Central Europe · Volume 19, The Court, the Coffeehouse and the Alps Underneath It
Backhendl
Vienna
Illustration
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 86 sources in the brief
Vienna. Attested in Austrian cookbooks since 1699, the signature dish of the Biedermeier period, so central to the city's identity that the era briefly earned the nickname "Backhendlzeit". Traditionally jointed into only four pieces plus the neck as a fifth, organ meats served alongside, genuinely nose-to-tail.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2, 1.3 kg each chickens
- to taste salt
- 3 eggs
- a little milk
- 200 g plain wheat flour
- 250 g breadcrumbs
- 750 g Butterschmalz, or 750 ml to 1 litre sunflower oil
To serve
- to serve cucumber salad with potatoes
Method
- Cut the chickens along the breastbone, open them out and take out the backbone. Separate the legs at the joints and take the wings off the breasts.
- Trim the fat and peel off the skin, gripping it with kitchen paper.
- Cut shallowly into the flat side of each thigh down to the bone, so it cooks faster. Salt every piece well.
- Whisk the eggs with a little milk. Set out the flour, egg and crumbs in three bowls.
- Coat each piece in flour, then egg, then crumbs, without pressing the crumbs on.
- Heat the fat slowly, until crumbs dropped in foam lightly.
- Fry 5 to 6 minutes a side, rocking the pan gently so the coating does not stick, until crisp and golden.
- Blot well on kitchen paper and keep warm in an 80°C oven until all are done.
Notes
The recipe is Radatz's, the Viennese butcher. Figlmüller marinates the pieces overnight in buttermilk and fries at 140 to 150°C; Martina Hohenlohe's Die Wiener Küche fries them swimming in oil. Both fry parsley in the fat and serve lemon. No Viennese source read marinates in vinegar or uses lard.
What a modern chef changes
A two-stage cook that solves fried chicken's oldest problem, crisp skin against a cooked-through interior, using kit built for exactly this job
Rung 1
Method
- Confit the jointed chicken in duck or pork fat at 80°C for 45 minutes before crumbing, cooling completely, rather than frying raw joints straight through. This fully cooks the meat gently first, removing the risk of a dark, overcooked crust masking an underdone interior, so the frying stage that follows exists only to build the crumb and colour, not to cook the chicken.
- Crumb and fry only once fully cold, using the same loose-crumb, water-misted method as the schnitzel above, at 175°C, for a much shorter finishing fry, 4 to 5 minutes, since the meat is already cooked.
- Serve the reserved confit fat, warmed, as a dressing base for the traditional Vogerlsalat, rather than discarding it, a direct nod to the nose-to-tail thinking that runs through this whole cuisine.