Schnitzel

A picture from a reader, Victoria, on her first schnitzel following the recipe below. Notice she has placed the meat on a drying rack to help drain the grease away — good job!!

Ingredients

Meat fillets of choice: veal, pork tenderloin, boneless pork chops, or chicken breasts breasts
salt + pepper
3T oil
1C flour
2 large whisked eggs
1C bread crumbs
1 lemon sliced into 4 wedges

Nutrition (estimates)

4oz Pork fillet 300c, 23k, 18p, 0f
3.5oz Chicken breast fillet 297c, 16.32k, 15.59p, .9f
3.4oz Veal fillet 228c, 9.85k, 27.29p, .3f

Directions

First, wash hands and setup a meat (or veggie station depending upon your food choices). For meat, be sure to have meat shears, a sharp knife, a folded piece of parchment paper and scale, skillet, baking sheet with cooling rack, and tongs.

This is a good video on making Schnitzel. I have two notes: 1) Do not use a wooden cutting board for meat, this is a matter of keeping a clean kitchen, get a plastic one reserved just for meat use. 2) Do not place cooked meat on paper towels as they just sit on grease, put fried food on a cooling rack over a baking sheet to drain the grease away from the food.

2) Meat Prep: Pull out your plastic meat cutting board. Weigh the meat first after removing any bone or skin (save for stock). Place the parchment paper on the scale to keep it clean. Then cut the meat into individual serving sizes. Wrap a serving into plastic (or put into a sandwich baggie) and pound the meat thin but not so thin it breaks apart. Season with salt and pepper on both sides and place on the baking sheet. Do them all. Then wash hands, cutting board, knife, and scale before proceeding. Toss the parchment paper and the plastic into recycle.

3) Prepare a dipping station: On a plate (or pie tin) add the flour. Then in a bowl whisk the eggs until they are runny off the whisk. Finally add another plate (or pie tin) and add the bread crumbs. Move the baking sheet nearby, along with the tongs.

4) Heat a cast iron skillet, add oil, and wait till the oil shimmers.

5) Using the tongs, dip the pounded/seasoned meat or eggplant in the flour, then eggs, and then the bread crumbs. Shake off excess flour and bread crumbs. Placed the dipped food onto the baking sheet so you can have them all ready to cook. You may find you need more of the dipping ingredients, it depends upon how much you pounded the meat, what size they are and how frugal you are with the ingredients.

6) Place the prepared meat in the skillet to start cooking. Do not overcrowd the skillet, but put as many in the pan as you can. You are looking for some tannish-brown color on the edges of the meat nearest to the pan, which is a sign to turn them over. You want them golden brown, not dark brown (although I will eat those ones too). Place cooked meat on a drying rack on another baking sheet to keep from sitting in oil; we want the oil to fully drain.

6) Traditionally, serve with a slice of lemon.

Diet

[x] Flexitarian + Omnivore
[x] Keto
[O] Mediterranean
[O] Lectin Avoidance: wheat, eggs
[x] Oxalate Avoidance
[x] Purine Avoidance
[x] Allergies: GLUTEN, EGGS

— with changes —
[x] Weight Maint: If eaten with other foods this is a portion issue
[x] Gluten free: use rice flour and non-gluten bread crumbs
[x] Vegetarian + Pescatarian + Vegan: use thinly sliced Japanese egg plants (recipe)

Comments

Generally, cooking Schnitzel is the last step in the German meal prep since it really does go fast. By the time I cook the meat, the other food is ready to serve so I pop things in the oven to stay warm until everything is ready to be served.

Traditionally, Wiener Schnitzel must be veal. They are are served so large and flattened that they can overfill a plate. From my perspective, that is just too much meat, so I serve smaller servings. At most I will cut a chicken breast into half-breasts, lengthwise, and that may be my serving.

Chicken: On the top, a half-breast where I cut the top fat portion from the bottom thinner portion and separated the chicken tender. On the bottom left I show the fat part sliced in half, then under that, on top is the bottom of the breast, and below that the chicken tender. This gives me at least 3 portions per half-breast, I only use the tender if someone wants a very small slice as it is too small and does not need much pounding.

*Nutrition is hard to calculate the nutrition for this dish, first the final meat product is not perfectly weighed out, the amount of dipping stuff on the food varies with each person, and the area to be dipped varies. The larger the sizes the more oil you may use, and so on. So I have done my best with the nutrition and you should use this as an approximation that will vary depending on your choices.

Vegan + Vegetarian meals are made with Japanese egg plant and I have added a link and video on how to make “schnitzel” egg plant.

Left overs should be reheated in the oven. Using the microwave will just make the flour-bread mushy.