Easy Chicken Schnitzel Recipe - easy breaded chicken schnitzel that is tender, juicy, and full of flavor with a great pan fried crunch!

Chicken Schnitzel is one of our all time favorite dishes - its easy to make, full of flavor, and totally comforting.

These German fried chicken cutlets are great for a quick dinner, and always a huge hit with even picky eaters.

Serve this chicken schnitzel with some of our German Spaetzle (super easy German dumplings boiled then lightly pan fried in butter) for a tasty German dinner!

We hope you love this recipe as much as we do!

Here at Sweet C's, we have lots of types of readers - those who like to get straight to the recipe, and those who would like more information, including tips and tricks to feeling more comfortable in the kitchen.

We provide a skip to recipe button in the top left corner, as well as a clickable table of contents, just below, to help make this page easier to navigate.

We try to travel to Germany often - not just because we LOVE tucking in to German food - but because my brother and sister-in-law and niece live just outside Heidelberg in a cute little town in the Rhine valley hills.

We’re missing our family a lot this year - so we’ve been making lots of schnitzel and spaetzle to bring back all those great memories of traveling through Germany!

To see more of our travels in Germany, please click one of the posts below, or click here for our Germany travel post index.

Schnitzel is really just a thin cut of meat, coated in a simple breading, fried in fat.

Schnitzel in German literally means "cutlet" - not necessarily breaded and fried - but the dishes below are the traditionally breaded fried cutlet recipes most people think of when thinking of German food.

This list will come in handy next time you're at a German restaurant, or traveling to Germany!

• Hänchen-schnitzel is German for Chicken Schnitzel.
• Weiner-schnitzel is German for Veal Schnitzel.
• Jägerschnitzel is Hunters Schnitzel - Veal Schnitzel topped in a mushroom cream sauce.
• Schweineschnitzel is German Pork Schnitzel.
• Paprikaschnitzel is Paprika Schnitzel - schnitzel topped with a tomato, onion, and bell pepper sauce. This schnitzel goes by Zigeunerschnitzel, which translates to "Gypsy Schnitzel". We prefer to not use that term, since it is often seen as a slur to Romanians - we call it paprikaschnitzel instead!
• Rahmschnitzel is Cream Schnitzel - a schnitzel topped with a cream sauce.
• Münchner Schnitzel is schnitzel coated in mustard before it's dredged and cooked.

This recipe can be baked, instead of fried - prepare as written below, and instead of frying, follow the next steps:

• Preheat oven to 400F.
• Place battered chicken cutlets on baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a nonstick metal cooking rack.
• Bake until chicken is golden brown and 165 degrees internal temperature - about 15 minutes for thin cutlets.

To air fry schnitzel, prepare chicken schnitzel as described below, and instead of frying, follow the next steps:

1. Preheat air fryer to 400 degrees.
2. Spray the air fryer basket with olive oil spray, place the tenders not touching into the basket, you may need to do this in batches.
3. Spray the tops well with more olive oil spray, you want to make sure there are no dry patches. 
4. Air fry for 10 minutes, flipping halfway through.
5. After flipping, spray with more olive oil spray. Chicken cutlets are ready when they are golden brown and the internal temperature reaches at least 165°F.

Chicken schnitzel goes great with a wide variety of dishes - but you can't not serve with a big bowl of German Spaetzle - delicious easy dumplings pan fried in a bit of butter. Get our Spaetzle recipe here.

For our complete side dish recipe index, please click here.

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