Chicken Fried Steak and Gravy!

In my little southern fried mind, there is nothing better than a good chicken fried steak!  It is so versatile and so yummy.   I have them for breakfast with fried eggs and sausage gravy and biscuits, on a slider with mustard and pickles for lunch and the traditional meal of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and a green vegetable for dinner.  I love them.  I could eat them almost every day and for every meal! 

  In this edition of Southern Home Cooking, I am going to show you how to make a nice chicken fry and the gravy that goes with it.  Let’s face the facts…it isn’t a really good chicken fried steak without the gravy!  And, when you add scrambled sausage, it is the same gravy for biscuits and gravy or to have with our morning edition of steak, hash browns and eggs.

   Start with selecting a good cube steak at the grocery store.  I get these pre-packaged and tenderized.  You’ll see them sometimes called minute steaks or cube steak or even top round or top sirloin.  It is all the same piece of meat.  It comes from the flank of the cow and is generally a tough piece of meat if it isn’t pounded (hence the cube, from the cube like indentions left from tenderizing with a meat mallet). 

  No one is really sure where this delectable dish originates although, Texas claims it; Texas even has a day set aside just for the chicken fried steak.  However, this dish does bear a striking resemblance to the German schnitzel.  But, what sets it apart from the schnitzel is that it is dredged in flour, then an egg wash and then flour again.  This gives it the signature “chicken fried” coating.   Once you are coated, just fry it up.   It really is that easy.  It doesn’t take long and with a little bit of multi-tasking, you can have a full meal within about 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp black pepper

 Dash of salt

2 eggs

½ cup milk

Peanut oil

Tenderized cube steak

Heat your oil in a pan to about 350 degrees.  While that is heating up, mix up your egg wash add the milk.  Then mix up your flour and spices.  I would suggest adding more if you like more spice as only a tsp can be kind of bland but for purposes of this recipe, I leave it bland and allow for adding to taste.

Once the oil is to temperature, dredge your cube steak in flour, then in egg wash and then back into the flour and place in the frying pan, frying until golden brown.

Making the Gravy  

When all of your steaks are cooked, drain your oil off and then put about two table spoons of oil back into the warm pan.  You will then add flour and stir until you have a nice thick rue.  Once your rue is like paste, add a splash of chicken stock (optional) and then about two cups of milk and pepper to taste.  Simmer, stirring constantly, until your gravy is the consistency you like.  Pour it off into a bowl and serve!

Gravy ingredients:

Flour – maybe a couple of table spoons but enough to make a nice rue the consistency of paste

Oil (or bacon fat)

Milk – 2 cups

Chicken stock (optional) – splash to a 1/3 of a cup.