NY Strip Schnitzel

One of the best meals I ever had was Wiener Schnitzel at the Woodbridge Inn in Jasper, Ga and the restaurant is still open and serving the dish today. They have another dish with Veal Cutlets called Veal Oscar that is prepared about the same way except it includes Crab Meat and Hollandaise. Now on to my first time cooking Schnitzel. Substitute beef, pork, or even chicken for the veal as they are all good. Using beef makes this just an improved cubed steak, but the degree of improvement is dramatic. Anyone that has never had Schnitzel will be pleasantly surpised and I think in for a real treat if you ever try it. As so often happens cooking this came about when a thought about something I would like to cook is met by what's on hand, which was a couple of rather thin NY Strips. I started by trimming all fat off, and boy was that hard to do as I love it on a grilled steak. Then I used my poor man's Jacaard style meat tenderizer, which is a device to hold meat while you slice it that came with an electric knife that quit working. After trimming I pounded the meat between plastic and this is the secret to this recipe. You will have a much more authentic version of the dish if you pound it thin enough (or buy it sliced thin) which will make it cook in the pan much differently than the thicker cutlets. When you think it is thin enough just keep pounding as most likely it is still too thick. It needs to be much thinner than cube steak. Seasoned flour, eggwash, and bread crumbs to provide that delicious flavor on the cutlets that only take 3 or 4 min per side to cook (we like to use Pringle potato chips for the breading). Ours were fork tender which did not surpise me at all and they were even better than I thought they would be.