Air-fryer Hen Katsu Recipe

Hen katsu is a straightforward dish to like. Juicy hen cutlets coated in an extremely crisp layer of golden-brown panko bread crumbs, served with a sweet-and-savory tonkatsu sauce and a aspect of crisp shredded cabbage and steamed white rice, make for a easy and scrumptious weeknight meal. Whereas each our basic chicken katsu and our katsu sando recipes name for shallow frying in effervescent oil (and produce scrumptious outcomes), we wished to see if we might produce comparable ends in an air fryer—our favourite equipment for shortening prepare dinner time and crisping all types of meals.

We discovered that the air fryer subtracts the annoyance of deep frying whereas delivering completely good, you-probably-can’t-tell-the-difference-from-deep-fried outcomes. With the assistance of an air fryer’s highly effective convection fan (as a result of an air fryer, as you would possibly already know, is only a supercharged mini convection oven), we’re capable of get katsu-style hen that has juicy, tender meat encased inside a lightweight, shatteringly crisp panko crust in a fraction of the time—and with much less mess—than fried variations. This simple air-fryer model of katsu comes collectively in about half-hour, and also you want only a handful of components to make it. 

The cutlets are fantastic with the basic katsu pairings of shredded cabbage, rice, and homemade tonkatsu sauce or a store-bought sauce like the wonderful Bull-Canine model sauce. However don’t cease there: We additionally love incorporating the crisp cutlets into sandwiches, serving them with nearly any sort of salad, or with easy sides like air-fryer broccoli and air-fryer potatoes. Listed below are just a few suggestions for golden and crisp panko-crusted hen katsu in your air fryer. 

Suggestions for Crisp Air-Fryer Hen Katsu

Pound the hen into skinny cutlets. Each boneless skinless hen breast or thighs will work nicely on this recipe, although they should be handled just a little in a different way. Boneless, skinless hen thighs require a bit much less prep than the hen breasts; simply use a meat pounder or the underside of a heavy skillet to pound them inside a zipper-lock bag till they’re a fair quarter-inch thick. Simply keep away from senseless bludgeoning when pounding, as this could trigger tears and holes within the meat—use agency however mild strain, specializing in the uneven spots.

Entire hen breast halves are too huge for this recipe (particularly contemplating the huge chickens you discover on the grocery store today), so earlier than pounding them skinny, you’ll first want to separate every breast into two cutlets. It is easy to do—if you happen to’ve by no means carried out it earlier than, simply observe this step-by-step information for how to cut chicken breasts into cutlets. As soon as break up, the breasts might be pounded identical to the hen thighs.

Briefly dry-brine the hen earlier than cooking. As a result of it tends to dry out, hen—particularly lean breasts—actually advantages from a moist or dry brine. Treating the meat, both by soaking it in a saltwater answer (wet-brining) or by salting it and letting it relaxation (dry-brining), will trigger its protein construction to interrupt down just a little bit, which in flip prevents the hen from releasing moisture when cooked. Kenji examined and established in his chicken katsu recipe that dry-brining the hen, even for only a transient time, is price it. ( We usually desire dry brining to moist brining as a result of it’s extra environment friendly and that holds true for this recipe.) 

You probably have time to salt your hen and let it relaxation for just a few hours, by all means achieve this, however we discovered that even only a 15 minute resting time yielded hen that was juicier and higher seasoned in each chew than unbrined hen.

Is unbrined hen unhealthy? No, not by any means, and if you happen to’re in a rush to get dinner on the desk, you’ll be able to skip this step. However if you happen to skip the brine altogether, we’d strongly counsel skipping lean hen breasts and utilizing fattier hen thighs, that are much less susceptible to drying out. 

Persist with the basic breading method. We use the basic three-bowl dredging method to make sure the hen is evenly coated with panko earlier than cooking. Dry (flour), moist (egg), dry once more (panko) is the order of operation to ensure the panko stays glued to the hen. Don’t be tempted to skip the preliminary flour dredge. The flour is just like the primer of the breaded-and-fried-cutlet world—it creates a fair floor for the egg to cling to, which in flip helps the outer panko layer adhere nicely to the hen, so that you keep away from a cooked cutlet with an uneven, patchy coating.

Oil your panko. Since we aren’t deep frying the cutlets in a big vat of sizzling oil, we have to improve the breaded cutlets’ capacity to crisp and brown evenly at each stage attainable. Coating the panko bread crumbs with a tablespoon of impartial oil like canola or vegetable oil earlier 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 depends on its capacity to imitate classically ready katsu’s crispy and browned deep-fried outcomes. Oiling the panko as described above is one step to attaining this. The opposite key step is to frivolously spray the tops of the hen with cooking spray after you place the hen within the preheated air-fryer basket. The sunshine coating of the cooking spray is simply sufficient to boost browning with out giving the hen the off canned-oil taste that may include overzealous use of cooking spray.