Schnitzel (Wiener Schnitzel)

Variations

• Wiener Schnitzel (authentic): Must be veal — the name is legally protected in Austria.
• Schnitzel Wiener Art: A 'Viennese-style' schnitzel made with pork — cheaper and more common.
• Jägerschnitzel: A German take topped with mushroom cream sauce.
• Cordon bleu: Rolled around ham and cheese, then breaded and fried.

Tips

• "Do not press the crumbs" is the opposite of what tonkatsu and milanesa both say. Tonkatsu presses its panko on firmly for a thick crust, and milanesa presses so the coating doesn't peel while frying. Chicken Kyiv goes further still — there the crust has to work as a container — and in the same paragraph it says of schnitzel, tonkatsu and milanesa that those three have "nothing inside. A split coating there just exposes meat." That one line is what licenses this dish: with nothing to hold in, the coating does not have to stay attached, so it can be built to come away.
• The puff is steam from the meat lifting the crumb off the surface. Water at the surface of the cutlet flashes to steam in the fat, and a loosely laid crumb layer is lifted by it clear of the meat into a blistered dome. Pressed on hard, that steam has nowhere to go and the coating sets flat against the surface. Deep frying says the same thing about batter — a big temperature gap makes a surface set open rather than dense.
• Which is why basting is part of the method, not a flourish. In a centimetre of fat a schnitzel does not submerge. Tilting the pan to throw hot fat over the top is what makes the upper face puff as well as the lower one. Drop it into a deep fryer instead and that action disappears, along with any way of working with a coating that has lifted.
• Pounding to 0.5cm and frying 1.5-2 minutes a side are one decision. Tonkatsu runs at the same 170°C and gives a 1.5-2cm loin about six minutes — that page notes the crust would not survive those six minutes at 180°C. Schnitzel keeps the temperature and cuts the thickness to a quarter, finishing in under two minutes a side. When the coating is the point, the meat has to be cooked within the time the coating can stand.
• The lemon sits where tonkatsu's cabbage sits. Both cut the richness; one does it with the crunch and water of shredded cabbage soaked and shaken dry, this one with acid (balancing flavour). Squeezing it on straight away is deliberate — the coating is still open then, and the juice gets into it rather than running off.
• Pound the meat thin and even so it cooks quickly and uniformly.
• Don't press the breadcrumbs in — a loose coating puffs and crisps as it fries.
• Use plenty of hot fat; too little or too cool and the crust turns soggy and greasy.
• Tilt the pan to baste with the fat so the top crust souffles too.
• Squeeze lemon on right away to cut the richness.