Wiener Schnitzel

Ingredients

• Veal escalope — 150 g each4
• Plain flour80 g
• Eggs3
• Breadcrumbs — fine, from white bread200 g
• Clarified butter or lard400 g
• Lemon1
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Beat the meat between two sheets of film to three millimetres. Use the flat side of the mallet, not the toothed one: teeth tear the fibres.

   10 min

2. 2

   Beat the eggs to an even liquid without foam. Salt the meat and coat it in flour, then egg, then crumbs.

   8 min

3. 3

   Do not press the crumbs on. The coating has to sit loosely; only then will it lift and puff.

4. 4

   Heat a centimetre of fat to 170 °C and lower the schnitzel in. Fry two minutes, swirling the pan the whole time so fat washes over the top.

   6 min

5. 5

   Turn it and give it ninety seconds more, to gold. Drain on a rack and serve immediately with a wedge of lemon.

   4 min

About the dish

In Austria only veal may legally be called Wiener Schnitzel. Pork exists and is sold everywhere, but on a menu it has to be called something else — Schnitzel Wiener Art.

The mark of a proper schnitzel is a coating that has lifted away from the meat and puffed. That comes from the quantity of fat: the schnitzel should float in it rather than sit on it.

The pan is swirled during frying. Hot fat washing over the top is what creates the blister; in a still pan the crumb simply bakes onto the meat.

Worth knowing

• — A schnitzel does not wait. Five minutes off the pan and the coating dampens from within; the blister is gone.
• — The crumbs should be fine and from white bread with no crust. Panko gives a Japanese texture, not a Viennese one.
• — The classic sides are potato salad or boiled potatoes with parsley. Sauce is not served with a Wiener Schnitzel.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

38 g

More from Austria

• Apfelstrudel — Apples with cinnamon and raisins in a dough stretched until it is transparent. It is pulled by hand, never rolled.