The Austrian Kitchen

Austrian cuisine is influences from Central Europe and throughout the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Austrian cuisine is most often associated with Viennese cuisine, but there are significant regional variations.

Authentic Austrian cuisine is marked by rich flavours and dominated by meats and carb dense foods like pastries and breads.

If there is one dish that is synonymous with Austrian cooking it is the Schnitzel! Known as the Wiener Schnitzel or the Vienna Schnitzel, it is counted among the Austrian national food dishes. It is a yummy fried delight and is served with a side of fried potatoes and sour cream and onions.

Mealtimes:

Breakfast is of the “continental” type, usually consisting of bread rolls with either jam or cold meats and cheese, accompanied by coffee, tea or juice. The midday meal was traditionally the main meal of the day, but in modern times as Austrians work longer hours further from home this is no longer the case. The main meal is now often taken in the evening.

A mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack of a slice of bread topped with cheese or ham is referred to as a Jause; a more substantial version akin to a British “ploughman’s lunch” is called a Brettljause after the wooden board on which it is traditionally served.

The most popular meats in Austria are beef, pork, chicken, turkey and goose. People like to eat Schnitzel.

AUSTRIAN BREAKFAST

Austria is a big breakfast country; for many people breakfast is the most important meal of the day, specially on weekends.

The traditional Austrian breakfast comprises of: Semmeln (a type of breadroll; singular: Semmel); butter; coffee (not tea, although hotels these days almost always offer tea as well); muesli (often more than one kind); cold cuts (ham, sometimes smoked bacon called Speck or Schinkenspeck, cut sausages); boiled egg (rarely scrambled eggs, even though the same thing applies as for tea: tourists are often offered a scrambled variation); cakes and pastries; jams (not marmalade, although the Austrian term for jam is misleadingly “Marmelade”); and orange juice. The range of each of these items matches with the hotel category. In a four star hotel, you can typically expect an impressive “Austrian breakfast” buffet.

Austria is credited in popular legend with introducing coffee to Europe after bags of coffee beans were left behind by the retreating Turkish army after the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Although the first coffeehouses had appeared in Europe some years earlier, the Viennese café tradition became an important part of the city’s identity.

In Austria are many Culinaric and Tourism Schools.

There are basically two ways to become a cook in Austria.

The most popular one is a dual education where a paid apprenticeship is combined with mandatory free professional school. Usually, it takes three to four years, then there’s an exam and after that you are officially a cook (journeyman). Another way would be a ‘Hotelfachschule’ or “HLW – Higher school for Economic and Tourism. Basically a trade school you usually attend from age 14-19. After it you can also go to university.

Austrian cuisine has many different sausages, like Frankfurter, Krainer Wurst from Carniola (Krain), Debreziner (originating from Debrecen in Hungary), or Burenwurst, Blunzn made out of pig-blood and Grüne Würstl—green sausages. Green means raw in this context—the sausages are air dried and are consumed boiled. Bacon in Austria is called Speck, bacon can be smoked, raw, salted, spiced, etc. Bacon is used in many traditional recipes as a salty spice. Leberkäse is a loaf of corned beef, pork and bacon—it contains neither liver nor cheese despite the name. Also Austria has an old hunting tradition since there are many woods across the country. In the autumn season many restaurants in Austria traditionally offer game on their menu along with seasonal vegetables and fruits like pumpkins from Styria.

Selfmade Cooking Videos

In the following pages you can see some main meals,

which are cooked at home, by the students or from there family.

The students from the HTL Rankweil cooked and produced some videos about it.

You can see the recipe and how it was cooked.

Enjoy the cooking and the meal.

Bacon in Austria is called Speck, bacon can be smoked, raw, salted, spiced, etc. Bacon is used in many traditional recipes as a salty spice. Leberkäse is a loaf of corned beef, pork and bacon—it contains neither liver nor cheese despite the name.

Austria has an old hunting tradition since there are many woods across the country. In the autumn season many restaurants in Austria traditionally offer game on their menu.

We hope you could enjoy our cooking book and that we could give you an inspiration to taste our Austrian Cuisine, it´s delicious.

Good bye and we hope you will soon

enjoy our Austrian Kitchen.