STANDARD BREADING PROCEDURE

One of the preliminary techniques to deep-fat frying is breading. Breading means coating a product with bread crumbs, cornmeal or other before cooking. This coating as been used for everything from fish to ice cream! It is a also preliminary step to shallow pan frying such items as chicken, fish and scaloppini.

Standard Breading Procedure includes three steps and three separate containers:
1.  Flour:  to aid breading to stick to the product
2. Liquid: Most often, egg-wash consisting of eggs and liquid (water usually) sometimes a small amount of oil; or other such as buttermilk
3. Crumbs: Often dried bread crumbs and our favorite, Panko, which are Japanese bread crumbs. The purpose of this step is to combine with egg-wash to create crispness and golden color. We like to add parmesan cheese to the crumbs. Crumb products used are varied from dried bread, meal, crushed cereal, Panko, even nuts.

Just Dredging with flour is used to give a thin, even coating of flour that helps in browning. For example, to frizzle shallots, the shallot slices are coated lightly in flour before deep frying or pan frying.  Note: dredging is also the first step in braising, such as for stew meat.

Batters are wet starchy mixtures that provide a crisp flavorful coating for deep frying meats, vegetables, cheese, and even ice cream. Leavening agents may be used to lighten up the results. Beer batters and tempura batters are two examples of batters.