’s start off with some veggies.

So I’ve got some eggplants, some zucchini and some summer squash. So grab yourself an eggplant, for instance. Dip it into the flour, okay. Now you’re thinking, why is it going into the flour? The reason it goes into the flour is so that the egg has got something to grab hold of, all right. So pop it into the egg. Use a different hand. Now, this is really key. You want to have one hand that’s used for the egg and the other hand that’s used for the dry stuff, so you don’t mix them up. That way you won’t get yourself in a mess. And that is the key to being a good breadcrumber. Drop that into the dry stuff and go back to the other hand, and then just push some of those crumbs on and then pick up your eggplant and stick it onto a tray.

So let’s move on to some meat. I’ve got a pork cutlet here, and what I’ve done with it is I’ve put it in between two pieces of clean film and just bat it about. You want it to be nice and thin, all right. So once you’ve got that thickness right, what you want to do is pick it up and pop it into the flour. But before you do that, this is a really important step. You take some salt and a little bit of pepper.

So you now pick up your seasoned pork cutlet, pop it into your flour. Remember, dry hand on this side. Then you drop it into the egg, then use your wet hand. Give it a couple of turns. And then for this one I’m going to use my fresh breadcrumbs with the cheese. So you literally just pick it up, let the excess run off, then drop it in. Beautiful. So you give that a good push around and then pick it up.

All right. So once you’ve got this done, don’t throw it straight into a pan. What works really well is when you put it into the fridge – and I’ve done some, like, 10 minutes ago – and just give it a little bit of time to set up. So it comes out. All of this stuff now is really well stuck to what it is that we’re going to cook. So our pork’s really well-coated, and so is our vegetable, ready to drop in the deep fryer.

I’m Curtis Stone, and that’s your “crumby” GMC Trade Secret.