Housewifery - Chicken Fried Steak

The Ficke family of Stephenville, Texas, was not a typical Texas family, I’m afraid, for so far as I can remember my mother never served us chicken fried steak. Mother cooked three meals a day and canned all the produce Daddy grew in our acre-sized garden, but, perhaps because Daddy was a German-American, her food was more kraut and sausage than “regular” Texas fare. So, as a child, I never learned to like chicken fried steak, and, try as I might, I still don’t. But . . . it is a tradition in Texas that surely deserves a history lesson!

It’s been said that there are three food-groups in Texas cooking: Tex-Mex, barbecue, and chicken fried steak.

Interestingly chicken fried steak, also called country fried steak if it is made without the egg wash, is a dish similar to the classic Viennese dish, Wiener Schnitzel, a tenderized veal cutlet, coated with flour, eggs and bread crumbs, and fried. For course, I remind myself, my grandfather came from Northern Germany, nowhere near Vienna! However, the origins of the dish appear to be from Austrian, and perhaps German, immigrants to Texas in the nineteenth century, between 1844 and 1850.

Lamesa, the county seat of Dawson County on the Texas South Plains, claims to be the birthplace of chicken fried steak, although chicken fried steak is the official state meal of Oklahoma! Unofficially, it is the state dish of Texas, as well.

The dish is prepared by taking thin cuts of pounded, inexpensive beef steak, perhaps chuck, round, or flank, and dredging it in flour and egg batter, seasoned with salt and pepper. It is fried in a cast iron skillet in hot lard. It is traditionally topped with white cream gravy and served mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, and biscuits or cornbread.

The cheapest, least tender pieces of beef are usually the ones that are used for this dish, since the pounding softens the meat and the majority of the flavor comes from the fried coating and the cream-based gravy that the dish is inevitably smothered in. And even fans of the dish will tell you that the best parts are often the coating and the gravy.

Also called CFS, it can be served as a sandwich on a hamburger gun, cubed and stuffed in a baked potato with gravy and cheese, or cut into strips and served in a basket with French fries and gravy and called “steak fingers”.

In the Northeast it is seldom found on a menu, and often if it is there, it is served with, I’m sorry to say, brown gravy. My husband, Raf, and I were entertaining his aunt from New Jersey recently, and she was horrified to see white gravy on the table, let alone on a piece of meat, and could not bear to taste it! What she was missing!

According to The Dictionary of American Food and Drink by John Mariani, the term "chicken fried steak" first appeared in print in the year 1952. It has long been a favorite dish in the South, Midwest, and Southwest United States.

And here, friends, is a one of many recipes for the dish:

2 pounds cheap beef steak, trim the fat
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 whole eggs, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil or lard (if you want the real taste)
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme

Cut the meat with the grain into 1/2-inch thick slices. Season each piece on both sides with the salt and pepper. Place the flour into a pie pan. Place the eggs into a separate pie pan. Dredge the meat on both sides in the flour. Tenderize the meat, using a needling device, until each slice is 1/4-inch thick. Once tenderized, dredge the meat again in the flour, followed by the egg and finally in the flour again. Repeat with all the pieces of meat. Place the meat onto a plate and allow it to sit for 10 to 15 minutes before cooking.

Place enough of the oil to cover the bottom of a 12-inch skillet and set over medium-high heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, add the meat in batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Cook each piece on both sides until golden brown, approximately 4 minutes per side. Remove the steaks to a wire rack set in a half sheet pan and place into the oven. Repeat until all of the meat is browned.

Add the remaining oil to the pan. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of the flour left over from the dredging. Add chicken broth and de-glaze the pan. Whisk until the gravy comes to a boil and begins to thicken. Add the milk and thyme and whisk until the gravy coats the back of a spoon, approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Season to taste, with more salt and pepper, if needed. Serve the gravy over the steaks.

And if you’d rather not try this yourself, then drive down to Strawn, Texas, and indulge yourself with a made-to-order chicken fried steak at Mary’s Restaurant. You won’t be sorry!Oh, and if you haven't heard Jimmy Baldwin's song, Peace, Love, and Chicken Fried Steak, find it and give it a listen!

©2008 Sue Seibert