Wiener Schnitzel

Happy New Year! ESSEN GIRL will now return to the regularly scheduled posts about meals!
I hope everyone enjoyed the parade of holiday-themed desserts, but let's get back on track with some actual meal recipes for lunches and dinners.

WIENER SCHNITZEL

Breaded Veal Cutlets

This was another first for me: I’d never cooked veal before. But, this classic recipe from The German & Viennese Cookbook was something I couldn’t pass up.

A word on veal. I know that a lot of people have concerns about how veal is raised, if not how all food animals are raised. While I share these concerns – we need to know where our food comes from, we need our food animals to be healthy and well-treated so we can be healthy while eating them, and we need to treat our fellow creatures with respect – I also grew up as the daughter of an agricultural educator. I learned that food animals are the livelihood of the farmers who own them. While this may be a “no, duh” moment for us all, the part we forget to remember is that since farmers rely on these food animals for their livelihoods, most farmers treat their livestock very well. I mean, it makes sense, right? If you treat your veal calves well, then you make a good profit, so your life is better. I hope that made sense. That’s why I don’t mind eating veal. (Please remember: this doesn’t mean that I love CAFOs or other terrible things about the American meat industry. It just means that I like food, and I’m not going to avoid trying a good recipe just because it calls for a baby animal instead of an adult animal.)

This recipe calls for a deep-frying pot filled with lard. However, I didn’t feel like I needed to deep-fry my dinner. Instead, I filled a deep skillet with peanut oil just enough to give a good crisping to the cutlets.

Wiener Schnitzel/Breaded Veal Cutlets

2 lbs veal round steak

½ C flour

1 ½ tsp salt

1 tsp MSG

¼ tsp pepper

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1 ½ C bread crumbs

Pound meat on both sides with tenderizer until ¼ in thick. Mix flour and seasonings together. Coat meat with flour mixture, then dip in egg, then coat in bread crumbs. I added some salt, pepper and garlic powder to my bread crumbs so the veal didn’t seem so bland.

Fry cutlets until browned on both sides. Drain over absorbent paper. Serve with lemon wedges.

I paired these very tasty, tender cutlets with Cauliflower in Mustard Sauce. It was a wonderfully German dinner that we enjoyed very much. 2 lbs of veal wound up being a lot for just a 2-person dinner, but we were able to enjoy the schnitzel as leftover meals and on sandwiches.

Have a question or a request? Put it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond. Fröhe essen!