The most common and beloved by many, ground meat food is, of course, cutlets. Everyone can easily name other similar dishes, such as meatballs, meatballs, meatballs ... But here they are likely to think about how the meatballs differ from meatballs and meatballs. To understand this, you need to take a closer look at each type of these wonderful products, and perhaps plunge into history. So how are the meatballs different from cutlets?
What is a modern cutlet
Today in Russian cuisine cutlets are called fried or steam products of an oval shape, which can be prepared from meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc.) and minced meat, potatoes, cereals, vegetables, mushrooms. The most popular type is beef and pork (as well as combined) cutlets of minced meat scrolled through a meat grinder. Onion is added to meat (garlic), pepper, loaf crumbs, potatoes or semolina, milk, a raw egg. Then, oval flat enough flat cakes are formed, usually pointed on one side and rounded on the other. Each hostess chooses the size of cutlets herself. Their length can vary from 6 to 12 cm.
They are fried on both sides in a frying pan without a lid over high heat until a brown crust is obtained. Then they can add sour cream or sauce, cover and simmer for a few more minutes. People who avoid fried foods tend to prefer steam cutlets cooked in a double boiler or oven.
Modern meat cutlets are a universal dish suitable for any side dish: fried potatoes and mashed potatoes, buckwheat porridge and rice, stewed cabbage and other vegetables. In the end, they can be eaten separately, with and without gravy.
In domestic cuisine, there are two more varieties - Pozharsky and Kiev.
The first option is a juicy cutlet of chopped poultry meat (game or chicken), breaded in white breadcrumbs and fried until crisp.
The second option is a chop of chicken, in which butter is wrapped, with chicken bone at one end. Mushrooms, greens, egg yolk, grated cheese can be added to the oil. The cutlet is coated with an egg, then crumbled in breadcrumbs and deep-fried.
What used to be called a patty
I must say that in the initial sense, a cutlet is a chop piece of meat on the bone or a piece of fish fillet. In Europe, this is still the case, but the modern Russian cutlet there would most likely be called meatballs or croquet.
The true cutlet is a chop piece of meat on the bone. Chopped and fried pieces of meat in our country are called simply chops. The most popular way to cook them: beat, place on a baking sheet, salt, pepper, put onion rings and grated cheese on top, pour mayonnaise and put in the oven for 40 minutes. Traditionally, we make them from pork, chicken and beef.
Now you need to find out what the meatballs are. What is the difference from cutlets and is there any?
About the cocks
So in modern Russian cuisine they call small round products of minced meat, but not as flat as meatballs, but thicker.
The formed meatballs are first fried in a pan, then placed in a saucepan, add the sauce and simmer over low heat. Served with meatballs with the same side dishes as cutlets. It turns out that the question of how the meatballs differ from cutlets, you can answer that only in shape.
I must say that before the meatballs that came to us from France were chopped from a tenderloin and were called medallions. They say that in Russia they were renamed, according to the method of preparation, into meatballs. But chopped meatballs prevailed, for they did not require tenderloin and the meat variety was not of great importance. Today they are prepared mainly from minced meat or meat minced through a meat grinder, but they retained their name, and the round shape is the only thing that different from the meatballs.
What is meatballs
Meatballs are balls made from minced meat or fish. They can be the size of a walnut or a small apple. In addition to meat, bread, rice, onions, spices, a raw egg, breadcrumbs, vegetables, dried fruits can be added to them. They are fried, stewed in sauce, steamed, baked. Meatballs always roll in flour and never breadcrumbs. They should have a fairly loose structure.
Serve meatballs with sauce or pour broth in which they were stewed. As a rule, there is a lot of sauce, they directly float in it. The fact is that they came to us from the Türkic kitchen, where they were cooked in a common pot and then served with gravy, which had a thick appearance. Traditionally, this serving method has been preserved, as well as a sauce consisting of tomatoes, leeks, fried onions, celery, garlic, flour, sour cream (sour fruit) and meat broth.
If the meatballs are, in fact, an independent dish that can be served with a garnish and without it, while the sauce is not necessary, then the meatballs mean serving a particular recipe in the thick sauce.
To summarize
So, meatballs and meatballs - what's the difference? In Russian cuisine, in fact, it is one and the same thing, only they have different shapes: the first - oblong and flatter, the second - round and thicker.
As for meatballs, the meatballs differ from them not only in shape, but also in cooking and serving.
Now we know how meatballs differ from meatballs and meatballs.