The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak, 2021 Travels, and Stuff

 First will be the stuff.  I don’t know what happened in my childhood to affect this but I have usually always been in the corner of the underdog so you can imagine my pleasure at watching the big win by Tampa in the super bowl.

After zero traveling in 2020, we are planning trips to upper East Tennessee, Nashville, Georgia, the Florida peninsula, and a 60-day western trip and we are sure looking forward to getting out – now, we just need our vaccines.

A little while back, we made Chicken Fried Pork Loin (schnitzel) and now Bev has requested Chicken Fried Steak and even though we’ve made it with several recipes that we always enjoyed, I went in search of yet another one.  The recipe I chose was called The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak and it comes from Trish on her Mom On Timeout blog.

It’s hard to pass on a recipe that has this description “The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak is fried to golden perfection and topped with the creamiest gravy you can imagine, sure to quickly become a family favorite.”  I’ve shown the recipe below as written with a couple of minor changes in the directions.  I cooked the first two steak pieces in a skillet to generate some fond for the gravy then I deep fried the others – I couldn’t see much difference in the looks of the two of them.  You can click on the link above to go to Trish’s site for the recipe and more pics like this one.

The Ultimate Chicken Fried Steak – Slightly adapted from Mom On Timeout

The Ingredients:

6 cube steaks (about 1/3 lb each)

1½ cups all purpose flour

2 tsp fresh ground black pepper, divided

2 tsp kosher salt or sea salt, divided

½ tsp smoked paprika

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1½ cups buttermilk

2 tsps TABASCO® Sauce (original)

2 eggs

1cups vegetable oil

Chicken Fried Steak Gravy

4 tbsp grease

4 tbsp flour

3 cups whole milk

½ cup heavy whipping cream

salt and pepper to taste

The Instructions:

In a shallow bowl, whisk together flour, one teaspoon black pepper, one teaspoon salt, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside.

In a separate shallow bowl, whisk together buttermilk , TABASCO® Sauce, and eggs. Set aside.

Pat cube steaks dry with a paper towel, removing as much moisture as possible. Season with salt and pepper. Let sit for 5 minutes and pat dry again with paper towel.

Dredge the cube steaks in the flour mixture, shaking off excess, then dredge in the buttermilk-egg mixture, letting excess drip off, and then once again in the flour mixture, shaking off excess.

Place breaded cube steaks on a sheet pan or metal rack and press any of the remaining flour mixture into the cube steaks making sure that the entire steak is completely coated. Let sit for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 225 to 250 F.

Meanwhile, heat vegetable oil in a heavy skillet or large cast iron skillet over medium high heat. How much oil you need depends on the size of your skillet. You want it to be about 1/4-inch deep. We aren't deep frying the steaks, just shallow frying.

Test the oil by dropping a bit of the breading into in. The oil should sizzle and bubble around the breading. Look for the oil to be glistening but not smoking - about 320-340 degrees F. Now we're ready to fry.

Place two steaks into the pan at a time and fry for 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Do not flip more than once or the breading will fall off. Do not fry more than two steaks or the pan will be too crowded and the breading will fall off.

Remove steaks from pan and drain on paper towels. Place in preheated oven. Turn skillet heat to medium.

Chicken Fried Steak Gravy

Pour the remaining grease into a heat safe bowl or glass measuring cup (I used my Pyrex). Do NOT scrape the skillet clean. We want all of those bits of yumminess to remain in the skillet so they can flavor the gravy.

Add back in 4 tablespoons of the grease to the hot skillet.

Whisk in flour and continue whisking for two to three minutes or until nice and golden brown.

Combine the cream and milk and slowly drizzle into the skillet, whisking constantly.

Continue whisking and bring the gravy to a simmer. Cook until the gravy is smooth and creamy, about 5 to 7 minutes. If the gravy gets too thick, add in a little more milk. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (Mine didn't need any salt but LOTS of pepper!)

Serve chicken fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes and your favorite green veggies.

The Verdict:

I followed the recipe except I had six pieces of cubed steak and still had enough breading and gravy.  Once again, we just boiled some potatoes and mashed them on our plates as our side dish.  The pan fried steaks went to a friend and the Texas born girl raved about them.  We also all thought the steak was crispy and delicious and I’ll use this recipe for the future and likely pan fry them per Trish's recipe.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

2/11/21 meal date