Ingredients
- 600 g boneless skinless chicken, roughly two thirds thigh and one third breast
- 80 g crustless white bread, torn into small pieces
- 150 ml double cream
- 100 g unsalted butter, cut into 5mm dice and frozen for 20 minutes
- 1 small onion, finely grated
- 6 g fine sea salt
- 2 g black peppercorns, finely ground
- 1 /4 tsp grated nutmeg
- 120 g day-old white bread, crusts removed and cut into 4mm cubes
- 40 g plain flour
- 1 egg, beaten
- 60 g clarified butter, or 40g unsalted butter with 2 tbsp sunflower oil
Make it step by step
- Put the diced butter in the freezer while you get everything else ready.
- Put the torn bread in a bowl, pour the cream over it and leave it for 10 minutes, until it has drunk the lot and collapses under a fork.
- Do not squeeze this bread out. Unlike a plain mince patty, the cream is meant to stay in; it is what makes the interior soft rather than merely moist.
- Mince the chicken twice through a coarse plate, or chop it finely by hand with two knives. A food processor will do it if you pulse in short bursts, but run continuously it turns the meat to a rubbery paste.
- Fold the soaked bread, the grated onion, the fine salt, the ground peppercorns and the nutmeg through the chicken until evenly distributed.
- Take the butter from the freezer and fold it in last, working quickly with a spatula and keeping the dice in visible pieces.
- Stop as soon as the butter is distributed. Worked warm or worked too long, it smears through the mince as a film and simply runs out into the pan instead of melting inside the cutlet.
- Chill the mixture for 30 minutes. It is deliberately soft and cannot be shaped until it firms.
- Divide the mixture into eight and shape each piece into a thick oval with wet hands, about 2.5cm deep.
- Put the flour, the beaten egg and the bread cubes in three separate shallow dishes.
- Roll each cutlet in flour, then in egg, letting the excess drip off, then press it into the bread cubes on all sides.
- Press the cubes on firmly. Loose ones fall off in the pan and burn in the fat, and they taste of it afterwards.
- Heat the oven to 180C/350F.
- Melt the clarified butter in a wide frying pan over medium heat, no hotter.
- Fry the cutlets for 4-5 minutes a side, until the bread cubes are deep gold and crisp.
- Keep the heat moderate. High heat blackens the cubes in three minutes while the middle is still raw, and there is no rescuing a burnt crust.
- Transfer the cutlets to a tray and finish in the oven for 8-10 minutes.
- Check with a thermometer pushed into the centre of a cutlet: it should read 74C/165F.
- Rest them for 3 minutes on a rack rather than on paper, so the underside stays crisp.
- Serve with mashed potato, and expect a little melted butter to run out at the first cut.
Nutrition and portions
Nutrition estimates and Zone blocks are not available for this recipe.
Ingredient substitutions and portion changes need a new calculation.
Recipe source
Adapted from RecipeWiki by RecipeWiki contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Formatting adapted; listed quantities and instructions are retained from the source.
RecipeWiki states that most text was drafted by a language model and edited afterwards. These recipes have not been physically kitchen tested. No source images are used.
Cook times in the method are source guidance, not a record of testing in our kitchen. Check food temperatures and ingredient labels when cooking.