This is how to make a Schnitzel that’s extra crunchy and beautifully golden! Schnitzel can be made with pork, veal, chicken, beef or turkey. So use whatever meat you want.
If you’re after a traditional German schnitzel, use pork. Or for Austrian, use veal!
Schnitzel
I love all things fried and my bottom hates me for it.
And of all deep fried things, Schnitzel is very high up on the list. I certainly had more than my fair share during my travels in Austria!!
Despite my love of all things deep fried, doing it at home is rare, mainly because I have a thing about “wasting” oil. Usually if I deep fry something, I end up using the same oil to make something else just so I’m not “wasting” it.
Not so good for Da Diet.
But quite simply, there are some things in this world that are worth deep frying, and a seriously crunchy, perfectly golden schnitzel is one of them.
What kind of meat is used for schnitzel?
Schnitzel is most commonly made with pork, chicken or veal. But it’s also made with beef and mutton. There are loads of different varieties, especially across Europe. But the two most well known ones are:
German – made with pork
Austrian (Wiener Schnitzel)- veal
My favourites are pork and veal – for flavour, texture and fond memories of my travels!
How to make Schnitzel
There’s nothing tricky about making schnitzel.
Pound meat of choice (pork, veal, chicken, turkey, beef)
Sprinkle with salt and pepper;
Coat in flour, dredge in egg, coat in panko breadcrumbs (SUPER extra crunch!)
Fry until golden
I like to use a rolling pin to pound the meat because there’s less risk of tearing the meat, but you can use a meat mallet if you have one.
The meat shown in the step photos below is pork. The photo at the top of the page is chicken.
Shallow Fry. Not Deep Fry!
Actually, you don’t need to deep DEEP fry schnitzel. I shallow fry in about 1.5cm / 3/5″ oil. That’s enough to ensure the crumb cooks evenly.
Using more oil doesn’t really make any difference.
How to re-use oil
The oil can be reused twice because the schnitzel flavour is pretty neutral in this recipe so it doesn’t infuse oil with flavour (as opposed to heavily seasoned food like Southern Fried Chicken which taints the oil with flavour).
To re-use the oil, cool in pot, line mesh colander with a single layer of paper towel, strain oil. Store until required – personally would stick to savoury rather than sweet.
Try Stay-Crispy Honey Chicken, Arancini Balls, Japanese Karaage, Mongolian Beef, Sweet and Sour Pork or Southern Fried Chicken!
How to serve Schnitzel
Straight up with just a squeeze of lemon. It’s certainly juicy enough such that you don’t need a sauce!
Schnitzel sauce – my favourite is mushroom gravy.
On the side – mashed potato, fries or crispy Potato Rosti are common options.
Fresh side – I also like to serve it with a side of something fresh, like this Everyday Cabbage Salad or Cabbage and Fennel Slaw
This whole food blogging business – editing photos, making videos, and writing about all this deliciousness that is schnitzel – really can be painful. As in – torture. It’s Monday and I swore I was going to be good this week (yeah, yeah, I know you’ve heard it before). I have Healthy Spanish Veggie Soup waiting to be reheated.
Now all I can think about is schnitzel. 😩
Freshly made, golden brown, extra crunchy, super juicy inside. This is a must!!! – Nagi x
More crunchy crumbed chicken
Crispy Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast – LOW CARB marvel!
Oven Fried “KFC” Chicken Tenders (11 secret herbs & spices!)
And more things worth deep frying
There’s not many! I’m very selective about what I deep fry – I have to really love it!!
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
Schnitzel recipe video! This is made with pork. I only cooked 1 in the skillet because I used a smallish skillet for safety reasons (I use a gas stove for videos, skillet is quite high off the work surface).
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Schnitzel!
Ingredients
Choose ONE of these:
- 600g / 1.2 lb boneless pork (4 steaks / boneless chops, about 150 g/5 oz each)
- 600g / 1.2 lb large chicken breasts (2 pieces,300g / 10 oz each)
- 600g / 1.2 lb veal or beef steaks (4 pieces, 150g / 5 oz each)
- 600g / 1.2 lb turkey breast cutlets (4 pre sliced pieces, 150g / 5 oz each)
Schnitzel:
- Salt and pepper
- 3/4 cup flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs (Note 1)
- Oil for frying (canola, vegetable)
Instructions
- Chicken breast prep: cut in half horizontally to create two steaks.
- Place the protein of choice on a work surface and cover with a sheet of baking paper or cling wrap. Use a rolling pin to pound to even thickness about 0.8 cm / 1/3″ thick (don’t pound too thin, hard to handle / might tear).
- Sprinkle both sides of meat with salt and pepper.
- Place flour in one dish, panko in another (or use a large tray for both like I did, see photos), and whisk eggs in a bowl.
- Coat meat in flour, shake off excess. Dip into egg, shake off excess. Press into breadcrumbs, and turn, pressing to adhere, then transfer to plate. Repeat.
- Heat 1.5cm / 3/5″ oil in a heavy based deep skillet over medium high heat.
- Dip the end of a schnitzel in to check if the oil is hot enough – it should sizzle straight away (see video).
- Carefully place 2 schnitzels in the oil and cook for 3 minutes until deep golden, turn then cook the other side for 3 minutes.
- Transfer to a paper towel lined plate to drain excess oil. Repeat with remaining schnitzel.
- Serve with lemon wedges – I usually serve schnitzel plain like this. Or see note for Mushroom Gravy recipe. Also see note for potato rosti, pictured in post.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published August 2017. Updated for housekeeping matters March 2019, no change to recipe.
LIFE OF DOZER
Do this with a ball, and he just sits there and watches as it bounces away.
Try putting a handful of Parmasan Cheese in the breadcrumb. Absolutely delicious!
YES TO THAT! 😂
Many years back schnitzel would be typically prepared for Sunday lunch in Slovakia. I don’t remember the last time I had it! Gotta make it again!
I love hearing that Julia!! I’d happily have schnitzel EVERY Sunday! 😂
well I thing the car was attendant needs a new job. I can imagine your not the only one that has a dog and that is exactly why I prefer to take my car to the shop. But it is pretty funny that you got refused service for having long golden hair in your car. Poor Dozer, he can’t help it.
Ba ha ha! I thought it was quite funny actually!! Also…..the inside of the car is pretty bad…. I sort of can’t blame him! It was more the humiliation of backing out and holding up traffic in the car park! 😂
Hi again Nagi, I love veal as it’s a lovely tender piece of meat, but I don’t see too many recipes using it. Do you have more for using veal, if so, can you share them with us. Thank you munchly!
Hi Josephine! You’re right, I don’t use it much, it’s a bit of an indulgence over here. At least, for a good one. Though having said that…. can you believe I have Osso Buco planned for this Friday? YES I DO!!
Hi Nagi, I’d like to know what your salad is in the little bowl. It looks like beetroot and bean shoots. Am I right or wrong? Can’t wait to try these AND your little salad with the rosti.
By-the-way I think the car detailer must have got out of the wrong side of bed that morning as he’s lost a “Golden” customer.
Te he he! I saw what you did there!!! I went lazy with the salad, I got a car of sauerkraut – I love it because it cuts through the richness – and I did a quick pickled red cabbage, it’s in this recipe –> https://promotown.info/marinated-fish-tacos/%3C/a%3E 🙂 N xx
My dad was a German immigrant and this is one of the recipes from “home” he taught me. He also used panko crumbs. I’ll have to try it with the mushroom gravy…with spaetzle of course! I love your website and recipes!
SPAETZLE! Yum yum yum!
My son and three grandsons came over to my home in Hillsboro, Oregon to watch the solar eclipse. So I was up at 6:00 to make cinnamon rolls. I used your method of using the dryer as a warm place for the dough to rise. As you said, it worked beautifully. Thanks for the useful hint. And the cinnamon rolls were much appreciated.
Gwen
Ohhhhh! I LOVE HEARING THAT! 😂 🌅🌄
Nagi, This recipe evokes many fond memories. My great grandparents immigrated to the US from Germany back in the mid eighteen-hundreds and many of the traditional recipes were passed down. Your method for preparing these is spot on. The meat of choice for these in our family was always pork tenderloin. Slice the tenderloin about 1 1/4 inch thick then bash it with the side of a cleaver until the proper thickness was attained. In fact, when I was a kid the bashing job was almost exclusively mine. Schnitzel, however was never served with a mushroom gravy it was served with a fried egg on top. Runny yolk, of course. Oh my, just think of that gorgeous yolk running all over the schnitzel. Give it a try sometime it’s a heart attack on a plate but oh so delish’.
Love your blog. You’re the best.
I LOVE hearing that Don! Especially the runny yolk 🙂 And I never ever thought to make this using tenderloin, thank you for the tip! That would be wonderful – please also the schnitzel would be a neat shape 🙂 Bring on the heart attack on a plate. Everything in moderation! N xx
Dear Don,
When I was very young, foot loose and fancy free, I worked on Wall Street in New York City and every week
on Thursdays, several young upstarts like me who worked on the Stock Floor, used to go to a wonderful
NYC Restaurant called Weiner Wald and we always ordered, Weiner Schnitzel A la Holstein which was a
beautiful golden Veal Schnitzel with a runny fried egg on top, and we downed it with large pitchers of
Dinker Larger Beer, which also was golden and very light. We were so happy with this restaurant, and all the
beer was so light for lunch, that it did not impair us when we returned to the Trading Floor of the NY Stock Exchange.
I truly miss those days and of course Nagi’s wonderful recipe brought back all of those memories. Nagi is the very
best when it comes to cooking, and she did get a bad bummer from that moron car wash. Too bad I wasn’t there,
as I would have done her car for her.
PS: Nagi for a update on my Golden Yellow Tabby BabyGirl Cat, She delivered to me 6 beautiful little kittens. Now I
an a Grandfather again! Holy Schnitzel! LOL
‘
6! WOW!!! Congratulations! 🙂 Love hearing about your days in the big city Bobby!!!
Hi Don, it’s Wiener not Weiner schnitzel. :-). Wien is German name of the capital city of Austria where this schnitzel originally comes from. I live in Slovakia near Austria and schnitzel is generally on the menu on Sunday. We usually eat schnitzel with potato salad. But I will try it with fried egg, It sounds really good. 🙂
Yikes I always get that wrong too! “i” before “e”, except after “c”…. I have to remember that applies to SCHNITZEL TOO!!! N xx
Don Bischoff, I too am of Prussian/German descent (with British), but sadly my grand-parents passed away when I was very young (now 72) and LOVE cooking of all types. I love your idea of the egg on top as I’ve been in this mode for a while now in looking for whatever I can put an egg on top. YUMMO! Thanks again for this idea, guess what we’re having for dinner tonight and I’ll even add Nagi’s rosti and light salad on the side. Looks like heaven to me!
No outfit is complete without dog hair. Cars are a great way to get it “On the Go.”
BA HA HA!!!! Well in my life, there is NO outfit without dog hair!
Blaine, I’m STILL laughing with your comment. Way to go when one has a dog. Me being me, I’d have just paid extra (depending how much) to have the WHOLE done deal especially since we’re still having COLD weather and I DON’T do car cleaning that’s for the car detailers, keeping them employed.
There was literally no other option for me! I had already selected the MOST EXPENSIVE ONE!!!
Thankyou,thank you,thankyou very much!
You are MOST WELCOME!!!! N x
Dozer, LOL! Too funny! Treats trump ball–smart dog! (I have dealt with dog and cat hair, both, and it’s astonishing how much hair comes off them! Just 2 or 3 pets can seem more like having and entire herd of them around when judged by the hair they leave everywhere and how quickly it accumulates!)
I love, Love, LOVE pork schnitzel! It’s one of my all-time favorite things! I don’t measure ingredients when making it, but use the same ingredients and the same shallow-frying method when making it, so I can rate this one just from reading the recipe. It’s so good! Did I mention I LUV pork schnitzel?
I like it plain, I like it with mushroom gravy, and even chicken gravy, but most often serve it with a béchamel gravy that is slightly peppered and contains crumbled or diced country-style pork sausage. Nothing fancy, though, just the ordinary convenience sort of pre-cooked, defrosted pork breakfast sausage. It is a white sauce sausage gravy similar to what is often served with chicken-fried steak in the US. I also sometimes enjoy schnitzel made with crushed corn flakes cereal, or half panko and half corn flakes.
I should confess that I’m not a big fan of cooking, but I do a great deal of it, and baking too, because I like good food and a lot of variety, but there are few good restaurants, and absolutely no good bakeries left, in the immediate vicinity. There is, however, a very good German restaurant nearby, that one couple we know drive 150 miles to come to every year for their wedding anniversary, but I can promise everyone reading this that Nagi’s schnitzel recipe above will produce a far superior schnitzel made at home than can be obtained at that popular German restaurant!
This is too funny, you sound like ME with your schnitzel enthusiasm!! I really like this idea of a creamy gravy with sausage, I must look that up! Is that like the sausage gravy served with biscuits? As for the hair – OMG, the one time I got Dozer shaved…the amount of fur there was….. the mind boggles. 🙂 N xx
Yes, I think it must be pretty much the same thing as the sausage gravy for biscuits, though biscuits & gravy isn’t really a staple here or as common in the North as for the Southern US, where it is often paired with something else not very common in the North either, grits. In the North biscuits are more likely just to be buttered and/or slathered with preserves or jam like a scone, so I’m not absolutely certain about the biscuit gravy, but it seemed to be about the same, as I recall that being.
I’ve never been much of a pork sausage for breakfast sort, but do like it in the gravy with schnitzel, and also in turkey stuffing and in stuffing for mushroom caps, either as bulk sausage for certain things, or a few of the diced pre-cooked links for something super quick & easy like the gravy–and quite often with an antacid or two for dessert! 🙂 It’s worth it, however, since that sausage can be hard to resist, sometimes.
I cook this up at least 3 to 4 times a month, but my favor meat is boneless chicken thighs. I cooked this up for my cooking classes and the students thought it was great too. They had one question, how do bone a chicken thigh? So I had to do a demo on bone a thigh and of course the bones went into the pot for chicken broth. One thing in our area the markets have chicken quarters on sale lots time with a price from 27 cent a pound to 40 cents a pound in 10 lbs bags. Last time I bought 40 lbs cut and bag them in portion of usable size. Great saving and good eating.
I hate deboning chickens, I am not good at it! But I agree, bone in chicken is so much cheaper, I should learn. 🙂 The only reason I don’t use thigh is because the frying makes breast so juicy! Also I find when I flatten thigh it isn’t as neat a shape – do you trim yours once flattened? 🙂 N xx
Look delicious! I honestly can’t fry food, I make a big mess, or I get the house full of smoke. I learn a new trick when I’m breeding with your video. I use two plates for the flour, and the breadcrumb and I like the idea to use a baking sheet. 🙂
That was a tip from my food prep assistant! Isn’t that clever? 🙂
It’s very clever!. I just noticed I misspelled some words on my first comment. 🙁
Hi! This is how I like to make my Schnitzel but sometimes it is requested less crunchy (Can you believe that?!?), more original and in this case I use regular bread crumbs.
The way I check if my oil is ready is either by sticking the end of a clean wooden spoon handle into the oil and if it appears to fry the oil is ready or I drop a few sprinkles of flour in and if it fries, the oil is ready. This way you don’t mess up any ends of your Schnitzel. 🙂
Ohhhhh that cracks me up!!! Schnitzel LESS CRUNCHY? Ba ha ha! PS I do that too except with chopsticks! My mother taught me how to tell how hot the oil is by looking at how fast the bubbles rise 🙂 N xx
Hi again. I think that attendant was downright rude! There much worse messes to clean up than dog hair. I always say that If I’d collected the hair from my borders I could spin it into yarn and knit dozens of sweaters and scarves!
YOU WOULD NOT! 😂 Actually, I don’t blame him…. the car really is in a disgraceful state!
Hi Nagi! I am making your marinated pork chops for dinner tonight, but now I want schnitzel. The breading process is what i use for many meats and seafood and I always pan fry. I buy mushrooms every time I go to the store (we eat a lot of onions and mushrooms) and a simple mushroom gravy is so go on so many things. Although lately they all seem to end up being your garlic butter mushrooms! When I set out mushrooms G always asks if I’m going to make “Nagi shrooms”. 🙂
Nagi shrooms! Too funny 🙂 It’s like my friends asking “is this a Dorothy cake?” They assume EVERY cake I make is a Dorothy one!
Yum, this looks so good. And Dozer is so adorable! 🙂
He’s a cheeky bugger 🙄
Panko crumbs are simply magical!! We love using them on our dishes for an absolutely amazing crunch!! And I cannot believe the inconsiderate attendant!! Do you know that the Egyptians used to collect cat hair and weave rugs. We were in St. Augustine in a museum there, and they had a cat hair rug that was worth thousands!! And I think Dozer is so cute that the gold hairs would make a beautiful rug. That Chinese attendant lost a golden opportunity!! It’s Monday, and it’s a good start for a diet week. I think. xoxo
NO!!! A cat RUG?! TOO FUNNY!!!! PS “That Chinese attendant lost a golden opportunity!!” <--- I saw what you did there! N x
Schnitzel is schmarvelous!!! :O)
Make me SCHMILE!
Hi! This looks so super great and delicious.
But unrelated question..What is that song you are playing in this video?
Thanks
Fuz
Hi Fuz! It’s one from Pond 5 – let me see if I can find the original name, I change it to make it easy for me to find when I need it 🙂
Thanks. You are so kind. Didnt even know about that site lol.