I always associate this dish with Uncle Bill’s Pancake & Dinner House, a restaurant in St. Louis, where I went to college. It’s open 24/7, so naturally there were plenty of late-night visits with classmates after hours of study or a night out at the club. (I don’t think I’ve ever been to Uncle Bill’s when the sun was up.) Every time, I ordered the same thing: country fried steak and eggs. It features a slice of breaded and fried beef under a blanket of creamy sauce; two eggs as you wish; a side of hash browns; and your choice of pancakes, biscuits or toast. It was affordable, filling and delicious.
This is the standard by which I judge every other version I come across – but it turns out there is more than one way to fry a steak.
Get the recipe: Fried Chicken Steak With White Sauce
The origins of chicken fried steak are shrouded in a bit of mystery. One story dates this dish back to the early 20th century, when a cook at Ethel’s Home Cooking in Lamesa, Texas, received an order for “chicken, fried steak” and mistakenly combined the two dishes. As amusing as the anecdote is, this story is not true. But it does indicate one version of the dish: beef dredged in flour, dipped in egg and/or milk, coated again in flour and then fried (similar to some fried chicken recipes, hence the name).
“Much evidence suggests that a version of this dish arrived in the cultural baggage of German immigrants who settled in Texas in the mid-1800s,” history professor James McWilliams wrote in Texas Monthly. “Some food historians trace its culinary heritage to Viennese schnitzel, a Viennese dish consisting of pan-fried breaded veal lightly crisped with lard or clarified butter.” This German-influenced version uses breadcrumbs as the final step in the breading process, resulting in a crispier exterior.
A third version is a more basic pan-seared steak favored by cowboys. Since they often didn’t have breadcrumbs or eggs to cook with, the steaks were simply dredged in flour and then cooked in oil in a cast iron skillet.
These are the three buckets that the dish generally falls into, but variations abound. “Home cooks took a specimen of the humblest, stringiest cuts of meat from the scruffiest backyard cow, beat it until it was tender, dredged it in flour laden with spices and cooked it in the leftover fat,” McWilliams wrote. “It was a disjointed, low-rent fare that reflected the struggle of settlers living on the brink of famine and penury. And like all such humble, home-cooked dishes, it was almost infinitely variable.
My version is an homage to one I enjoyed all those years ago, and it’s influenced by the myriad recipes available today. It’s also slightly streamlined for efficiency, with some minor tweaks for better results.
The preferred cut of meat for this dish is cube steak, which is what I request. Cube steak is a round steak that has been passed through a mechanical tenderizer, known as a meat cuber or Swiss machine. (It’s responsible for the dimples you see on beef.) But cooks can use whatever they want, with some even opting for more premium cuts, like filet mignon (although I think it’s better to reserve them for other uses).
For the coating, I stick to the three-step breading process (flour, egg, flour) to get the thicker coating I’m used to. Instead of breadcrumbs, I recommend the same mixture of seasoned flour for the first and third steps to avoid dirtying an additional dish. The addition of cornstarch and baking powder, while not quite traditional, helps create a lighter, crispier coating. Some recipes call for a mixture of buttermilk and egg for the middle step, but using the same milk as for the sauce eliminates a foreign ingredient. Speaking of sauce, the nickname “chicken” versus “country” usually indicates whether the steak is served with a white or brown sauce (in which it is sometimes smothered). I prefer the former, generously seasoned with freshly ground black pepper.
The result is a crispy, nicely seasoned chicken fried steak and a creamy, peppery white sauce. Every bite is like a warm hug, begging you to come back for more.
Get the recipe: Fried Chicken Steak With White Sauce
