How to prevent the flour/cornstarch in pork chops from falling off after pan-frying and still be crunchy

pork-chops

I coat my pork chops with cornstarch with seasonings (salt, five-spice, etc.) before pan frying. After pan-frying, the coatings easily fell of from the pork chops. How do you prevent the coating from falling off and at the same time, make it crunchy?

Best Answer

Usually, the pattern for getting coating to stick is dry/wet/dry.

Here's the pattern that I've followed (especially from Cook's Illustrated crunchy pork chop recipies) -

  1. Pat dry the meat with paper towel, then score the meat in a cross-hatched grid pattern, and season well.

  2. Next dredge the chops in plain cornstarch, shake off excess.

  3. Next dip in the liquid (buttermilk flavored with garlic and Dijon mustard for me, beaten egg would be another option).

  4. Next dredge in seasoned coating (ground corn flakes with more cornstarch, salt and pepper for me, or cornstarch with whatever spices/seasonings you want).

  5. Then you let it sit on a wire rack for 10. This allows the coating to "set."

For the cornflake coating, this holds onto the pork chop incredibly well. Not sure if that would work as well with cornstarch as the outer coating, but I think the concept would hold.

Here's a place that posted the recipe (Cook's Illustrated keeps most recipes behind a paywall, but this is the same one):

Mens Place: Crispy Pan Fried Pork Chops