For a while, Safeway had breaded chicken fried steak at their meat counter. The kids and hubby and I love chicken fried steak, and sometimes it would be on just enough of a sale that I could justify it. I don't make chicken fried steak from scratch and hubby, who makes the best chicken fried steak ever, only does stuff like that on his day off.
They haven't had it at all for months. I've been making special trips to check.
What they did have on sale was cube steak. I can handle an egg wash and seasoned bread crumbs from a canister... now the teenager claims I'm cheating for using cube steak instead of pounding the heck out of it myself with the meat tenderizer and loosening the top of our dining room table. (Now that I think about that, maybe I should be pounding meat and kneading bread and dreaming up some other table weakening recipes...
I do need to find out how to make gravy from scratch instead of relying on hubby to do it for me. That would be worth the learning curve... anyone know a good tutorial?
No tute' but I've used this for years. Perfection. Remove meat from pan. Add 3/4 cup milk to at least 3T of drippings. Then add 3T flour and 1t salt (or a little less depending how much salt was used in your coating mixture),stir mixture over heat. Once it's very thick, add another 3/4 cup of milk. Stir until desired thickness. Easy, perfect, yummy!
ReplyDeleteIs this like Texas Chicken? I make mine with flour in one bowl, egg in next and then crackers and parmesean cheese and spices in third bowl...I don't pound the sirloin much, just enough to go...also with veal this is good. And if the kid wants to make the meat...let him go. I consider all that you do as someone doing the "prep" for me. Does the chef do it ALL in a restaurant...I think not!
ReplyDeleteFun blog!
The gravy trick for me is making sure I have exactly the same amount of flour as I do fat. My mom always just poured off excess grease, but I can't do that because it throws my ratio all off. So what I do, is when I'm done frying I spoon out 3 tablespoons of the grease to a new (hot) skillet, then add 3 tablespoons of flour. Whisk it til it's combined, then stir it til it's the color you want your gravy to be (for chicken fried steak, I like white gravy, so I just cook it for a minute or two to take the starch taste out of the flour). then whisk in about 2 cups, give or take, of whatever liquid you want. Again, for white gravy, I use milk. But for brown I use water or stock (chicken or beef, depending on what the gravy is going on top of) Keep stirring til it's thick, season, and you're all done.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm the Queen of the Can Opening around here, so I'm no help. I hate cooking, lol!
ReplyDeleteWell QC up at comment number one and LC at comment number three pretty much have it wrapped up. Equal fat (I use drippings) and flour and liquid. I use half milk, half stock for brown gravy. It makes it creamy and gives you plenty of flavor, too!! Just fyi, I've *always* made chicken fried steaks with cube steaks. That's the only thing venison cube steaks are good for!!! : )
ReplyDeleteI use a ratio of 1 TBsp. butter to 1 and 1/2 TBsp flour for 1 cup of gravy. So double the amounts for two cups of gravy.
ReplyDeleteI remove the meat from the pan and pour in one cup of water with one bouillon cube dissolved in it, for one cup of gravy.
Then I mix the 1 TBsp of butter with the 1 and 1/2 TBsp of flour together in a bowl or mixing cup, while the water is coming to a boil. When the water and bouillon in the pan have reached the boiling point, I take 1/4 c. of the liquid and add it to the butter and flour mixture. Stir well together. Then add another 1/4 c. of liquid to the butter and flour and stir well again. Now slowly stir the butter and flour liquid into the pan, making sure to stir it in very well so you don't get flour globules. If you do, use a whisk.
Now you can add in extra flavorings. A little Worcestershire sauce, or soy sauce, or ground up spices.