Sous Vide Viennese Schnitzel

picture in courtesy of http://imgerman.com/

I really love sous vide. I love it, for what it is - I am not those, who are sous-viding due to the fact, that it is trendy. And I am not one of those who like to sous vide everything.

But - as Heston Blumenthal I believe, that this is one of the techniques, which will stick and will have a great culinary impact.

I will not explain here, what exactly sous vide is - there are so many people who wrote and blogged about it and many of those who are much more accomplished than me. Just google it.

For the moment, a Supreme deluxe is till out of reach [who can easily spend U$ 400 on one kitchen appliance + shipment to the UAE will also be quite expensive]. But I adapted the beer chiller hack and it is working great. It is perfect for very short sous-viding as well as for things which would need medium-long time to "cook". For things which need very long or things which you need an exact temperature control, it is not that good…

Anyway - I don't remember how I got the idea, but suddenly I thought, that a breaded escalope would be perfect to sous vide. Usually the meat [for Viennese escalope it should be veal, but for other "schnitzel" also pork and poultry is used] is hammered to tenderize it [and in case of poultry also to ensure, that it has an uniform thickness].

The problem besides, that a proper "Wiener Schnitzel" is bigger than the plate it is served on, is that due to the thin hammered meat, you don't have a lot of meat taste. And I love meat. I adore meat!

So my plan was, to use controlled low temperature cooking, to tenderize but not dry out the meat and after the medium-rare steak is chilled down, to bread it and fry it up.

I bought some large slices of veal top round. They were quite big already but still 1.5 cm thick.

Then my spice mill came into action. I made a "special schnitzel" seasoning - pepper, salt, dried garlic, dried onion flakes, caraway, mustard seeds and dill seeds were part of it. The meat was then seasoned with the almost pulverized spices. Then they went into a plastic bag to get vacuumed.

Then I put it into my beer chiller - with the water heated up to meet a temperature between 55ºC and 60ºC - for 60 minutes. In this time most of the connecting tissues is converted and the escalopes look anemic but are edible.

Then they went into the fridge. To cook already cooked meat when it is warm, would result in an inconsistent breading as well as it would be overcooked.

After the "chilling time" it was breaded in flour, egg-cream wash and grated stale bread crumbs [I loved to use panko crumbs but all what I had was dry baguette].

Then they took a bath into an hot oil and butter mixture. Schnitzel are fried swimming in ghee - but I didn't had it on hand - plus I didn't wanted a half pound of butter for frying only.

And: the result was delicious!

The only point, I will do different the next time: I will not use a egg-cream mixture. this is done for a classic Viennese schnitzel to ensure, that the batter is not clinging to the meat - but as the meat is anyway thicker, it wouldn't be an issue and would result in more crispiness - and maybe I would directly use panko instead having the mess of grating the bread...