Wiener schnitzel — the iconic dish of Vienna. Such a simple thing and so good. I'm going
to show you how to do schnitzels with various meats, and various fats. This is the kind
of home-frying that I can really get behind because it requires very little oil.
Schnitzel is just the German term for any very thin cut of meat that's been breaded
and fried, but Weiner schnitzel is veal. It can't be anything else. I've got two veal
scaloppini here — probably the most common way veal is sold in the U.S. — very thin
slices and we're gonna make them even thinner. A layer of plastic wrap on top and I will
use my smooth meat mallet to pound these as flat as possible without tearing them apart.
You might feel that eating a juvenile animal is particularly cruel. And you could certainly
argue that. However, it is also true that the industry here in the U.S. and many other
countries has phased out the practice of keeping calves confined to crates. Just FYI.
Alright, I am 100% on team season the meat, not the breading. I would have no idea how
much salt to put into a pile of flour, but I can look at a piece of meat and judge how
much salt I will want on it. Just remember, it's really thin. You're not seasoning an
inch-thick steak here. Go easy.
Schnitzel is so thin that you absolutely cannot tell in the end whether the seasoning goes
all the way through the breading or if it just went on the meat. I would challenge you
to blind taste test if you disagree.
Into some plain flour, and everything here should be as light and thin as possible. Knock
off any excess. Now we need an egg. Hey, it's a double-yolker! I'ma save that for breakfast.
One egg is more than enough, and I'll just beat that smooth in the plate with a fork.
In goes the meat, and again, get off any excess.
Now, breadcrumbs. You could make your own breadcrumbs from stale bread, which is of
course the traditional way. I left this bread out overnight, and then I'll throw it in my
food processor. You ever wonder why people hold onto the food processor as it goes? Because
it you don't, it might gradually walk off the counter.
Alright, I've been blitzing those for like 5 minutes, and they are not fine enough. Not
for schnitzel. Fact is, a lot of the bread you buy these days, at least where I live,
is made with dough conditioners that delay staling, and as result this bread just isn't
dry or hard enough yet to make fine breadcrumbs.
You could certainly just buy some breadcrumbs. These are very fine and bone dry. Another
option to consider is Japanese breadcrumbs. Panko. Obviously not traditional for schnitzel,
but nothing else is remotely as crispy as panko. The crumbs are way too big and jagged
for something this delicate, but you can grind them up in the food processor and make them
fine.
I'll show you one piece in the regular store-bought breadcrumbs and one piece in the blitzed panko.
The key here is to not press the meat into the breadcrumbs. Light, light, light. Just
let whatever wants to stick stick.
And we'll bring these immediately over to our hot clarified butter – certainly one
of the traditional fats for this. You can buy it, but I'll show you how I made this.
Half a pound or a quarter kilo of butter into a little saucepan, and then turn the heat
on like medium low. Just let it melt and then boil for a long time — this took almost
half an hour. The milk proteins rise to the top, while the sugars and water sink to the
bottom. When the bubbling really slows down, you know most of the water is gone, and I
think that's where the traditional Germanic clarified butter, "Butterschmalz," usually
stops. Indian ghee goes the extra step of letting this brown a little bit, and I think
I did brown this a little but that's fine. If you just wanted to buy a jar of ghee, that'd
work too.
I've got a strainer with a paper towel in it, and I'm just gonna strain the butter through.
For good measure, I'm gonna strain it again on the way into my big, 12-inch fry pan. If
there's any milk solids still in the butter, they will burn terribly when we fry our schnitzel.
But that is perfect, right there. Pure butterfat — no protein or sugar that would burn, and
no water that would burst and pop at the medium-high heat that I'm using.
With this kind of thing, I think the easiest way to test the temperature is to dip your
meat's toes into the oil. If it sizzles a lot, you're good to drop the rest in.
So they say the schnitzel should be "swimming" in the fat — meaning there's enough fat
in the pan that the meat is floating above the metal surface, but not so much fat that
the meat is submerged. That would be deep frying. I think I've got a hair too much fat
in this pan.
One way I've found myself parting with tradition on this is I like to flip the schnitzels multiple
times as they cook — basically constant flipping, just like the technique of constantly
flipping steak. I think it works here for the same reasons. It helps things cook a little
more evenly, and it stops you from being surprised. Like I almost burned those dark spots where
the big one touched the bottom of the pan, and I definitely would have burned it if I'd
waited to flip until halfway through the cooking. You flip often, there's no surprises. You
can assess and adjust the heat, move things to a cooler part of the pan, etc.
With a piece of meat this thin, you can be virtually guaranteed that the inside will
be done by the time the outside looks done. Out these come to a rack or some paper towels
to drain and rest. Normal breadcrumbs are on the right, and boy can you tell. You can
already see the panko crumbs on the left are crispier.
On the plate goes my favored of the traditional side dishes for schnitzel — cucumber salad.
Also traditional would be fries or potato salad, but I don't need to be having carbs
with my carb-encrusted protein. Plus I freaking love a cucumber salad.
I've got an English cucumber here. In the U.S. this variety comes wrapped in plastic,
because the skins have not been waxed. That makes them good to eat without peeling. And
you just slice them as thin as you can. Any cucumber is fine, but English cucumbers have
this dense texture that works really well for a thin-sliced salad. Into a bowl those
go. Not everybody likes onion in this — I definitely do. About half a red onion for
that much cucumber and I'm gonna cut it once down the middle before slicing thin. This'll
give me quarter-rounds — a manageable size for a salad. In those go.
And then a whole bunch of fresh dill. You could get away with dried dill, but you'd
want to use a lot less. Then I'm just eyeballing equal quantities of white vinegar and any
neutral oil for the dressing. You can always add more later. Pepper, a pinch of salt, and
then the traditional big pinch of sugar. Stir that around, and you want to make that hours
before you eat, maybe the day before. It'll basically pickle a little bit in the fridge.
A ton of moisture will come out of the veg, and then you can give it a stir, taste it
and see if you want more vinegar or anything else. Delicious salad.
And there's our panko Weiner schnitzel. I like some fresh parsley on top, and then the
sauce — an ample squeeze of fresh lemon. I would call that essential. That is the sauce.
Really crispy and tasty. You might be thinking, "That's so bland. Where's the seasoning?"
Well, with something this simple, you can really taste the core elements shining through.
The taste of the clarified butter is really strong. To me, it's the dominant flavor here.
How does that other cutlet stack up — the one with "normal" breadcrumbs? It's good,
but it's not as crispy. Now, I'm sure a 9th degree schnitzel master could make it crispy.
They've got all kinds of tricks. There's this thing where they shake the pan aggressively
to make the breading separate partially from the meat, causing it to fry into something
like a phyllo shell. That's cool, but I am not a 9th degree schnitzel master, and if
you aren't either, I highly recommend panko that you've blitzed into a fine powder. It's
just foolproof. Crispy every time.
Could this work with beef itself of veal? Well yeah, German and Austrian immigrants
in Texas made it with beef and that became chicken-fried steak, one of the great American
dishes.
But let's try making it with pork now. That'd be "schweineschnitzel." I've got two boneless
pork loin chops and I'm gonna butterfly them — just cut them to make them half their
original thickness, stop right before you go all the way through, and open it up like
a book. Plastic wrap on top. I hate wasting it, but from a food safety perspective, this
is probably the practice I should be advocating. It just prevents bacteria-laden juice from
splattering around your kitchen. Look how big those suckers are!
I'll season them as before. Flour, egg, breadcrumbs. Yes, that's the fine panko. And let's reach
for another traditional schnitzel fat — lard. A few big spoonfuls into a hot pan. It melts
right away.
Medium-high heat. Dip the pork's toes in — sure seems hot enough. And again, I'll flip it
a few times. When she's outwardly done, she's done. Time to drain and cool.
Here's another common version of that cucumber salad — this is the creamy version. It's
exactly the same, except instead of oil and vinegar dressing, it's vinegar and sour cream.
You can just eyeball it — make it as creamy as you want it. Let it sit in the fridge a
long time before tasting and adding vinegar or anything else it needs.
Check out the size of that cutlet! Back where I used live in Indiana, they would put a comically
too-small-for-the-job hamburger bun on that with some mustard, onions and pickles. That's
another German-descended classic they call a tenderloin sandwich, even though it's usually
made with loin, not tenderloin.
Anyway, this is great. Though, don't use the lard unless you like for your pig to really
taste like pig, which this definitely does. And I think I like the creamy version of the
salad almost as much as the other one.
OK, last thing, let's make a chicken schnitzel. The chicken breasts that I get at the store
are so huge that I'm not gonna bother butterflying this. I'm just cutting all the way through.
That half is easily one portion on its own. I'll pound it out — you could use a rolling
pin or a heavy saucepan for this. But be prepared that chicken tends to shred and break apart
more when pounded out. So be careful.
Season that and dust it in the flour, and if you wanted to kick up the flavor a bit,
I quite like a big spoonful of mustard mixed in with the egg. No idea if it's traditional
but it's real tasty.
And we can fry this one it good ol' vegetable oil. Totally fine to use a neutral frying
oil for any schnitzel. Dip the meat's toes in — oops, not hot enough. Try again — still
not hot enough. And there we go.
The mustard is delicious, but be aware that it will contribute to uneven coloring on the
crust. She's crispy, she's brown, she's done. And if she's still a little raw in the center,
she'll probably finish cooking via cary-over during resting.
That mustard in the breading really makes this come alive. By the way, I would be conservative
with my salt on these cutlets because you can always salt them some more at the table
and I actually prefer that. I like that heterogeneity.
I suppose that whole heterogeneous seasoning thing is becoming one of my catchphrases,
along with this one. You know what this means? Sure you do. It's our little secret code — that's
what makes it fun. And yes, it is not on a t-shirt, and yes, you can now buy it, for
a very limited time. We will take pre-orders on this for the next 14 days — two weeks
from the day this video goes live. I'm working with a company called Bonfire. Took my a long
time to find the right company to work with. I like these folks. Bonfire will take your
preorders for the next two weeks, and at the end of that we'll see how many we've got,
then we'll print the shirts and then send them out to you. The cost is $20, plus shipping
and tax, which is obviously gonna depend a lot on where you live. It's a nice, high-quality
soft shirt, and we opted for the screen-printing instead of the laser-printing, so this looks
really good and it's gonna last a long time. Nothing fancy here. There's no color options.
It's unisex. I'm wearing a medium right now. Lauren is wearing an extra-small. And you
wanna see what's on the back? Absolutely nothing is on the back. There's no like, "Go to adamragusea.com
or youtube.com/aragusea," no identifying marks or explanatory language whatsoever. Just our
little secret code. You want a t-shirt? Do you pre-order in the next two weeks. Link
is down in the description. Now go make some schnitzel.