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Meet the Crispy, Crunchy, Juicy Pork Sandwich That is as Large as Your Head

Why It Works

  • Pounding the pork into a skinny, uniform fillet ensures fast and even cooking.
  • A salt and sugar brine makes a young and delicate lower of pork flavorful and juicy.
  • Utilizing a standard cracker crust, as a substitute of a flour breading, ensures the coating absorbs much less oil, leading to a crunchier and fewer greasy outer layer.

For hundreds of years, the world’s culinary traditions have met and advanced within the Midwest. As a magnet for immigrant populations and their hopes and desires, with extra cultural flexibility than the long-settled East Coast and South however a stronger sense of neighborhood than the wide-open West, the area is a real melting pot—“essentially the most American a part of America,” to borrow a phrase from the Midwest historian James Shortridge.

The Midwest is a spot the place cooks dare to ask questions like, “What if we served our Greek meat stew over spaghetti and piled cheddar cheese on top?” or “May we flip Ozark chicken and gravy right into a Chinese language dish?” or “Who’s to say that Particular Okay wouldn’t make a delicious dessert?

And that intuition for experimentation can actually repay, like when somebody on this closely Germanic and pork-loving area requested, “What if we put schnitzel on a bun?”

In accordance with heartland legend, that somebody was Nick Freienstein of Nick’s Kitchen in Huntington, Indiana, opened in 1908, which claims to be the birthplace of the Midwestern breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. Is it actually? I’ll depart that to the teachers. Whoever got here up with it, it was a good suggestion, which is why it’s now a staple in Iowa and Indiana, the 2 states which have the strongest claims to the custom, and on menus nearly all over the place else within the area. 

Crisp, tender, and constantly satisfying, the Midwestern breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is a Midwestern cousin to the Southern fried rooster sandwich that’s now a high vendor at quick meals chains like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes. 

It’s additionally an important visible gag—one which represents heartland bounty and a great worth. Not all pork tenderloin sandwiches are big, however the plate-size variations are iconic.

Critical Eats / Two Bites


“The bigness is the wow issue,” says Julia Spalding, an editor at Indianapolis Month-to-month who’s been consuming and writing about tenderloin sandwiches for many years. “There’s some enjoyable in determining the way you’re going to eat it—fold it over, make a triple decker, eat across the edges, or lower it in half and take half dwelling… The bun is sort of like a punchline. It’s type of humorous, simply sitting there on high of a large sandwich.”

The Key Parts for Frying the Pork Tenderloin

The breaded pork tenderloin is a simple sandwich. To make it, you pound a chunk of pork till it’s solely a couple of quarter- or half-inch thick, brine it (which it’s best to), bread it, fry it, and put it on a bun. There are infinite alternatives for experimentation inside these easy pointers.

To start out the recipe growth course of, I created a type of breaded pork tenderloin matrix, itemizing out the varied potentialities, from selecting the lower of pork to pounding to breading to frying to meeting. General, I needed a sandwich that was juicy, salty, and intensely savory, with a transparent distinction between the crisp, crunchy crust and the ridiculously tender meat inside. I’ll stroll you thru a number of of crucial concerns.

The Finest Reduce of Pork for This Sandwich

A breaded pork tenderloin sandwich ought to begin with tenderloin, proper? Not essentially. Lots of the Midwest’s most iconic restaurant variations, together with the purported unique at Nick’s and practically all these plate-size variations, are created from tender loin, not tenderloin. 

It’s logical for eating places serving up a whole bunch of sandwiches a day to pick loin over tenderloin. Pork loin is bigger, extra inexpensive, a bit of bit fattier, and fewer prone to collapse when thwacked with a meat mallet. After it’s been completely tenderized, it actually isn’t all that completely different from tenderloin, anyway. It’s extra sensible in a restaurant setting.

Critical Eats / Two Bites


That mentioned, by way of a number of rounds of side-by-sides, a slight distinction was evident, and it mattered. For cooking the sandwich at dwelling, the “ridiculously tender” choice was tenderloin, indubitably. Whereas shut in texture, pork loin nonetheless retains a slight chew even when tenderized. That could possibly be a constructive for many who like a extra assertive fillet, however it isn’t what I’m going for right here. The one texture I need contained in the crisp layer of fried breading is tender.

As dwelling cooks, we have now extra flexibility in our elements than eating places extracting skinny margins from a whole bunch or hundreds of sandwiches per week. I don’t fry pork sandwiches at dwelling typically, however once I do, I’ll spring for the tenderloin.

Why a Brine Is Vital for the Finest Tenderloin Sandwich

In my first spherical of assessments, it was instantly apparent that skipping the brine wasn’t an choice. If you’ve pounded a pork loin into submission, it cooks rapidly—inside only a minute or two. Even a tenderized tenderloin can dry out and get robust earlier than you’ll be able to pull it out of the scorching oil. A brine provides taste and helps the pork keep juicy and tender. I examined a line-up of brining choices:

  • Buttermilk
  • Pickle juice
  • Salt-and-sugar
  • A mixture or buttermilk and pickle juice
  • A mixture of buttermilk, salt, and sugar

I believed buttermilk may be the reply, however it added a particular tang that distracts from the meat-and-potatoes attraction of this straightforward sandwich, even when diluted. Similar for the pickle juice brine. These skinny, pounded-out cutlets take up taste quickly and completely, and I needed them to style like pork, not buttermilk or pickles. A salt-and-sugar brine accomplishes that, boosting moderately than overwhelming the meaty taste of the principle ingredient. 

You may be questioning why I’m utilizing a moist brine right here, when Critical Eats has written that dry brining is the best way to brine meat. As that piece acknowledges, there are exceptions. 

If you’re coping with a centerpiece-worthy piece of meat, like a turkey or a beef tenderloin, dry brining saves area. It means you don’t need to contaminate a wonderfully good cooler with gallons of uncooked meat tea. The alternative is true when working with these wafer-thin cuts. You may dedicate a shelf in your fridge to 4 pounded items of pork tenderloin laid out on a wire rack, or you might stuff them right into a zipperlock bag and wedge them right into a nook.

Lots of the advantages of dry brining don’t apply right here. We’re browning and crisping the breading, not the meat, so the floor of the tenderloin itself doesn’t should be dry. Drying out the floor of the meat could be a destructive, truly, whenever you’re pounding it so thinly that it’s virtually all floor. The residual brine left on the fillets, even after patting them dry, helps the breading adhere. Flour received’t stick with a chunk of tenderloin with the outer texture of beef jerky.

Dialing within the Breading for Most Crispiness

In researching in style variations of fried tenderloins, together with on the remarkably energetic Pursuing Pork Tenderloins Fb web page, I got here throughout 5 major breading choices that piqued my curiosity for testing: saltines, varied different crackers (Ritz, Cheez-It, Membership, City Home), cereals (corn flakes, Rice Krispies), potato chips, and panko. I went to the grocery store and loaded a cart with bins of crispy snacks and cereals. Saltine crumbs are the preferred selection, however I needed to imagine that I may discover a higher different—one thing that added bonus crunch and taste to the sandwich. 

After a number of rounds of assessments, I ended up again at saltines. As soon as once more, I needed to showcase the flavour of the pork, and saltines gave me one of the best crunchy however comparatively impartial breading, which I may taste with my very own mix of spices. 

Critical Eats / Two Bites


If impartial is the aim, why not simply dredge in flour? Right here’s why: Cracker crumbs are coarser than flour, and their irregular floor traps tiny pockets of air throughout frying. Because the moisture contained in the crumbs evaporates, steam pushes outward, increasing these pockets and making a shattering crunch. Additionally, as a result of crackers are already baked, they’re decrease in free starch content material than flour, so that they take up much less oil. Which means a lighter, much less greasy crust. And at last, they’re a part of the breaded pork tenderloin custom! That counts for one thing.

The Seasoning and Frying Oil

In step with my aim of creating a sandwich that was easy however intensely craveable, I added what I consider as basic fried rooster sandwich seasoning—black pepper, paprika, a contact of cayenne, and (non-compulsory) MSG, for further mouthwatering attraction. There’s nobody approach to season a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, however I feel the suitable method is to go only a little additional than simply salt and pepper, including taste to a comparatively bland lower of meat with out distracting from it. (I had a unbelievable chorizo-spiced tenderloin not way back, with a chunky tomato salsa on high. I help having extra enjoyable together with your spice combine, however that is meant to be a foundational recipe.)

I arrange a typical dredging station, seasoned every layer of the dredge for whole taste saturation, and fried in peanut oil at a excessive temperature, so the crust would brown earlier than the pork inside overcooked. I selected peanut oil for its smoke level of 450°F. For those who can’t use peanut oil due to an allergy, search for one other oil with an equally excessive smoke level, reminiscent of soybean or sunflower.

Constructing the Sandwich

Critical Eats / Two Bites


As soon as your tenderloin is cooked, assembling it’s straightforward, however if you wish to keep true to custom, you do need to take a aspect the place toppings are involved. “It’s both lettuce, tomato, and mayo or mustard, pickle, and onion,” Spalding informed me. “These are two completely different camps.” The cultural divide is actual. I’m often a mustard, pickle, and onion individual, however I don’t choose.

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