Wed 23 Jan 2008
Chicken breasts, when pounded and flattened, can make an excellent substitute for veal. And if your market has them, the thin sliced boneless roaster breast is even better, since you don’t have to pound or flatten the individual pieces. The fact is, if someone didn’t tell you, and if you’re not a food professional, there’s a good chance that you’d have difficulty telling the difference. The muscle fibers in both meats are surprisingly similar; they’re both low in fat, and neither has much collagen, the factor that
Makes meat fibrous and chewy.
The basic ingredients in most of the “veal” dishes that follow are boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They’re called “cutlets.” A scaloppine is a cutlet sliced in half lengthwise.
By the way, if Frank had his way, from now on you wouldn’t think of chicken breasts as an inexpensive substitute for veal. You’d think of veal as a more expensive substitute for his chicken breasts. In fact, Frank likes to say that “Anything veal can do, my chicken breasts can do better,” He points out that chicken breasts are richer than veal in vitamin A, niacin, and calcium, and they’re lower in calories and cholesterol. They’re equal to veal in protein, and of course, they’re much, much more affordable.
If thin sliced boneless roaster breast is unavailable in your market, you can make your own scaloppine, place a skinless, boneless chicken breast half on a flat surface, insert a sharp knife into the side and cut the chicken breast into two wide flat slices. Put these slices between sheets of plastic wrap and pound with a meat mallet or rolling pin to 1/4″ thickness.
Chicken Recipes – The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
Copyright (C) by Mitzi Perdue – Used with Permission
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