The Dish
Last night for dinner the family tried a new recipe I found in the New Doubleday Cookbook: chicken-fried steak, which is a fried, breaded round steak, that dad was able to cook. Additionally, we had sides of mashed potatoes and pickled beets. A little additional Google-Fu found me a McCormick mix of country gravy, which was a lovely white gravy with lots of pepper in it. The steak recipe allows for using lard, butter, or margarine for the cooking fat, so lower calorie options are available. Also, several breading options are available, with a simple egg, milk and flour batter, or you can use bread crumbs, or in my case, corn flake crumbs.
Thoughts
Everything turned out very well and was delicious; the recipe was straightforward to prepare, but the length of cooking time for the steaks was a bit of a surprise: after some browning in fat, the steaks cooked for about 45 more minutes. Hard for a hungry man to deal with, but the result was quite worth it. The mashed potatoes and steaks were done close to the same time, the gating element was cooking the gravy so it was properly heated but not scorched.
Not bad for my first find from the New Doubleday Cookbook, I'll definitely keep looking for more to make from it. It makes me hungry for some fried-chicken now
My ultimate goal is to do the cooking myself, but at this point, just to be expanding our repertoire of recipes is exciting too.
Chicken-Fried Steak Recipe (adapted from the New Doubleday Cookbook 1985)
serves 2-4
- 1 pound top or bottom round steak, pounded thin or it's pre-flattened cousin cube steak (flattening the steacks can be quite the tension-releaser!)
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 eggs lightly beaten w/ 3 tablespoons milk
- 1 cup fine dry bread crumbs or cracker meal
- 4-5 tablespoons lard, meat drippings, butter, or margarine
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
Cut steaks into squares about the size of your palm; dust with flour, dip in egg, then crumbs to coat evenly. Heat the lard in a large heavy fry-pan over medium-high heat. Brown steaks 2-3 minutes per side. Sprinkle the browned meat with salt and pepper. Cover the pan, then over low heat, continue cooking 45 minutes until tender.