Chicken Cutlets with a Swiss Cheese Crust is a tasty fried chicken dish suitable for weeknight cooking.   The whole chicken and cheese thing isn’t normally appealing to me, but I had been craving fried chicken like crazy when I came across this recipe.  I was also looking for an opportunity to use my new meat mallet, which I picked up for a song on Amazon and hadn’t had an opportunity to use. 

But what tipped me over the edge was that this chicken recipe might be good enough to win over the chicken skeptics in my household.     For most of the last two decades I’ve had one or more children at home who dislike chicken.  They’ll have fried chicken or wings or the occasional chicken nuggets,  but the usual baked chicken dinners or stir-fries  that grace many American tables were never really a thing in our house.   From both a budgetary and nutrition perspective this is challenging: There are few better and more affordable sources of lean protein than a baked chicken breast. The child who is most anti-chicken is currently living away from home. giving me ample opportunity to dabble with and (hopefully) perfect a weeknight chicken dinner.

I found this recipe in a 1987 fundraiser cookbook from St. Paul Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska.  The recipe’s author was, at the time, a single woman in her mid-30s.  As of this writing, she is recently retired and still living.  While her mother is well-represented in most chapters in the cookbook, Chicken Cutlets with a Swiss Cheese Crust appears to be this woman’s only contribution.   Judging from this one recipe, she is not her mother’s daughter.  Her mother cooks with a traditional mid-century style:  stews with rich gravies, casseroles made from canned soup.  That sort of thing.  The daughter’s Chicken Cutlets recipe is more like a mid-80s Good Housekeeping recipe:  not particularly innovative or avant garde, but certainly a step removed from casseroles.

The original recipe says “four servings”, but makes a heroic amount of food.  I chalk this up, in part, to the gargantuan chicken breasts that populate twenty-first century meat departments.  I intentionally chose the smallest breasts I could find and still ended up creating way-too-big portions for my family.  And we’re not exactly dainty eaters.  A proper portion might be half of one of these monster chicken breasts.  Consider slicing the chicken into two thin breast pieces before pounding flat, or simply cutting the cooked cutlets in half before serving.   A 6 ounce piece of chicken breast should be sufficient for a single serving. 

You’ll need to plan ahead if cooking for a large crew.  The cutlets will need to be fried in batches, which dramatically alters the cooking time.  Each batch takes 8-10 minutes to cook.  If you end up with gargantuan chicken breasts, a ‘batch’ might be a single cutlet.  The cutlets will keep well in a warm oven, but plan ahead.

I made a few adjustments to the recipe.  The first was to substitute Swiss cheese for Gruyère.  This is technically a Swiss cheese, it’s just not the Swiss cheese that Americans usually think of.  Gruyère has a similar flavor profile as hole-y Swiss cheese and melts a little bit easier.  It’s also easier to find a good quality Gruyère, at least where I live.  Around here Swiss is often only available in mass market brands or sliced at the deli counter.  

I also changed up the components of the crust.  The original recipe calls for all-purpose flour, which I swapped for a 50/50 mix of rice and wheat flours.  I stole this idea shamelessly from Japanese family members.  The rice flour gives a crispier crust when fried and helps the batter stay attached to the chicken while cooking.   The recipe is otherwise the same as originally written.

It’s too soon to tell if this wins over the skeptics – our biggest chicken-hater is currently living away from home – but it was a hit with the rest of the family.  This, in spite of the fact that I served 40 Carrots – a weird Cheez Whiz and carrot concoction from the same cookbook – as a side dish.    There’s enough cheese and butter in the crust that it doesn’t need a sauce or gravy to accompany it.  I served it over simple buttered noodles and it was just fine. 

The following day I microwaved one of the leftover cutlets and served it on a sandwich roll with mayonnaise and tomato.  When I make these again that’s probably the approach I’ll take – they make a fantastic sandwich.   I could also see this working as a stand-in for a schnitzel, with spaetzle and vinegared cabbage.   There doesn’t really seem to be any way to do this one wrong.  Enjoy!