CHICKEN CUTLETS

SAUTÉING A BONELESS, SKINLESS CHICKEN BREAST sounds easy. But too often the chicken comes out of the pan only lightly colored and dry. Ideally, a sautéed chicken breast should have a nicely browned exterior and a tender, juicy interior.

We sautéed both floured and unfloured chicken cutlets to determine any differences in taste, texture, and juiciness. We immediately noticed a more dramatic sizzle when the unfloured cutlet hit the pan. While both cutlets sizzled during cooking, the unfloured cutlet "spit" a bit more. The flour seems to provide a barrier between the fat in the pan and the moisture in the cutlet. The floured cutlet also moved about more freely; while neither version stuck to the skillet, the floured cutlet skated easily as we swirled it about.

When cooked, the floured cutlet displayed a consistently brown crust, almost resembling a skin. The uncoated breast was a spotty brown. Both breasts were equally moist, but the floured cutlet had a better mouthfeel, with its contrasting crispy exterior and juicy, tender meat. The floured cutlet, reminiscent of fried chicken, was also more flavorful than its uncoated counterpart. Our advice: Flour those cutlets.

The best cooking medium for chicken cutlets is vegetable oil, which provides excellent browning and won't burn. In a concession to the reigning wisdom about health, we tried sautéing a batch of cutlets in just the sheerest film of fat. The results were disastrous. The fat burned, the outside of the chicken became dry and stringy, and the crust was very disappointing, nearly blackened in some spots and a strange yellowish color in others. For sautéed food to become crisp and uniformly brown, the entire surface must stay in contact with the fat. Chicken has an irregular surface, and any part that is not in contact with the cooking medium—in this case, the oil—will not brown because it is being steamed by the moisture released from the cooking meat. In a 12-inch skillet, two tablespoons of oil is about right. If your skillet is wider, you may need closer to three tablespoons.

Everyone's stove is different, of course, but most home burners are quite weak, so when we say "high," we mean "high." Once the oil shimmers, quickly lay in the chicken cutlets, with the tenderloin-side down, holding onto the tapered end as you lay the cutlet flat.

Maintain the heat to the point at which the fat remains at a fast sizzle but does not quite smoke. If you see more than just a wisp or two of smoke, slide the pan off the burner immediately, turn down the heat, and wait a few seconds before returning the pan to the flame. Be advised that there will be some spattering.

We also tested coating the cutlets with bread crumbs to make an especially crisp exterior and found that breaded cutlets tended to burn faster than regular floured cutlets. We made several modifications to our basic sautéed chicken cutlet recipe to eliminate this problem. First, the cutlets must be pounded to a thickness of a half-inch or less so that the interior won't still be raw when the exterior has browned. Second, the pan doesn't require as much preheating. Last, breaded cutlets should be cooked at a slightly lower temperature than plain floured cutlets.