Austrian · Main
Wiener Schnitzel
- Intermediate
- 40 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light.
Ingredients
- 4 veal cutlets (pork makes it Schnitzel Wiener Art; Vienna checks the paperwork)
- Flour, 2 beaten eggs + splash of cream, fine breadcrumbs from stale rolls
- Clarified butter (butterschmalz), 2cm deep: not oil, if you want the true taste
- Lemon wedges; lingonberry jam
- Erdäpfelsalat (potato-cucumber salad) alongside
The skills inside
The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pound cutlets between plastic to 4mm: even, thin, unbroken.
- Flour, egg, crumbs: pressing NEVER; the crumbs should barely cling.
- Fry in deep clarified butter, SWIRLING the pan constantly so butter waves over the top, 90 seconds a side.
- The crust should souffléd away from the meat in golden waves. Lemon, immediately.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter 80 recipes
- The coat is continuous before it goes anywhere near the fat: held up to the light, no bare patch of food shows through anywhere, seams and thin edges included.
- It is bonded rather than resting on top: a gentle shake sheds loose dust only, and the coat does not slide off as a sheet when the piece is handled.
- It bubbles hard and steadily from the moment it enters the fat, and the bubbling visibly slows as it finishes; those bubbles are the surface water leaving, and a quiet entry means the fat is too cool.
- Out and drained, it is an even gold-brown all over and it is still crisp several minutes later on a rack; a coat that softens within a minute of coming out never lost its water.
- Broken open, there is no paste of raw flour under the crust and no hollow gap where the coat has lifted away from the food.
Where it goes wrong The fat was below temperature or the pan was crowded, so the coat drank fat instead of sealing against it: it comes out pale and heavy, greasy to the fingers, and slumps off the food as it cools.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner or dry Riesling
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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