27 January 2016

Using Panko to prepare walleye fishcakes

Walleye is of course best eaten as a fillet, but if you are preparing it as fishcakes, the following tip might be useful (recipe at the link):
In order to have the subtle, delicious flavors of walleye shine through in these cakes, I chose to use panko bread crumbs instead of regular or “Italian-style” bread crumbs, which potentially can alter the innate taste of some dishes.

Additionally, while panko bread crumbs don’t absorb liquids as readily as regular bread crumbs — which means more panko is required to bind mixtures — they also don’t absorb grease as easily and remain crispier longer.
Some background:
Panko is a variety of flaky bread crumb used in Japanese cuisine as a crunchy coating for fried foods, such as tonkatsu. Panko is made from bread baked by electrical current, which yields a bread without a crust, and then grinding the bread to create fine slivers of crumb. It has a crisper, airier texture than most types of breading found in Western cuisine and resists absorbing oil or grease when fried, resulting in a lighter coating. Outside Japan, its use is becoming more popular in both Asian and non-Asian dishes: It is often used on fish and seafood.

1 comment:

  1. Alton Brown turned me on to panko years ago. You'll never go back. My favorite recipe I used them on was goat cheese stuffed eggplant.

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