How to Make Milanesas

My name is Maxi Van Oyen, I’ve been a cook for more than 15 years. I’m from a western province of Buenos Aires. Now we are in the capital, the Villa Crespo neighborhood, in my house, eating milanesas in many different ways.

The milanesa was invented in the Austro-Hungarian Empire hundreds of years ago, and it came to Argentina with the wave of Italian, Austrian and German immigrants about 200 years ago.

You can use rib eye, sirloin, tenderloin, round steak,rump, and the most Argentine way is using the hind leg, cheap cuts like the nalga, bola de lomo, la cuadrada, all of these cuts work perfectly. But that's here, typically abroad they don't use economic cuts.

We have a saying called “la verdad de la milanesa”, which means I’m going to tell you the real deal. “Yo te cuento la verdad de la milanesa,”  the truth of the milanesa or the secret about something, but we use it in many contexts, not just talking about milanesas. 

There’s just as many milanesa recipes as there are people who make them. I try to make them ideal, to cook the meat exactly right, to marinate it with flavors that will generate ultimate flavor for the meat.

I don’t make milanesas in the traditional way. I make a dry marinade, like a dry rub, with flavors that I want to season the meat with. Generally, I use parsley, garlic, a lot of lemon zest, something spicy, a little salt, and I leave it dry marinating for a few hours. 

Then, I dredge it with flour, dust off the excess flour, dip it in a scrambled egg with a lot of salt (which is the salt that will season the meat, the egg should be salty), Dijon mustard, and then bread crumbs.  After, which is important, fried, deep-fried, an aggressive and quick deep fry. 

The 3 or 4 key side dishes for milanesas are: mashed potatoes, really good French fries - which I use for the milanesa napolitana, noodles, gnocchi, or really any other carb is good. And of course, the classic Argentine way to eat it is with ensalada mixta (tomato, lettuce and onion salad).

Milanesa con puré de papas, or milanesa with mashed potatoes is a classic combination in Argentina. Maxi boils and smashes the potatoes, then adds butter, milk, and nutmeg. 

The milanesa a la napolitana is the best invention of modern Argentine gastronomy. You take an old, dry, and cold milanesa and reheat it in the oven with tomato sauce and cheese, in order to hide the burnt or dryness of the old milanesa. It’s spectacular.

To make milanesa a la napolitana I make veal milanesas, always fried, and then I put it in a pan and add tomato sauce, usually I use leftover sauce from a stew, bolognese, or ravioli, that's what the bodegones of Buenos Aires used. Then, I add a creamy cheese or mozzarella, I make sure it melts well, and I add fresh sliced tomato on top, and into the oven. 

One of my favorite combinations is a chicken milanesa with carbonara pasta. It’s like an Argentine version of a chicken Parmesan. 

Maxi says that Argentines love the milanesa so much, they put it in between two pieces of bread and made a sandwich. For Argentines, the milanga is everything. In the Tucumán province, milanesas sandwiches are so popular, they even made a monument statue.