Today we bring to your attention chicken Pozharsky cutlets - a real royal dish, which is served in restaurants. The classic recipe is complicated, and cooking will take quite a while. However, large juice-dripping, crispy patties deserve to be tasted! There is also a simplified version of the dish (based on the prepared meat), as well as a diet recipe. Consider them all in our article.
Pozharsky cutlets: history of occurrence
In fact, this dish is not so many years old. Passing Torzhok, on the way from Tver to Moscow on Easter, Nicholas I and his family got stuck on the road. While the servants were pushing the carriage, the emperor went into the nearest tavern and wanted to taste the cutlet of veal. However, there was no such meat in the kitchen, and the wife of the innkeeper, Daria Pozharskaya, ordered to kill the chicken at her own risk and peril, since there was no shortage of them. Imagine the surprise of the innkeepers when the sovereign enthusiastically appreciated the proposed food. Moreover, the emperor ordered a dish with such an unusual taste to be placed in the courtyard.
Recipe saved through cookbooks
And that inn quickly gained popularity. People visited the institution to taste delicious food, asking for a recipe. And A.S. Pushkin, about which he later wrote in his works. As you can see, pre-revolutionary recipes did not sink into oblivion thanks to the cookbooks published at that time.
Some recommendations
Before you start cooking, you need to consider some nuances. It is necessary to use a whole chicken carcass, but choose a bird by weight, fatty. Remove meat from the breast and thighs in equal proportions, do not use the skin. If you want, you can make cutlets from the breast in half with veal. But this is a variation of the classic dish.
The secret of the classic recipe
Cutlets are extremely juicy and tasty because it is necessary to add slices of frozen butter to the minced meat . Servings are formed quickly until the butter has melted, and small pieces of dried white bread are used as breading. It is these particles that create an unsurpassed crisp, and the oil, melted, remains inside. That is why the "Pozharskaya" cutlet, the classic recipe of which we will present now, should be eaten immediately after cooking. Otherwise, it will lose its characteristic, so attractive crunch.
Classic Recipe: Ingredients
In order to prepare a dish, we will need the following products:
- chicken breast meat - 400 g;
- chicken meat - 400 g;
- white bread without a crust - 150 g;
- cream with a fat content of 20% - 200 g;
- frozen butter - 150 g;
- white bread for breading - 300 g;
- turnip bulb - 1 pc;
- salt;
- black pepper;
- melted or vegetable oil for frying.
Fillet cutlets always turn out to be somewhat dry, so we add to the main component the same weight as a tender juicy ham.
What you need to know before cooking?
Breading in this recipe is a technologically rather complicated process. A day before cooking, 300 grams of white bread for breading must be left in the refrigerator by unpacking. During this time, moisture will come out of the crumb, and the bar will dry out. When the day is up, the bar is cut into very thin slices, and then into squares, the thickness of which is only half a centimeter. It is very good to use a wavy bread knife for slicing.
Pozharskaya cutlet (a classic recipe for the dish we present to you) contains frozen butter. This ingredient is not cut into pieces, but rubbed on a coarse grater, and then the resulting particles are again sent to the freezer. What else in the recipe presented is non-standard moves in comparison with conventional cutlets? The bread crumb is soaked in cream, but not squeezed, since this dairy product should be part of the forcemeat. Cut onions and simmer in oil in a pan, and only then they roll together with meat through a meat grinder.
Method for cooking minced meat
We chop the prepared processed meat into small pieces and pass through a meat grinder along with a creamy crumb. Let the cream dissolve in the meat. Remember how the Pozharskaya cutlet was prepared (we are now mastering the classic recipe) in the original? The chicken ran around the yard an hour ago, and now it is already on the table in the form of an exquisite meal. That is why the meat we scroll with our own hands, without using a ready-to-cook semi-finished product with additives. Now we again pass the minced meat through the unit, but this time we attach the stewed onion to the composition. It remains to mix the composition, salt and add black ground pepper. To make the patties more airy, slightly beat the minced meat with your hands and place it in the refrigerator for an hour. If you want to cook a meal faster, you can cheat a little: send the mass to the freezer for about twenty minutes.
Cutlet formation
Now that all the cooling periods are in place, you can mix the minced meat with ice oil shavings. We repeat that everything needs to be done very quickly, and in order to prevent the oil from flowing, melted by the warmth of the hands, we put on thin medical gloves. The Pozharskaya cutlet, the classic recipe of which we have practically mastered, should be the size of a chop. So, in restaurants, the dish is served on the bone together with mushrooms and baked potatoes. Formed cutlets should weigh 200 grams. Breaded each serving in breadcrumbs and again sent to the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Now we practically know how to make cutlets according to an old Russian recipe.
Heat treatment process
In the meantime, we have time to preheat the oven to 200 degrees and even do other things, for example, preparing a side dish. Chilled billets are sent to a well-heated pan. The oil in it should bubble, but no burning should be allowed. In this process, it is necessary to feel a fine line when a well-heated frying pan has not yet heated up. Fry our portions on both sides until golden brown, and then send them to the oven for 8 minutes. The finished dish is served immediately, as we said, traditionally with mushrooms and potatoes. So, for a side dish, you can use fried potatoes with mushroom sauce, or you can grill mushrooms in cream. Enjoy your meal!
Diet recipe
Now we will learn how to make Pozharsky cutlets diet. A dish according to this recipe can be prepared when there is absolutely no time for fussing with repeated freezing of the ingredients. If you cook a super-diet dish, then you will have to abandon the meat from the legs, replacing it with another part of the chicken fillet, and also do not put butter at all, although this ingredient is present to a minimum in the presented recipe. Also, instead of frying in a pan and languishing in the oven, cook the cutlets steamed, and instead of cream for the crumb, use low-fat milk.
The ingredients that are needed to prepare the specified dish:
- chicken fillet - 500 g;
- fresh chicken egg - 1 pc;
- white bread - 100 g;
- breadcrumbs;
- cream (milk) - 1 cup;
- butter - 20 g;
- vegetable oil for frying;
- salt;
- ground black pepper.
Cooking method
First, cut the crust with bread, cut and pour milk. Take a deep plate in order to beat an egg with two tablespoons of water in it with a fork. Cut the chicken into pieces and scroll through the meat grinder, add the bread soaked in milk, and again pass the minced meat through the kitchen unit. To squeeze out the remains of milk from bread crumbs or not, in this case - your business. Now it remains to salt and pepper the resulting mass, and also add butter to it (in this recipe the butter will be softened) and mix everything thoroughly.
Immediately proceed to the formation of cutlets. They can be either oval or round - as you like. This is not a classic recipe; fantasy is permissible here. Dip the resulting semi-finished products in the egg composition, and then breading each cutlet in breadcrumbs. By the way, this ingredient can be replaced with small bread crumbs. Then we heat the frying pan, poured with oil, lay out the patties and fry them on both sides until a golden brown crust forms. Then, as in the case of the classic recipe, we send to the oven preheated to 200 degrees for 8 minutes. The diet dish is ready! It can be served with sauce and vegetables. Enjoy your meal!