Cooking With Us - E14 - Wienerschnitzel and German Potato Salad

At the original Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany!

Theron and I have recently (well, fairly recently now) returned from a three week trip in Europe!

 The last couple spots we visited were Vienna, Austria, and Munich, Germany.  

For this reason, Wienerschnitzel and German-style potato salad were fresh on our minds when trying to think up our next episode of Cooking With Us. 

Not to mention, Theron just really wanted it!

So we did our best to recreate authentic German potato salad and German/Austrian Wienerschnitzel - the latter being delightfully simple to make, not to mention delicious!

The video is a bit longer than normal, so my apologies for that! 

 Don't forget to uprez and watch full screen. 

(And, as always, please share!!)

 

Also - the 2nd camera angle is Theron trying out his new canon point and shoot.

The recipe and transcript will follow, as well as a plug for the rad page I got these recipes from!

 (For the most part!)

 And just for a little added incentive, here is what your finished product will look like:

Yummy yummy!

First, take a sip of a good German beer. 

Give your hubby a pat on the head for his excellent choice of dinner fare...

And get ready to start with Part 1: The Potato Salad!

(Like my Bavarian flag inspiration in the background?;)

We started things off by baking our bacon.

Of apparently extreme importance is having Yukon Gold potatoes for this!

We used five of them.
Apparently you're supposed to use five pounds of them for this recipe!
Oopsie!:)

Boil them for 20 - 30 minutes.

In the meantime, chop up one medium sized red onion into small chunks.

You'll also need about a tablespoon of dill (fresh or jarred).

That too gets the chopping treatment.

We added everything as we chopped it into our mixing bowl. 

(Though I totally spaced on buying parsley!)

This step - 1 tsp sugar.

Then 2 teaspoons salt.

Then one more teaspoon of pepper.

Thus far our mixture was dry. 

Photo by Theron, of course :)

We then added in 3/4 cup red wine vinegar.

'Twas a lot. Next time we may cut this in half or so.

Then in went 3/4 cup vegetable oil
and 1/4 cup chicken broth.

Something else we'd probably reduce next time around.

Theron's photo of our mixture thus far ;)

Now for the fun part - drain your potatoes and let them cool a little.

Then, holding one at a time in a kitchen towel, use the other part of the towel to easily rub off the skin.

This worked super well!

See? All skinless and ready to be chopped!

Keep slicing them into ever-smaller parts until the sizes seem right.

Also, somewhere around this time, your bacon should be ready to come out.

So, please smash it and crumble it into small pieces. 

(And pretend not to notice when your husband eats some and gives some to your dog).

Add your bacon to your mixture...

And of course your potatoes as well - it is potato salad, after all, right?

Now put that in it's own bowl (as we needed this one) and let it sit.

Theron put it in the fridge b/c he likes it cold. - Do what you like! 

Now you're ready for the best part - Part 2: The Wienerschnitzel!

For this you're going to need three large bowls (or similar.)

The first one will contain flour, the second will contain two or three eggs, beaten, and the third will contain your panko breadcrumbs - a first for me!

Since the only veal we could find was frozen, we opted for pre-tenderized and super thin pork chops.

Huzzah!

Dredge your pork chop (or veal cutlet) in the flour first...

Then into the egg mixture it goes...

And finally, into your breadcrumbs.

It was pointed out on ever blog I read that you shouldn't be pressing these hard into your meat, 

but allowing them to create sort of shell around it.

Let your schnitzels rest and dry a bit while you prepare your lard (or cooking oil.)

One of Theron's photos of our resting schnitzels :)

We used lard, as it was a first for us, and Theron was pretty excited about it.

This is what lard looks like. 

And as the text suggests, you need enough to hit the sides of your frying pan 1/4 inch up.

Theron was pretty pumped to be able to use his cast iron skillet. 

He loves this thing!

We ended up using all the lard. 

You have to get it to 300 to 350 degrees.

Ours reached 350 before we started cooking our wienerschnitzels.

(Despite what the podcast might mistakenly suggest!)

Also, preheat your oven to 200 degrees, and put in a baking pan lined with paper towels.

While the lard heats up, take some time to snuggle your puppy...

And accept husbandly hugs.

Then it's back to business people!

You need to cook each schnitzel for 3 to 5 minutes per side, only flipping it once.

Don't forget to spoon the grease atop the schnitzel while the other side is down.

Then, into the oven it goes to stay warm and crunchy!

Greasy, greasy deliciousness.

Prepare some lemon slices to squeeze onto your finished wienerschnitzels!!

Are you jealous?  Because, you should be.

The best feedback you can probably get is your husband exclaiming:

"This wienerschnitzel is the bomb!"

It also makes for excellent leftovers...

Especially if you can reason that the fact the potato salad has bacon in it makes it a breakfast food.

See? It can even be enjoyed with coffee!!

Though, were you to ask my husband 

(and because I want to put in some more of his artsy photos)... he might say:

"Nein!" and suggest a Hofrau original brew.

Or perhaps even - "Nein if it's not in a stein!"

From the original Hofbrauhaus of course! ;D

Also, he may be busy taking photos of your dog.

Just enjoy yourself, all the while remembering: You can no longer get Lowenbrau beer in the states...

 

So make this awesome dish and eat it up!  That is - until you can hustle back over to Munich!

Or, you know, Austria :)

Blog plug for the rad blog I got most of this from:

http://foodiewife-kitchen.blogspot.com

Enjoy! 

And as always -

Guten Apetit!

-Val!

Recipe:

German Potato Salad

If you search potato salad on her ^ site, you'll note I forgot the parsley! Woops, next time!

- 5 pounds of Yukon gold potatoes, brought to a boil for approx 30 minutes, let cool.

   - use a towel to rub the skin off the potatoes

- 1/2 lb bacon, cooked extra crispy

   - chop up very small

-  1 red onion, diced

-  1 TBSP dill, chopped fine

-  1 tsp sugar

-  2 tsp salt

-  1 tsp pepper

(combine)

add in:

- 3/4 cup red wine vinegar

- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup (or more) chicken broth

- 2 tsp reserved bacon fat from cooking your bacon

Dice your potatoes and add them in, folding everything together carefully.

You can leave this at room temp or cool in the fridge.

Wienerschnitzel

- 4 thin (pre-tenderized if you're lucky!) pork chops (or veal cutlets if you can find them!)

- dredge in flour

- dip in a mixture of 3 beaten eggs

- coat lightly with breadcrumbs, don't press them into the meat

Let each rest for a while to allow the toppings to dry.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees, placing inside of it a baking rack lined with paper towels.

- heat 16 oz lard (or olive oil, if you choose) to 300 - 350 degrees.

- lay in one schnitzel at a time, for 3-5 minutes.

Flip only once, spooning the grease on top of the schnitzel.

Place the schnitzels into the oven till you're ready to eat.

Finally, cut up some lemons into wedges.  

Cover your schnitzels with lemon juice. Enjoy with your potato salad.

Voila!

Transcript:

Oh... and thank you for joining us again for Cooking With Us.

As you may or may not know, my husband and I just got back from a trip to Europe, and the last played we stayed was Munich, Germany!

So today we're going to make German potato salad and Wienerschnitzel!

And Wienerschnitzel actually it means - well, the schnitzel part just means it's a breaded usually veal cutlet that's fried.  But the Wiener part means that it's actually from Vienna.

We also went to Vienna so, it kinda works out...

And, my husband, this one... actually ate a lot of Wienerschnitzel while we were in Munich.

It was good!

So, that's why we're gonna make that  today.

German style potato salad is very different from most potato salads that we've had in the United States. And that involves boiling Yukon gold potatoes.

Potatoes.

So we're gonna first start with bacon. Can't hurt, everybody loves bacon.

Bacon!!!

You know the potatoes have to be boiled for thirty minutes and so let's start that.

Oh really?

How many potatoes?
Five.

Hofbrauhaus.

We're boiling our potatoes for twenty or thirty minutes, since we're using our pressure cooker, hopefully it'll be a little bit less.

We can't really find pretty red onions here but we got one.

Chopping the red onion now.

Puppy chop.

We only need on tablespoon of dill.

Now we're gonna chop our dill... into... itty bitty pieces.
Tiny, tiny, yeah tiny pieces.

So we're adding one teaspoon of sugar to what will be our mixture for our potatoes.

Two teaspoons of salt. Then it says one of fresh cracked pepper.

Brigly!

Three quarters of a cup red wine vinegar.

Three quarter cup vegetable oil.

oil oil... double... nah. nah.

One quarter cup chicken stock.

It almost looks like a gelatin.

I've never reserved bacon fat before. I've never reserved fat before.

Ok we're gonna just do two teaspoons of the bacon fat.

Potatoes.

These are really hot potatoes so we're gonna let them cool for a little bit before we remove the skins.

You hold it like this, and the skins just peels off, and that's why you save your hand from being burnt.
Oh.

Look how hot that is, you can see the steam.

So yeah, I'm just using this part of the towel to take off the skin.  And it's coming off really easily.

It's really cool looking.

So we removed the skins from our potatoes. In the meantime, Theron is going to crush up our bacon.

Cut it into thin slices, and then into even smaller slices.

It goes in the bowel?  Yep!

Now, gently mix it.

Cause they're already, uh...

Cause they're very, they can easily turn to mush and we don't want that. Yeah.

This looks good.

I'll add some of the bacon now, how about that?

So this looks really, a lot more liquidy than what the recipe shows...

It's good though.

Bacon!

Ok.

Alright so we are waiting on our potato salad to just rest.

To me it's a little too vinegary but Theron says it tastes authentic from when we were in Germany, so I guess - I didn't eat it then, so I believe him.
Yep.

And now we're going to start with our wienerschnitzel!

Flour first, then the egg mixture, and then the breadcrumbs finally. And then they're gonna rest onto this plate here before you put them in.

I've never used breadcrumbs in my life before!

So a lot of people say use two eggs, some say three... Since it's a large pot, I'm gonna use three.

And finally the flour.

Ok we tried to get veal cutlets to try and be super-authentic to the Viennese ...Wienerschnitzel... but the only veal cutlets we could find in the major meat market here were frozen.

So these are tenderized pork chops, so we don't have to beat them thin, they're pretty thin, so that works out for us cause we don't have a meat mallet.

First you dredge it in the flour.

Shake the flour off... put it in the eggs.

Let the eggs drip off... put it in the breadcrumbs.

And don't push the breadcrumbs into it, the breadcrumbs are supposed to make a layer around the outside. So we're just gonna lightly not hurt it, put it in the breadcrumbs.

You're doing really good at that.

Looking good.  I guess that's good enough.

Is it?

I mean I guess. Ok.
And then, let it sit. Let it sit till it dries out a little bit.

Ok, that's two. Zwei. Zwei.

If you're looking for lard in the store, it's the package that says lard on it. It's what's for dinner.

Ok, so, this is the first time I've ever seen lard in person or held it in my hands.

How much lard?

It said it has to go up to the sides of your frying pan a quarter inch. So... enough for that, enough to do that.

Das ist mein iron skillet. Das ist mein lard.

So the first thing you do is get the lard and melt it, obviously... The temperature of the lard needs to bee three hundred to three hundred fifty degrees... before you even try to put these guys in... because what you want to do, is put them in, cook them for three to five minutes on one side, flip them, and when you flip them, you're gonna start putting the oil of the lard on top...

Cause that's gonna keep it crispy and then we put it in our oven, which is at two hundred degrees right, it's been waiting.

Come here...
Come here...
Oh good boy.

He is a spoiled dog... he is the Brigly bear.

That is a lot of lard.

The amount of lard that you put into
fry it with, is independent of the amount of lard that stays on the Wienerschnitzel.

Baby this is gonna be the best dinner that you ever ate.

So, we will take the temperature... two-ninety-one.

Ok, so now we're gonna do the dangerous task of putting our wienerschnitzels into very hot lard.  Which is not gonna be pleasant.

meow.

Those wienerschnitzel... oh please be careful!

We need three minutes.

You're doing very good.  I'm impressed.

Thank you.

You think it'll be very crunchy on the bottom?

In the... everything I read it says don't flip them more than once, only flip one time, that's it. So we won't be flipping it, we will just be hoping that it is great.

Dammnn

There we go.. Last one.

The lemons... Ahhh.

While we wait for the wiener to schnitzel...

Theron's cutting up some lemons cause they go on top and also you squeeze the lemon juice on top of the wienerschnitzel and that's the... really... the way you're supposed to eat it.

Bam!

It looks really good so I'm gonna eat it. Mmm it is good!

Bam!

This wienerschnitzel is the bomb!!!

Hi it's next morning, last night we enjoyed, very much, our wienerschnitzels and our potato salad.

Especially if you let the potato salad sit on your plate for a little while, it doesn't seem as vinegary at all, it's actually quite good.

Um, I'm gonna share this one with my husband... for breakfast... even though he had two last night and I only had one. We should have obviously made a lot more than four, but now we know how to make them, and they're easy!

I just made coffee... as you can see I'm being the dutiful wife.

It has bacon in it, so that makes it breakfast, right?

I should put some lemon juice on the guy here...

But to give a solid finish to the, to the video, which I don't think I did last night... obviously it's best to eat the Wienerschnitzel right away because it's very crunch and good.

Oh hot... hot...

So, as you can kind of see... this is our plate of left over Wienerschnitzel and potato salad.

I put some lemon juice on it as you saw... and now for a smaller bite.

So whenever apparently I take a bit of something that tastes good, I go like this...

Have you noticed that?
I've noticed it from watching my own videos.

So the wienerschnitzel is freaking good, super easy to make, and you should definitely try it.

And to me it tastes like Germany, because that's where I ate most of it... but obviously it should also taste like Vienna... or anywhere in Austria, I guess.

The potato salad is singularly delicious.

Well there you have it everybody.  This pork version of wienerschnitzel has an A+ thumbs up from me and it did have one from Theron as well, he's gonna come down and eat it for breakfast.

Eat it, and enjoy, and guten apetit.

Thanks for joining us, and ciao!

Das ist mien kitty cat, das ist mien frau. Frauline kitty cat.

Hello... Come on... Yeah you have to follow me, that's your job.

What a - Brigly! He's a hopper dog.