Cutlets are an absolutely universal dish that a good housewife can prepare in a matter of minutes. There are several hundred different cutlet recipes. Depending on the composition of the minced meat used in the cooking process, cutlets are divided into meat, vegetable and cereal.
But most traditionally, cutlets are prepared from minced meat.
Depending on the type of meat used, the cutlets will differ significantly in taste. Thus, the predominance of pork will make the preparation of the dish more fatty and juicy, beef is suitable for lovers of lean meat, white poultry meat is the most dietary cooking option. And cutlets from different varieties of fish will diversify your diet and serve as an excellent source of phosphorus.
How to prepare minced meat for cutlets?Any housewife should know how to cook cutlets. If at first you have difficulties in preparing cutlets, it’s not a problem! Step-by-step recipes for making delicious homemade cutlets from various types of minced meat will help you cope with the task!
It is worth remembering that to obtain a delicate taste, minced meat (any kind) must be enriched with onions and soaked white bread. You can grate the potatoes on a fine grater. But the main ingredient should, of course, be minced meat! Spices are added to the minced meatballs at your discretion. Ground black pepper and garlic are universal. And one more thing. Cutlets can be prepared for future use. Frozen, they will be an excellent solution for working women. After all, taking it out, defrosting it and frying it takes 10 minutes. And a fresh, delicious dinner is on your table.
Features of frying and other methods of preparing cutlets.There are a great many ways to heat treat cutlets. Cutlets can be fried in a frying pan, pre-breaded in breadcrumbs, stewed, baked in the oven, steamed or grilled.
When frying cutlets in a frying pan, you should use good refined vegetable oil. Chicken cutlets can be fried in olive oil. Butter, as well as animal fat and lard, are not used for frying.
Cutlets in the oven can be placed on a baking sheet raw or pre-fried in a frying pan. When cooking cutlets in the oven, it is important that they do not dry out.
It is worth highlighting the grilling method separately. It's incredibly tasty! Be sure to try it! However, remember that for grilling you should not add eggs to the minced meat, but rather beat it properly. In this way, you can give the minced meat the necessary viscosity.
- 500 gr. - minced meat (pork and beef)
- 100 gr. – bread or loaf a little stale
- 1 chicken egg
- 1 onion
- A few cloves of garlic (optional and to taste)
- 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs
- Salt, ground black pepper - to taste
- Vegetable oil for frying
For the filling:
- Butter – 200 gr.
- 1 tbsp. l. - fresh parsley, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp. l. - fresh dill, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- salt, ground black pepper - to taste
For the base:
- Chicken breasts - 2 pcs.
- Flour – 4 tbsp. spoons
- Chicken egg – 2 pcs.
- Milk – 100 ml.
- Breadcrumbs – 1 cup
- Vegetable oil – 200 ml
- Pepper
- Minced chicken – 2 kg;
- Onions – 2 pcs;
- Carrots – 1 piece;
- Egg – 2 pcs
- Bread – 200 gr;
- Milk – 100 ml;
- Salt and pepper to taste.
- 500 gr. - minced meat (pork and beef)
- 1 large onion or two small ones
- 1 fresh chicken egg
- 2 slices white bread
- Salt, ground black pepper - to taste
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Meat cutlets are a traditional dish of Russian cuisine, which is probably regularly prepared in every family, without exception. From early childhood, we associate cutlets with the warmth and comfort of home, with the love and care of mother and grandmother, with sincere family lunches and dinners. The secret of such popularity of cutlets is that they are very tasty and filling, quite simple and quick to prepare and are inexpensive compared to other meat dishes. Homemade cutlets made from minced meat have a very soft consistency, so they are easily chewed and absorbed by the body, which makes them an indispensable dish in the diet of children, the sick and the elderly.
Useful information How to cook homemade pork and beef cutlets - a simple recipe for juicy cutlets with step-by-step photosINGREDIENTS:
- 500 g minced meat (pork + beef)
- 1 large onion
- 1 egg
- 3 – 4 small slices of white bread
- 1 tbsp. l. sour cream
- 2 tbsp. l. breadcrumbs
- 3 tbsp. l. vegetable oil
- salt, pepper, khmeli-suneli
PREPARATION METHOD:
1. Let's start preparing homemade cutlets by soaking the bread for 5 - 10 minutes in cold water.
Many housewives soak bread in milk so that it is properly saturated with it and imparts its taste to the cutlets. However, since a lot of milk is used for soaking, and only a small part of it ends up in the cutlets, and the rest is thrown away, my mother taught me to soak the bread in plain water, and add a spoonful of sour cream to the cutlet mince instead.
2. Chop the onion very finely. Some cooks grind onions together with meat in a meat grinder. I do not recommend doing this, as this releases a lot of juice from the onion, which simply evaporates during the process of cooking the cutlets, and the cutlets turn out drier. Onions cut with a knife retain more liquid and make the cutlets juicy and flavorful. 
3. Place minced meat, egg and sour cream in a bowl.
For classic homemade cutlets, mixed minced pork and beef are best suited. Pork gives the cutlets tenderness and juiciness, and beef adds its rich meaty taste and slightly reduces the fat content of minced pork.
4. Squeeze the bread a little, peel off the crusts and add to the minced meat along with the onions. Add salt and spices. I like to add khmeli-suneli seasoning to these cutlets; with this Georgian mixture of various spices, they turn out very aromatic and rich in taste. 
5. Knead the cutlet mince thoroughly with your hands until smooth. Beat it several times to remove air from it. To do this, collect all the minced meat with both hands and forcefully throw it back into the bowl.
6. Form round or oblong cutlets from the minced meat and roll them on all sides in breadcrumbs. If you don't have breadcrumbs, you can use regular flour. Before making each cutlet, I advise you to rinse your hands with water, this will prevent the minced meat from sticking to them. 
7. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and place the formed cutlets. You can pack them quite tightly, as they will shrink in size during cooking. Fry over medium heat until golden brown for 5 minutes. 
8. Then turn the cutlets over and fry the other side in the same way.
9. To make homemade cutlets soft and juicy, pour a little hot water into a frying pan, close it with a lid and cook over low heat for 15 minutes, turning the cutlets once during cooking.
Lush, juicy and delicious homemade cutlets are ready!
To make homemade cutlets less high in calories, you should, first, pay attention to the quality of the minced meat. Usually in production, minced meat is made from fatty meats and even additional animal fats are added. Therefore, it is better to prepare minced meat at home, using mainly lean beef and a small amount of pork tenderloin. Cutlets made from homemade minced meat are much less fatty and high in calories and are more suitable for children's and diet food.
Secondly, you can regulate the amount of bread in the cutlets - the less there is, the more dietary the dish turns out. However, bread gives the cutlets looseness and fluffiness, that is, a more delicate and soft structure. Homemade cutlets without adding bread will turn out too dense and dry. So you need to find your own proper balance. You can use healthier types of bread to make cutlets - rye or wheat with bran, and some cooks even replace bread with oatmeal.
Thirdly, instead of frying cutlets in vegetable oil, you can use dietary cooking methods - bake them in the oven or steam them. This also significantly reduces the calorie content of the final dish and increases its beneficial properties.
An everyday and well-known dish, homemade minced meatballs turn out to be more tasty than cutlets classified as semi-finished products.
Minced meat for cutlets can be prepared from any meat - pork, beef, chicken, lamb, either individually or from a mixture. Cutlets made from any minced meat have their own positive taste qualities. Cutlets made from pork, beef or mixed minced meat are considered the most common in cooking. Minced meat can be purchased at the store, although the best option is to prepare it yourself.
Minced meat cutlets - recipeThe principles for preparing cutlets from any minced meat are very similar. If desired, you can add potatoes, herbs, mushrooms, cheese, vegetables and much more. We bring to your attention the simplest cutlet recipe. Keeping it as a base, you can experiment with ingredients.
Ingredients:
- about.5 kg. meat;
- 2 onions;
- 1 egg;
- 3 slices of bread;
- 150 ml milk;
- salt;
- pepper;
- breadcrumbs and flour.
1. Pass the meat through a meat grinder, after cutting it into suitable pieces. The onion can be skipped along with the meat, but the cutlets will turn out more juicy if you puree it using a blender.
2. Break the bread and pour milk over it.
3. Combine minced meat with onion puree and soaked bread. Break the egg, add salt and pepper. Mix well.
4. Form the resulting mixture into cutlets, giving them a flat and round shape.
5. Dip the cutlets in flour or breadcrumbs, then fry in vegetable oil on both sides. If a non-stick frying pan is involved in cooking, you do not need to use breading.
- When preparing minced meat, it is recommended to grind the meat 1-3 times in a meat grinder. When processing meat manually, the internal juices in the meat fibers are preserved.
- Bread perfectly absorbs the juices of the meat, so the cutlets with bread come out more tender and juicy. It is better to take stale bread (crumb). Fresh bread will make the cutlets too sticky. Rye bread or wheat bread is just a matter of taste.
- The eggs make the cutlets tougher, so adding them is not necessary.
- Cinnamon, mustard, coriander, garlic and other ingredients will make the cutlets more piquant.
- The juiciness of the cutlets is enhanced by the addition of beef fat or lard. Adding butter will prevent the cutlets from losing their fluffiness.
- To make the dish more interesting, add potatoes, zucchini, beets, pumpkin, cabbage, carrots, herbs, a little kefir or sour cream.
- When it’s time to turn the cutlets over, you need to reduce the heat and cover the pan with a lid. You can determine the readiness of the cutlets by examining the juice coming from them. The juice is clear, and the inside of the cutlet is gray - the cutlets are ready!
I ask you to try to cook the most delicious cutlets according to my mother’s recipe. There are no people who are indifferent to them. The recipe is simple, but proven over many years. In addition, the cutlets can be prepared for future use and if you don’t have time or unexpected guests arrive in 5-10 minutes, you will have juicy, tender and flavorful cutlets. This is my first "anniversary" recipe.
Ingredients for “Homemade cutlets”: Recipe for “Homemade cutlets”:
So let's start cooking. Grind the meat in a meat grinder or food processor. I used minced pork. But in principle you can combine pork-chicken, pork-beef. It has been noticed that cutlets turn out tastier if all the ingredients are chopped in a food processor; in a meat grinder the taste is slightly different.
Grind the onion.
And chop the potatoes.
Mix all the ingredients of the cutlets in a bowl. Salt and pepper to taste and add chopped garlic. Now the most important thing. Be sure to beat our minced meat thoroughly. We collect it into a lump in our hands and throw it on the table or into a bowl at least 20 times. This procedure will prevent our cutlets from falling apart during frying. Now let’s let the minced meat rest a little for about 5 minutes. During this time, the bread will absorb the juice from the onions, potatoes and meat, because we didn’t add any additional liquid to the minced meat.
Then we take a small piece of minced meat (50 grams) and form small oblong cutlets. The cutlets must be small. This makes them different from others and gives them a special “charm”.
Fry the cutlets over high heat until nicely browned. Do not try to fry the cutlets until done. We are not striving for this. But you need to brown it well. Please note that we do not use any breading. The quality of the meat has deteriorated significantly recently; before, the cutlets never stuck to the pan. And now sometimes it happens. But to prevent this from happening, as soon as you place the cutlet in the hot oil, immediately move it around the pan with a spatula, this will allow the crust to grasp and not stick to the bottom. There should be enough oil in the frying pan, about 1 cm. These are the handsome ones we got.
Do you know why Soviet cafeteria cutlets were disgustingly tasteless? Because they put too much bread and crackers in them, and they skimped on meat and took it from the tough parts of the carcass. If you want to get delicious cutlets, do not buy ready-made minced meat of dubious origin. You don’t have to buy expensive beef tenderloin, but the back, neck, shoulder, brisket and some parts of the hind leg are ideal.
Before putting the fillet into the meat grinder, do not forget to thoroughly clean it - remove the films, remove cartilage, bones and veins. In addition to beef, chefs recommend using fatty pork - it is this that will give the cutlets juiciness and tenderness.
Standard proportion: for 1 kg of beef - 1/2 kg of pork or for 1 kg of beef - 250 g of lard. However, cutlets can also be made from lamb, veal, chicken, turkey, and game. Choose any degree of grinding, but experts advise not to overdo it and limit yourself to one-time cranking in a meat grinder with a medium-sized grill.
Of course it is necessary. The main thing is not to overdo it with eggs and use no more than 2-3 eggs per 1 kg of meat, otherwise the cutlets will turn out tough. The same amount of onion will require approximately 200 g, preferably pre-sautéed and cooled, since raw onions may not have time to fry and will give the cutlets a harsh taste. If you like fresh onions, grind them at the same time as the minced meat in a meat grinder.
Don’t think that bread was included in the recipe out of a desire to save money. Without the crumb, you will end up with a lula kebab, not a juicy meatball. It is the soaked bread that helps make the cutlets softer and more tender.
Naturally, it is important to maintain the correct proportion. It looks like this: for 1 kg of meat - 250 g of white bread and 300-400 g of milk or water (if you are making chicken cutlets, you will need less bread and eggs).
Use yesterday's or slightly dried out loaf. Remove all the crusts from it, cut into pieces and soak in cold milk or water. As soon as the crumb swells, knead it thoroughly with your hands and mix with the rest of the minced meat. Some of the bread can be replaced with grated potatoes, pumpkin or other vegetables.
The resulting minced meat is also well decorated with spices (paprika, black pepper, coriander, chili) and chopped herbs (dill, parsley, cilantro, mint). Don’t forget to salt the future dish, but under no circumstances try it raw (tasting minced meat is the most common cause of poisoning among housewives). 
It is advisable to cover the bowl with the prepared minced meat with film and put it in the refrigerator for half an hour so that the bread absorbs the meat juices. Then thoroughly mix the mass again, beating it with your hands and saturating it with air. At the very end, some chefs advise adding a handful of crushed ice to make the dish juicier. After this, wet your hands in cold water and start making cutlets.
If desired, you can cover them with breading - under the golden crust the minced meat will remain juicier. Most experts do not trust store-bought breadcrumbs and recommend making them yourself - to do this, you just need to grind white bread in a blender. Then roll the cutlets in the resulting crumbs and place them in the frying pan. You can also use sesame seeds, small bread sticks, flour and lezon as a breading.
The last one is 3 eggs, lightly beaten with salt and 1-2 tbsp. spoons of milk or water. The cutlets are first rolled in flour, then in lezone and only then covered with bread crumbs. 
There is nothing complicated in frying cutlets, the main thing is to place them in a hot frying pan with hot oil (preferably melted butter) so that the minced meat “seizes”, a crust forms and the dish does not fall into pieces.
In addition, keep a distance between the flatbreads: if you place a mountain of cutlets on one vessel, they will quickly release juice and begin to stew rather than fry.
As soon as a golden crust appears, you can reduce the heat and cook under the lid. It’s better not to torment the cutlets by turning them over frequently (it’s advisable to do this a couple of times), but don’t go too far from the frying pan, otherwise you’ll end up with coals instead of a juicy meat dish. However, you can skip frying and stew the flatbreads or steam them. 
