Jagerschnitzel

I love German food, but you wouldn’t know if from this blog.  I have many different cuisines represented here—lots of French and Italian, a good bit of Asian, with a smattering of others like Greek, Russian, Dutch and even Hungarian, but no German.  Well, that’s a shame, because the Germans have one of the world’s great cuisines.  Sure, it’s not considered as fancy and gourmet as French or romantic like Italian, but it’s great.

German food doesn’t get pretentious.  It doesn’t take itself too serious.  It’s simple and hearty and sort of like good home cooking.  I’ve enjoyed it over the years on a couple of trips I made to Germany, and back here at home, where we’ve got a great German restaurant that’s been around for almost fifty years.  Other than bratwurst on the grill now and then, I don’t cook it a great deal, which is probably the reason for the dearth of German recipes on this blog.  Well, I decided to change that, and do it with one of my favorite German dishes:  Jagerschnitzel.

Jagerschnitzel is a variation of the classic dish wienerschnitzel, which is a veal or pork cutlet that is breaded and fried.  Some say that famed Texan dish Chicken Fried Steak was actually created by German immigrants who substituted beef (plentiful in Texas) for the pork and the rest was history.  Well, jagerschnitzel is basically wienerschnitzel taken a step further, with the addition of a wonderful mushroom sauce.  Jager means ‘hunter’ in German, so perhaps this is the way the hunters ate their wienerschnitzel back in the day.   

Whatever the case jagerschnitzel is delicious and I’ve been making it a lot over the last year, so I’m pretty happy with this version, which is perhaps not 100% trad but it makes up for it in flavor.  Give it a try some time.  Ser Gut!

Ingredients

4 pork loin cutlets
2 eggs
1 tablespoon German mustard
1/4 cut flour
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
4 strips bacon
1 medium onion
8 oz small mushrooms
1 clove of garlic
1/3 cup white wine
8 oz consommé
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons butter
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 cup peanut oil

Directions

Using the flat (non spikey) side of a meat hammer...

pound pork cutlets to 1/4 inch thickness.

Note how much bigger (and flatter) the pounded cutlet is than the unbeaten one.  This will help it fry up nice and quick and get cooked through before the breading burns.

Get some good German mustard:

Whisk eggs and mustard together, then make a dredging station with flour, egg/mustard mixture and bread crumbs in three separate pans.

Dredge cutlets in flour,

then egg mixture,

then bread crumbs.

Place cutlets on tray and refrigerate for an hour or so.

Fry bacon in skillet

Remove bacon and reserve

Chop onion and slice mushrooms.

.

Saute the onion and mushrooms in the bacon grease until golden and soft.

Mince garlic and add to skillet

Add white wine and simmer until reduced by half

Add consommé and simmer for a minute

Add heavy cream and cook a few minutes more

add butter and stir until melted.

season with salt and pepper to taste.  Keep sauce warm.

In a clean skillet, heat oil to 400F.  Fry cutlets in oil, one or two at at a time...

until golden brown and crisp.  They will cook fast, so just a couple minutes a side.  

Serve sauce over the cutlets.

Here we've served the jagerschnitzel cutlet with some red cabbage and sauerkraut, and of course a hearty beer as well.  You just have to have a beer with German cuisine.

Until next time,


Prost!


Chris