Coating in Breadcrumbs

This is an excellent technique for making food more appealing. You are adding extra colour, texture and flavour and sometimes disguising something that might not look so appealing. The process is relatively simple and the results are well worth the effort.

The basic technique requires a bowl of seasoned flour, a bowl of beaten egg and a bowl of dried breadcrumbs. The secret is to keep one hand for the egg and the other for the flour and breadcrumbs, otherwise you will be bread crumbing your hands at the same time.

Say for example we are coating rissoles. Take the first one and roll it in the flour to lightly coat the whole surface.  Next place it in the egg and with your other hand make sure that this coats all the flour. Then drop the rissole into the breadcrumbs and using your dry hand sprinkle it with the crumbs until you can pick it up without touching the eggy bits. Now roll it around until the whole surface is coated. One coating is usually enough but if the aim is for the coating to contain a liquid centre, garlic butter for example, simply repeat the whole process again.

Now that you have the basics of bread crumbing you can experiment with different flavours. Finely grated parmesan cheese in the breadcrumbs works well and you can have fun with various herbs and spices. If you are using something aromatic like lemon zest it is best to add it to the flour so that it isn’t lost in the cooking process.

You can also replace the breadcrumbs with cereals like crushed cornflakes or rice crispies but these need to be oven baked rather than fried. Other alternatives are crushed savoury biscuits or oatmeal.