Back in February I was invited to cook on the Gander Mountain cooking stage at Pheasants Forever’s annual Pheasantfest. It was a great experience for me, and I got to meet and hang out with some incredible people. At the end of the weekend we had a good amount of pheasant left over, so I was able to bring some home. I wasn’t sure what to do with all that meat, but one of my first thoughts was to make a pheasant schnitzel. The more and more I thought about it, however, I thought maybe schnitzel has been covered before and most people are familiar with it. I did a quick Google search to see if there were any variations on schnitzel that might be interesting—and was overwhelmed with options.
I assumed it was a German dish, but schnitzel actually originated in Austria. Schnitzel is a broad term that basically means some kind of meat has been pounded thin with a mallet and then breaded with flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs, and finally fried in butter. It’s usually served with some kind of potato and a wedge of lemon. What I didn’t know is that just about every country and culture has a version of schnitzel. Here in the Midwest, the popular breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is really just a schnitzel on a bun. Chicken-fried steak is also basically just a schnitzel with a sausage gravy.
In parts of Scandinavia, schnitzel is made with reindeer or pork and served with anchovies and capers. There is…
