This is a love letter to a slab of prime pork pounded flat to the size of dinner plate using a meat mallet, breaded and deep fried. I’m talking about fried breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches, specifically those made in the state of Indiana.

Content Warning: This is not for vegetarians or vegans. Sorry.

The fried breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is Indiana’s unofficial state food. It should have become the official state sandwich in 2023, but the Indiana state legislature failed to pass the bill that would have made it so. More on that later.

Though a few other states, notably Iowa, also have fried breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches on many a menu, Indiana claims to be the source of this deep fried delight.

Breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches are a genuinely regional food. Despite its widespread popularity in Indiana, and a few other places in the Midwest, the deep fried pork tenderloin sandwich is virtually unknown in the rest of nation.

Indiana’s breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is one of the few regional dishes that hasn’t been exploited nationwide by trendy restaurants or fast food outlets, unlike Philly cheese steaks, for example.

Nick’s Kitchen restaurant in Huntington, Indiana, near Fort Wayne, claims to have originated the fried breaded pork tenderloin. Nick’s Kitchen has been in business at the same downtown Huntington location since 1908. The story goes that in the early 20th century Nick’s Kitchen’s original owner, Nick Freienstein, came up with the breaded and fried pork cutlet sandwich as a variation on wiener schnitzel, one of the national dishes of Austria.

Wiener schnitzel is breaded and pan fried veal. A pork tenderloin is hammered out thin with a meat mallet, breaded, deep fried and served on a bun. Nick’s website says it still uses Freienstein’s original recipe.

The sandwich caught on with Hoosiers like it was basketball. More than a century after Freienstein came up with the recipe, breaded pork tenderloins are served dining establishments of all types throughout the state.

I fell in love with Indiana fried pork tenderloin sandwiches while a college student in the Hoosier state. Many consider these sandwiches comfort food. At the time, they were survival food for me. It was a bonus that you could obtain them in many bars.

When I migrated to the West Coast, the delightful fried pork tenderloin was nowhere to be found. Alas, they’re not exactly health food, so it may have been all for the better.

Still, there were those cravings.

On a recent trip to Indiana, I resolved to eat as many pork tenderloins in as many places as possible and to journey to the source – Nick’s Kitchen.

A pilgrimage to Nick’s Kitchen didn’t disappoint. If you need a baseline to judge all other breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches by, there’s no better base line measurement than Nick’s.

My sandwich came screaming hot, spilling way over the edges of the bun, taking up the better part of a cheerful Fiestaware dinner plate. The breading was perfectly crispy golden brown with slightly darker edges. The meat was very tender, pounded out to about a quarter of an inch thick.

Nick’s represents perfection in breaded pork tenderloin land. It is the acme of breaded pork tenderloins, at least in my opinion.

But saying that one place’s breaded pork tenderloin is better than another’s breaded pork tenderloin is a very relative thing. All pork tenderloins are inherently good, if you love breaded pork tenderloins.

The only ways to experience a bad pork tenderloin is if poor ingredients were used or the person doing the cooking failed epically (or both).

There are probably as many variations on the theme of breaded pork tenderloins as there are establishments serving them. And there is no accounting for each individual’s taste. Some people prefer theirs with thicker meat, or heavier breading and so on.

The same goes for toppings. I like mine with onions, pickles and mayo, but will sometimes also add ketchup or swap mayo for ketchup. Some people want lettuce. Some want tomatoes. Or both. Others do not. Other folks swear by yellow mustard or even the have audacity to combine all three condiments.

Some establishments will claim to have the “best” breaded pork tenderloin or someone will declare they ate the “the best” pork tenderloin of their lives at a certain place.

The fact is, every place the claims to have the best breaded pork tenderloins is telling the truth. The writer who says they ate “the best” breaded pork tenderloin at certain place is 100 percent is correct. The best Indiana breaded pork tenderloin is the one you’re eating. If you are eating a breaded pork tenderloin in a certain place, it’s the best tenderloin you will eat there.

If there is any such thing as an expert on Indiana fried breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches that would be Indianapolis-based musician, comedian and story teller Rick Garrett. Garrett calls himself The Tenderloin Connoisseur, and he has a blog to prove it.

For the past 15 years, Garrett has been sampling and posting reviews of pork tenderloin sandwiches at eateries across the state. He has amassed some 270 reviews (with the help of a few guest reviews) on his blog, All Tenderloins All The Time, to create what has to be the most comprehensive Indiana pork tenderloin database in existence.

“Rick believes that the Tenderloin is a true piece of Hoosier identity. Like us Hoosiers, a true tenderloin isn’t fancy or showy, but just something solid you can count on,” says his blog’s About page.

Fried pork tenderloin sandwiches are so emblematic of Indiana they have become a tourist attraction.

The Indiana Foodways Alliance, a non-profit that says it is “dedicated to the celebration, promotion, and preservation of the authentic food culture of Indiana,” has created The Tenderloin Lovers Trail. The organization has actually created three tenderloin trails – north, south and central. In all, 78 locations serving breaded pork tenderloins are on the trail maps.

Hamilton County, located to the northeast of Indianapolis, has its own Original Tenderloin Trail and promotes Tenderloin Tuesdays. In 2024, a whopping 66 restaurants on Hamilton County’s Tenderloin Trail will offer discount on the sandwich July 2-30. The county’s tourism website offers both written and video instructions on various ways to eat the often giant tenderloin sandwiches.

The tenderloin trails represent just a small fraction of all the Indiana eateries serving the sandwich.

Foodie website Mashed recently named the pork tenderloin as Indiana’s favorite comfort food.

So why isn’t the fried pork tenderloin sandwich the official Indiana state food or sandwich?

In 2023, the Indiana legislature bungled an effort to make the pork tenderloin the official state sandwich in the fifth-largest pork producing state in the nation, home to more than 3,000 pig farmers who raise approximately 4 million hogs.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in January 2023 that a bill would designate the breaded pork tenderloin as Indiana’s official state sandwich. The Indiana Pork Producers Association was all for the legislation, according to Inside INdiana Business.

“We know from many, many food trails from websites from social media followings that that breaded pork tenderloin has a giant following in Indiana,” Jeanette Merritt of the Indiana Pork Producers Association told Inside INdiana Business, stating the obvious.

Gov. Holcomb was confident SB 322, actual pork legislation, would enshrine the pork tenderloins as the official state sandwich. After all, Indiana officially named popcorn (Purdue grad food scientist and popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher was from Brazil, Indiana) the state snack in 2021 and declared the firefly the official state insect in 2018.

Some 40 states have official state foods as well as a slew of other official edibles including state fruits, state vegetables, state grains, state beans, state cookies, state desserts, state sweeteners, state nuts, state herbs, state jellies, state treats, state pies, state cobblers, state breads, and state dairy products, according to the Snack Stack blog.

Wisconsin has a state pastry – kringle. Vermont has a state flavor – maple. Oklahoma has an official state meal. Louisiana has a state cuisine, gumbo, in addition to a state meat pie called Natchitoches. There are 22 official state beverages, most of which are milk.

“We’re going to settle the question once and for all about what is the official state sandwich of Indiana,” Holcomb said in the Indianapolis Business Journal. “I will not let that get away from us.”

Naming the breaded pork tenderloin the official state sandwich or food would seem like a legislative no-brainer, a bill that could be easily served up by lawmakers.

Well, not so much.

The bill went by the wayside in what was apparently a busy legislative session, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. There were very important things on the legislative agenda like banning care for transgender children (HB 1608), restricting voting rights (HB 1334), increasing taxes on electric vehicles (HB 1050), and restricting the definition of “service” animals to dogs and miniature ponies (HB 1354).

“Providing the formal acknowledgment of the pork tenderloin as the official state sandwich may have been too much for legislators to digest, as the bill will join others that failed this year (2023),” Laura Merrifield Wilson wrote in the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

As it turns out, the naming of official state foods has a fraught history, the Snack Stack blog reports.

Snack Stack cites the 1988 case of the cranberry muffin in Wisconsin (that state is major producer of cranberries) when a group of second graders in the town of Merrill, Wisc., proposed the baked good as the official state food. The students worked with their state senator, Democrat Lloyd Kincaid to introduce the legislation. The students sent 150 letters to cranberry growers and legislators to promote the bill, and even traveled to the state capitol, Madison, to lobby for the bill.

Instead of inspiring the children, Wisconsin legislators gave the little future voters a lesson in bare knuckle politics, loading the bill up with changes. The bill came to the floor at the end of the legislative sessions and the supporters of the bill eventually gave up because lawmakers just wanted to go home.

“It really and truly was derisive the way they did it,” the students’ teacher, Elaine Tabor told The Country Today, a newspaper in Eau Claire, Wisc. “I mean, these are second graders. It didn’t cost the state anything. I felt very badly the way it was handled. It was a literal slap in the face. I don’t know what this is teaching the students.”

Meanwhile, published reports indicate the Indiana legislature may try again to correct its grievous 2023 error, and make the pork tenderloin as the official state sandwich.

If, like me, you live in an area where pork tenderloin sandwiches are hard to come by, the best thing is to do it yourself and make your own.

How To Make Your Own Indiana Fried Breaded Pork Tenderloins

The two key variables in making breaded pork tenderloins are the thickness of the meat and the seasoning of the breading. Some eateries and recipes call for more spices or larger quantities of black pepper, adding spices like paprika. I added a lot of garlic powder and it tasted great, but I also think garlic makes almost anything better.

The recipe below was adapted from one on the Indiana Destination Development Corporation’s Visit Indiana website. I used saltines instead of the Ritz crackers called for in the recipe on the Visit Indiana website. There are dozens of breaded pork tenderloin recipes online.

After making the tenderloins, I think that four eggs for the breading is probably too many. Two will probably do. One sleeve of saltines makes more than enough breading.

The size of the tenderloin before hammering and cooking is relative. I cut my about an inch thick and pounded them to about ¼ inch thick. As noted below, don’t make them too thin.

I also used buttermilk to make the dredge, mostly because I happened to have some in the fridge.

I cooked mine in vegetable oil in a large cast iron skillet.

See the video for exciting live action pork tenderloin production.

Ingredients:

Four 5-ounce center-cut pork loins
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 sleeve of saltine crackers
2 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp black pepper 2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp of pepper
4 eggs
1 cup milk
40 ounces of vegetable oil

Prepare The Pork:

Butterfly cut each piece of pork loin but cutting in half longways almost all the way through. This should allow you to double the size of the loin.
Lay each piece on a cutting board in between wax paper and pound out to 1/4-1/2 inch thickness.
Do not pound out too thin.

Prepare Breading:

Whisk eggs and milk together in a bowl.
Crush the crackers and add them to a bowl with flour.
Add salt, garlic, and black pepper to the cracker/flour mixture.

Bread Tenderloins:

Individually dredge each loin piece through the wet egg mixture and then into the dry mixture bowl.
Gently shake to remove excess breading.

Fry Tenderloins:

Pre-heat skillet or deep fryer to 350°.
Deep fry until golden brown.

Enjoy.