American cooking Recipes & regional stories

Skillet & Sage

A culinary journey through the fifty states

The regional table / Indiana

Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Published September 22, 2026 · Indiana

A pale gold breaded pork cutlet overhanging a small hamburger bun by three inches on every side, with mustard, pickle chips and raw onion visible under the edge
The bun is a normal bun. That is the whole joke, and it only works if the meat was pounded thin rather than cut thick. AI-generated illustration.
Jump to Recipe

The cut named on the menu is not the cut in the sandwich, and once you know which one is which, everything else about how it is made stops being strange.

Two different pieces of meat are involved and the federal cutting literature keeps them carefully apart. Purdue Extension — Indiana's land-grant university, writing about the state's own animal — publishes AS-671-W, "At-Home Hog Slaughter", by Brian Richert, Matt Claeys and Amanda Mosiman of its Animal Science extension group with Amanda Blair and Christina Bakker of South Dakota State, produced 10 August 2020. When it reaches the point of breaking a side down, it tells you to find the tenderloin and use it as a landmark: "Locate the tenderloin, a small round muscle that sits just under the backbone. At the ham end, make a mark at the edge of the tenderloin." The United States Department of Agriculture says the same thing in Farmers' Bulletin 2138, "Slaughtering, Cutting and Processing Pork on the Farm", in the 1973 revision — cut the thick loin away from the thin bacon strip "at the edge of the tenderloin muscle at the ham end", and then note what comes off the loin itself: "Three kinds of chops are cut from the pork loin — shoulder end chops, center chops, and chops from the ham end." The tenderloin is a small round muscle used to locate a cut. The loin is the large one the chops come out of. A sandwich this size cannot be made of the first and is always made of the second.

The federal label rules keep the distinction in plain sight. 9 CFR 317.344, "Identification of major cuts of meat products", lists the cuts a retailer must carry nutrition information for, and the pork entries read: pork loin chop, pork loin country style ribs, pork loin top loin chop boneless, pork loin rib chop, pork spareribs, pork loin tenderloin, pork loin sirloin roast, pork shoulder blade steak, pork loin top roast boneless. Every one of them but the spareribs and the shoulder begins with the words pork loin, and the tenderloin is one item on that list, not the list itself. What Indiana does to the loin is the opposite of what the older printed sandwich did to the tenderloin. The Jackson Herald of Jefferson, Georgia ran a syndicated sandwich column on 13 May 1926 and reran it on 23 September the same year, and in it: "Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches. — Wipe two large fine-grained pork tenderloins with a cloth dampened in cold water. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper and dredge with flour; lard with thin strips of salt pork and roast, basting often. Remove and chill. Cut into thin slices and place between slices of bread buttered with horseradish butter." Actual tenderloin, larded, roasted, chilled, sliced, served cold, and nothing fried about it. Indiana's sandwich took the name and kept none of the method. The claim usually attached to its invention — a Huntington lunch counter, 1908 — is the house's own and no document behind it could be opened here, because Indiana's newspaper portal at newspapers.library.in.gov answered 403 to every request on 22 September 2026.

Why this version works

Loin, pounded, not tenderloin, sliced. A whole pork tenderloin weighs about a pound and tapers; flattened, it tears into a ragged strip. A centre-cut loin slice is a single wide-grained muscle with no seams running through it, which is why it will take a beating out to an eighth of an inch and come off the board in one piece. Buy the cut the sandwich is actually made of and the hardest step gets easy.

The federal breading cap is a useful ceiling. 9 CFR 319.880 is one sentence long: "The amount of batter and breading used as a coating for breaded product shall not exceed 30 percent of the weight of the finished breaded product." That is the line between a breaded cutlet and a crouton with a secret. Weigh the cutlet before and after if you like; a properly pressed coating on a thin loin slice lands well under it, and anything that lands over it has too much crumb and not enough pork.

Cracker crumbs rather than fine dry breadcrumbs. Crushed saltines are coarse, salty and already baked dry, so they brown quickly and set into a rigid shell that holds its shape off the meat. Fine crumbs pack tight against the cutlet and go sandy; panko puffs and shatters. The shell is the reason the overhang stays flat instead of drooping.

An eighth of an inch, because the crust has to set before the meat overcooks. Pork loin is lean and goes chalky fast. At an eighth of an inch the cutlet is cooked through in the time the breading takes to colour — two or three minutes — so there is no window in which you are waiting on the inside and ruining the outside.

Ingredient notes

Bun: a plain soft four-inch hamburger bun, the cheaper the better. The contrast is the point: a big bun fights the cutlet for attention and a good crusty roll makes the whole thing hard to bite. Butter the cut faces and toast them, which keeps the bottom from going to paste.

Pork: boneless centre-cut pork loin, one and a quarter pounds, cut into four slices about five ounces each. Ask for loin and not tenderloin at the counter and be ready to be corrected; the names on the case follow 9 CFR 317.344 even when the menu does not. A loin slice cut half an inch thick pounds out to roughly eight inches across, which is what you want against a four-inch bun.

Crackers: about sixty saltines, crushed to coarse crumbs with a rolling pin rather than a processor — you want sand and gravel together, not flour. Saltines carry their own salt, so the seasoning below assumes them; with unsalted crumbs add half a teaspoon more salt to the crumb mixture.

Frying fat: a neutral oil with a high smoke point, an inch and a half deep in a wide pan. This is frying in the federal sense rather than sautéing — the cutlet floats and does not touch the bottom — and a shallow pan will give you a pale ring where the meat rested on the metal.

Step by step

  1. Cut and butterfly. Cut the loin into four slices about 1/2 inch thick. Lay each flat and cut it almost in half horizontally, stopping short of the far edge, then open it out like a book. Trim off any fat cap.
  2. Pound it out. Put one cutlet between two sheets of plastic wrap and work from the centre outward with the flat side of a mallet until it is an even 1/8 inch and roughly 8 inches across. Move outward, not downward; hammering in place makes holes. Repeat with the rest and salt them on both sides with 1 teaspoon of the salt.
    A broad, thin raw pork loin cutlet between sheets of plastic wrap, beside a flat-faced meat mallet.
    Pound from the centre outward to an even 1/8 inch, keeping the cutlet intact. AI-generated illustration.
  3. Set up three trays. Flour seasoned with the pepper and the garlic powder in the first, the eggs beaten with the milk in the second, the cracker crumbs with the remaining salt in the third. Wide, flat trays — a cutlet this size will not fit in a bowl.
  4. Bread and rest. Flour a cutlet and shake it off, pass it through the egg and let the excess run, then lay it in the crumbs and press firmly with your palm on both sides. Set the breaded cutlets on a rack for 10 minutes so the coating hydrates and grips.
  5. Fry. Heat the oil to 360°F. Fry one cutlet at a time, 2 to 3 minutes a side, until the crust is a deep even gold and the meat reads 145°F at the thickest point. Drain on a rack, not on paper, and salt lightly the moment it comes out.
  6. Build. Toast the buttered buns. Put mustard and pickle chips on the bottom, the cutlet on top of them, raw onion on top of that, and the bun lid in the middle of all the overhang. Eat it from the edges in.
If the breading slid off in the oil, the cutlet went in wet or straight from the crumbs — pat the meat dry before flouring and give the breaded cutlets their ten minutes on the rack. If the crust browned before the pork was done, the oil was above 375°F or the cutlet was thicker than an eighth of an inch in the middle; drop the heat and pound the next one further out from the centre. If the meat curled into a bowl in the pan, there was a strip of silverskin or fat left along one edge, and trimming it is the fix.

Storage and make-ahead

These are worth eating in the first ten minutes and are poor leftovers. If you must keep one, refrigerate the cutlet bare and unbuilt for up to 2 days and reheat it on a rack in a 400°F oven for 8 minutes; the crust comes back about three-quarters of the way. A microwave turns it to wet cardboard.

Breaded raw cutlets freeze well for a month, stacked between sheets of parchment on a tray. Fry them from frozen at 350°F, adding about 2 minutes a side.

What to serve with it

Something sharp and cold, because the plate is otherwise all fat and starch: a dill pickle spear, or a vinegar slaw, or sliced tomatoes with salt. Crinkle-cut fries are the Indiana default and nobody will thank you for a salad.

A pale gold breaded pork cutlet overhanging a small hamburger bun by three inches on every side, with mustard, pickle chips and raw onion visible under the edge

From the recipe box / Indiana

Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

A slice of boneless pork loin pounded out to twice the width of its bun, breaded in cracker crumbs and fried until the crust is rigid — the sandwich Indiana names after a muscle it does not contain.

Prep
25 min
Cook
15 min
Total
40 min
Serves
4
Calories
690 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Cut the loin into four 1/2-inch slices, butterfly each one and open it flat.
  2. Pound each cutlet between plastic wrap from the centre outward to an even 1/8 inch, about 8 inches across, and salt with 1 teaspoon salt.
  3. Set out seasoned flour, egg beaten with milk, and cracker crumbs with the remaining salt in three wide trays.
  4. Flour, egg and crumb each cutlet, pressing the crumbs on hard, then rest them on a rack 10 minutes.
  5. Fry one at a time in 360°F oil, 2–3 minutes a side, to a deep gold crust and 145°F inside. Drain on a rack and salt.
  6. Toast the buttered buns, lay on mustard and pickles, add the cutlet and onion, and cap it.

Nutrition

Fat31 g (6 g saturated)
Sodium1150 mg
Protein42 g
Serving1 sandwich
Calories690
Cholesterol135 mg
Carbohydrates47 g (6 g sugar, 2 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Is the overhang just a stunt?

It is a consequence rather than a stunt. Pounding lean loin thin is what makes it cook through before the crust burns, and a slice big enough to be a meal at an eighth of an inch is necessarily wider than any bun. The size follows from the thickness; the thickness follows from the meat.

What about lettuce and tomato?

Common enough in Indiana and entirely allowed, but they wet the crust from the inside. Mustard, pickle and raw onion are the standing order because they are all sharp, cold and more or less dry. If you want tomato, put it on the plate.

Why cracker crumbs instead of breadcrumbs?

Because they set into a rigid shell instead of a soft coat. Crushed saltines are coarse and dry and already carry salt, so they brown fast and hold their own shape once fried, which is what keeps three inches of unsupported cutlet from sagging off the edge of the bun.

Can I make it with an actual pork tenderloin?

You can, and it will be a decent cutlet and a bad version of this sandwich. A tenderloin is a small round muscle weighing about a pound, so you get narrow medallions that tear at the edges when you pound them and never reach the width the whole thing is built around. If you use it, cut it into four pieces, pound them gently, and accept a sandwich that fits its bun.