Air Frying Class

Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

One of our favorite quick lunches is tonkatsu, Japanese-style pork cutlets. There’s something about a juicy piece of pork locked in a crisp panko crust that’s just so satisfying to eat. Smothered in a good tonkatsu sauce with rice and shredded cabbage on the side? Game over. Tonkatsu is usually deep-fried, which is how the breaded cutlet develops a crust with substantial crunch. We wanted to get the same crispy crust using an air fryer, for a meal that takes minimal effort and delivers maximum reward.One of the biggest challenges with air frying crumbed cutlets is removing moisture from the surface of the meat, which is where it comes into contact with the breading. With a vat of hot oil, you have a huge amount of heat transfer, since oil is a relatively efficient conductor of heat. That effect can’t be replicated exactly with forced convection because the medium of heat transfer is air, a relatively less efficient conductor of heat.We’ve seen people try to cheat this by saturating the surface of breaded items with oil spray before loading them into an air fryer, but we found this method to be largely ineffective. We found that coating cutlets in mayonnaise instead of a standard egg wash delivers great results. Whole eggs are made up mostly of water; mayo is an oil-in-water emulsion, which means it contains far more oil than water. Just like an egg wash, the mayo helps the breading stick, but it limits the amount of moisture that needs to be evaporated off and provides a secondary benefit: as it cooks, the emulsion breaks, the water evaporates, and the exuded oil helps to fry the breadcrumb coating so it crisps and browns as the pork cooks.Even with the help of mayo, we stick to cooking two cutlets at a time to help produce as crisp a crust as possible. We found that adding more cutlets at one time increased the humidity in the air fryer, preventing the coating from getting as crisp.Serve up your tonkatsu with the classic sides of shaved cabbage, lemon wedges, and rice. If you can find it, our favorite prepared tonkatsu sauce is made by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/OtaJoy-Tonkatsu-Cutlets-Sauce-Ounce/dp/B00OE36HXI?&linkCode=ll1&tag=chefsteps02-20&linkId=ddf2aa0d46cd831b266556d56c036505&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl">Otafuku</a>, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bull-Dog-Bull-Dog-Tonkatsu-Sauce/dp/B0002IZD1G?&linkCode=ll1&tag=chefsteps02-20&linkId=ba2b78cfe06d690958f4040f64c2bbbd&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl">Bulldog Tonkatsu sauce</a> is also pretty good.

Air-Fried Tonkatsu (Japanese-Style Pork Cutlets)