Austin's Drive In - Whopper Sandwich

My husband grew up working in his father's drive-in restaurant (Austin's Drive In).

He and his brothers started out with jobs like swatting flies and picking up garbage from the lot, then progressed to the position of  "soda jerks" and eventually to knowing the business inside and out.

One of the stories they like to tell about those days involves preparing pork tenderloin cutlets for a sandwich that eventually was re-named "Whopper Sandwich". It was a best seller.  (This was long before Burger King so no problems there).

I think they each had a different experience making those sandwiches and a different story to tell.

The process involved tenderizing the cutlets with a mallet, then dipping them in egg, then in cracker meal, then later fried to produce a beautiful golden patty that stuck out the sides of the bun all the way around.

Lonnie's story is that as a pre-teen, he started challenging himself to see how big of a patty he could make from those small pork cutlets. I guess he kept dipping and working in those cracker crumbs until the patties were coming out as big as saucers!

His Dad had to tell him to hold back and not make them so big.

Then there is the story of one of the younger brothers assigned to the breading task... each time he did it, he ended up with such a thick coating of the breading on his hands that he couldn't close his fingers!

Fun memories for them!

So, a few months ago, one of the nieces, sent out a group family email, saying she wanted to make Whopper Sandwiches for her teenagers and wanted to know the original recipe for them.

The brothers described the ingredients and the method, but in the end, she couldn't find cracker meal in her area, so she had to make substitutions.

Her family loved the sandwiches and she had fun with her daughters making them.

With all the talk of making Whopper Sandwiches, Lonnie started craving them too. Of course I had to try making some for him.

I bought thin boneless center cut pork chops but I couldn't find cracker crumbs in any of the grocery stores around here either.  So, I spent forever crushing saltines to use.

I don't have a tenderizing mallet so I scored the chops on both sides with a knife...

...then used a potato masher to flatten them.

I did the egg wash and crumb coating twice, added salt and pepper, then fried them (about 1 inch of oil) in a skillet.

They came out pretty good.

I stirred up a simple version of 1000 Island dressing (tarter sauce and ketchup) and grilled the buns.  Lonnie added lettuce, tomato and onion to complete the sandwich as he remembered it.

He enjoyed it and said it was close to the original.

Next time, I'm going to get him to do the breading and see if he can come up with some saucer sized patties - just like old times!

And, I should add, I have since found cracker meal...it's stocked near the seafood department at the grocery, and labeled as fish fry mix...but the ingredients list is just cracker meal.