Recipe - Country-Fried Steaks

The fun of this dish is taking what is a tough and cheap cut of beef and making it awesome.

Ingredients

Cheap cuts of beef

2 eggs

1 cup milk

All-purpose flour or bread flour

oil or lard for frying

Cajun Seasoning

Instructions

Take your cheap beef cuts, such as top round or whatever is cheap, and pound them out pretty flat with a mallet. I put them one or two at a time in a gallon-size zip-lock bag and pound them in that to contain the mess. The pounding tenderizes them pretty nicely.

Take a couple of eggs and beat them and add a cup of milk and mix that up and that’s your egg wash.

Pour some bread flour into a large bowl so you’ve got plenty of room to slosh around.

Season the steaks with whatever you like. I recommend a good Cajun seasoning like Tony Chachere’s and sprinkle the steaks on both sides and rub in the seasoning so that it will survive the egg wash. Dip the steaks into the egg wash, then go directly into the flour bowl. Drench them in the flour.

In a large skillet, use medium-high heat and heat the oil until is sizzles when you sprinkle water in it. Add one or two steaks at a time. They ought to sizzle when you add them. They absolute key to successfully frying anything is getting the oil to the right temperature. In the past, I’ve jumped the gun and added the meats before the oil was hot enough. Wait until it is good and hot and you can’t lose.

Cook them on one side until you see the red juices pooling, then flip them. When you notice a nice golden brown form around the edges, take them out and let them rest on a few paper towels to catch the excess oil.

If you got the temperature right, they won’t be greasy, but just awesome and a little crispy.

Prepare a peppered white gravy. I can’t stress enough that you got nothing without a gravy. You can get packets that just involve adding water, and I’ve had great success with those, or you can use some of the excess oil, and turn the heat way down, and add couple of tablespoons of the drenching flour to the oil to make a white roux. Once the roux has cooked a minute or two, add a couple of cups of milk and wisk that together with the roux, then turn the heat up to high and wisk continuously so as to avoid scorching it. Add plenty of pepper. Fresh-ground pepper is always, always better than the pre-ground stuff. Add salt to taste. When it starts to thicken, go ahead and take it off the head and let it sit for a minute.

Serve with a vegetable and you’ll probably want creamed potatoes as this dish seems to beg for them. I could see hashbrowns working, too.