Don’t know what to cook for dinner tonight? This chicken schnitzel and chips recipe by Lucy Tweed is the best!
By Lucy Tweed
This chicken schnitzel and chips recipe is super popular in our house. I use it to manipulate everyone, bahaha!
I mean, the chips are just SOOO good!
They are the OG form of a chip, where the pointy chunks would be chipped from each potato with a little knife. But more importantly, the shape of these chips allows for tangy chewy down one end and crispy delicious down another.
This combo of the BEST cut of chook, fried crispy things, heaps of umami goodness and a tangy punch to go with it is my idea of heaven.
You can also make the schnitz as far as crumbing, then freeze and fry on demand because it’s a laborious procedure so you may as well treat your future self like a queen and do some for her.
Kitchen bashers are wonderful when you need them, and spend the rest of their time arguing their importance with other utensils. So I like to use a wooden weighty thing for this (traditional rolling pin, or a favourite my dad made from an old chair leg) rather than a metal mallet.
Chicken Schnitzel And Chips
Serves 4
Ingredients
6 chicken thigh fillets
½ cup (75 g) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 ½ teaspoons onion powder
1 tablespoon chicken stock powder
3 eggs
2 ½ cups (150 g) panko breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
1 kg (2 lb 3 oz) potatoes, peeled and cut into rough 5 cm (2 inch) angular chunks, resembling shards
1 cup (250 ml) chicken stock
½ cup (125 ml) white wine
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
sea salt
rice bran oil, for shallow-frying
1 baby cos lettuce, cut into wedges and washed
Optional ingredients: sauerkraut, aioli and lemon wedges
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
- Place each chicken thigh between two pieces of baking paper and smack it out firmly to 1.5 cm (½ inch) thick. Don’t be too rough or you end up with sections breaking up. A thigh schnitzel does result in a wonderfully misshaped crown affair – all the more spots for the crumb.
- Combine the flour, onion powder and stock powder in one bowl.
- Crack the eggs into another bowl and lightly beat.
- Mix together the panko crumbs and dried rosemary in a third bowl.
- Then line a baking tray for the finished schnitz.
- Dust the chicken pieces in flour, drench in egg and press into the crumbs, then place on the tray.
- Repeat this until your fingers are bulbous with crumb – E.T. fingers are a suitable gauge. Rinse and continue until finished. (Or use skewers to avoid this situation.)
- Set aside until ready to fry.
- Toss the potato shards in the stock, wine, lemon juice, paprika and salt to taste, then tip into a roasting tin and spread them out. Roast for 40 minutes, flipping halfway through.
- Heat about 5 mm (¼ inch) of rice bran oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and cook the schnitzels for about 3 minutes each side.
- You want them golden and cooked through. It’s best to fry in batches to achieve this.
This close to the end of the week you would hope the salad has at least attempted to make itself, and to be fair … it kinda has. Leaves + dressing (recipe below).
Eat with the schnitties and shards.
Vinai-no-regrette (Vinaigrette)
Makes a bit over 1½ cups (375 ml)
Google ‘storing salad dressings’ and there are lots of opinions: ‘lemon juice goes gross’, ‘NEVER refrigerate EVO oil’ etc. These may all be true and my palate may very well be unsophisticated, but I have a jar of this running like master stock in my fridge for weeks. It gets low fast and I top it up with stuff.
You can decide if that works for you but the main thing is to remove the raw garlic. If you want to leave it in there, then saute it first.
Ingredients
½ cup (125 ml) lemon juice
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed (into big chunks you can fish out later)
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt
½ cup (50 g) grated parmesan
1 cup (250 ml) extra virgin
olive oil (EVO oil)
Optional ingredients: fresh herbs, chilli, other mustards and anchovies
Method
- Lemon juice + garlic + dijon + sugar + salt + parmesan > a jar or bowl.
- Leave for 30 minutes.
- Walk away, make dinner, pour a drink, talk to your guests, and play a round of Pictionary with your kids where all they draw is a stick man even if they get the word ‘carwash’.
- The key is to let the lemon juice dissolve, cook and suck the deliciousness out of everything in that mix, so just go away long enough to suddenly think ‘Oh, the salad dressing!’.
- Add the EVO oil and shake or whisk like crazy.
Learn this. You will use this dressing often. Here are some things I do with it:
- Halve the quantities and make it in the base of the large bowl you plan to serve a big green salad in. Tossing dressing from the bottom up is enlightening.
- Add chives.
- Add basil and some smooshed roasted cherry toms.
- Toss it through a zucchini pasta with ricotta.
- Combine some with an equal amount of mayonnaise and mix with a shredded roast chook for the easiest picnic roll filling.
- Add a tablespoon to your scrambled egg mix.
- Mash with anchovies and butter to eat on toast.
Chicken Schnitzel And Chips images and text from Every Night of the Week by Lucy Tweed; photography by Lucy Tweed. Murdoch Books RRP $35.
