Chicken fried streak isn’t too common, but it sure can be a treat

Time:1 hour 10 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

I’ve always liked chicken fried steak. The cube steak just has so much flavor on its own that it really doesn’t need all that much done to it for it to taste pretty good. Fry it, giving it a crispy exterior should only make it better. This recipe is fairly simple, but does have some aspects to it that I’ve never seen before, like marinating the steak in milk and using saltine crackers as the coating. There’s also a gravy recipe baked into this recipe. Hopefully, Josh’s mom has good taste.

Key Ingredients and omissions:

I didn’t leave anything out of this recipe. I think come of the key ingredients are the milk and saltine crackers. The recipe calls for a pretty large amount of saltine crackers, and they are the majority of the coating of the steaks. It may seem like too much, but you will use most of it. The milk is also an interesting addition. I’m not sure if it made much of a difference to the flavor or texture, but it is needed to help the coating stick to the steaks.

Tools:

• Cast iron pan or other frying vessel

• Some sort of meat tenderizer

Cooking Review:

Prep: 40 Minutes

This step could be about half for you. I was working on another recipe at the same time, so I did a little juggling here. You really only need about 20 minutes to marinate your steaks in milk at room temperature. If you want to tenderize your meat, maybe a few extra minutes. I used the tool shown in the slideshow below to ‘tenderize’ the meat. It’s essentially a bunch of little knives that pierce the steak. While waiting for the steaks to marinate, I went ahead and used a food processor to crush the saltines. I transferred them to a baking dish along with the flour and other seasonings to get the dredge station set up.

Dredging: 4 minutes

While I heated my oil, I dredged the steaks one by one. It was really easy; I just transferred each steak from the milk to the saltine coating, pressing the coating firmly onto the steaks. Be sure that all sides are well coated.

Frying Steaks:19 minutes 4 batches

I think I started with my oil a little too hot, as my first batch got dark pretty quickly. Luckily, I was able to have them cook through without burning. I cooked each side for 2-3 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack on a paper towel lined baking sheet. It would’ve been nice to have a oil temperature target instead of waiting until the oil was ‘shimmering’.

Gravy: 9 minutes

I didn’t include this part in the total time because I wasn’t able to get it to work. I removed the oil from the cast iron pan and replaced it with butter. Flour was whisked in and let cook until lightly browned before the milk was slowly whisked in. The recipe says to add more milk if needed to loosen up, which I did. However, the gravy kinda just stayed together in a big mass, never really reaching a gravy consistency. Maybe it was because I used bread flour instead of all purpose, but that substitution had never been an issue in any other recipe where I made that change. I also tasted it and didn’t like it, so I feel like something definitely went wrong here.

Analysis:

The gravy, as it is part of the recipe will be considered in part of the score, but I won’t rehash it here. As far as the steaks go, the coating was very crispy and had a nice flavor. There weren’t any seasoning besides salt and pepper, yet I had absolutely no complaints when it came to the flavor. Of course, the steaks themselves had a nice flavor to them, as well. They still had some chew and a few tougher parts, but it wasn’t a jaw exercise. Honestly, I don’t think I would even want a gravy with these. I’m going to give this recipe a 8/10. The gravy loses it a point and they could be more tender. The great flavor and extreme simplicity make up for any other points it would have lost for part of the recipe being a failure. Give it a try and I don’t think you’ll be upset, except for maybe the gravy.