I’ll admit it — I know nothing about Southern cooking except for what I’ve seen on the Food Network. But I’ve been experimenting with some Southern recipes and liking the results. I am far from an authority on Chicken Fried Steak (I am a Jersey girl after all), but I had some cube steak laying around and figured, why not? For those of you who don’t know, cube steak is the meat of choice for chicken fried steak. It is a cut of beef that has been tenderized, usually by a machine if mass-produced, but sometimes by a meat hammer. It’s a nice, cheap cut of steak that cooks up rather quickly and comes from the top round or top sirloin. The cubing (a.k.a. tenderizing) machine may even fuse two pieces of meat together to form one cutlet.
I was pretty happy with the dish, but it was too rich for me. I am more into light food, like roasted fish or sauteed veggies. Between the red meat, the frying, and the double-coating, this amounted to a hearty meal. It was tasty, and I highly recommend it, but I am such a light eater that I probably won’t be making it again unless I haven’t eaten all day.
This version is a fusion of a Bobby Flay recipe & an Alton Brown recipe. Those two guys know what they’re doing so I don’t mess around too much with what they’ve come up with. It’s also quite straightforward: dredge the steaks in seasoned flour, egg, then flour again. Fry. Make sauce. Serve. Enjoy!
Oh, and you should probably serve these steaks with mashed potatoes and collard greens!
The Jersey Cook 