Poorboys Chicken Fried Steak

[POORBOY]

Sure anyone can fry a slice of meat.
After reading several, well a heck of a lot, of recipes.
I made this the first time, last summer.
Most recipes call for London Broil, or a more expensive cut of meat, or Cube steak. The original way to do it seems to be the best. Buy Round Steak, cut about 1/2 inch thick. Get your hammer. Clean the working end of it. Place the meat on 5 or 6 paper plates. Place it on something very solid. Start tapping on the outside of the meat in circles and work your way to the middle. ( while doing this the other day, the "Better Half" Walked in to investigate the noise. I turned to her, she was grinning. She said I am not going to say a word. She left and I resumed tapping the meat). When finished, it should be considerably larger and not over 1/4 inch thick.
Apparently it breaks down the connecting tissue more than a conventional meat hammer, by applying solid impact, rather than spiking impact.


Chicken Fried Steak with Cracked black pepper Gravy


4 cuts of round steak
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
all-purpose flour
canola oil, enough to fill up to at least a 1/2 inch of the pan
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Beat together the egg and milk and set aside. Mix together the salt, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder and cayenne and season on both sides of beef cutlets then add the remainder to the flour.

Heat the cooking oil in a large cast-iron or other heavy skillet over medium-high heat for a few minutes. Oil should be about a half-inch deep in the pan. Check the temperature with a drop of water, if it pops and spits back at you, it's ready.

Dredge the cutlets in the flour, shaking off the excess. Then dip each cutlet in the egg/milk mixture, and then back in the flour.
Carefully place each cutlet into the hot oil. Fry cutlets on both sides, turning once, until golden brown. Remove from heat. Drain cutlets. You now should have a lovely tender medium chicken fried steak

Cracked black pepper Gravy
After the cutlets are removed from the pan, pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of oil, keeping as many as possible of the browned bits in the pan. Heat the oil over medium heat until hot.
Sprinkle 3 tablespoons flour (use the left-over flour from the chicken fried steak recipe (You weren’t gonna throw that goodness away now were you?) in the hot oil. Stir, quickly, to brown the flour.
Gradually stir in 2 1/2 cups milk and stirring constantly with a whisk and whisking out any lumps. (You can cheat and use a emersion blender if you have one ) Lower heat, and gravy will begin to thicken. Continue cooking and stirring a few minutes until gravy almost reaches desired thickness. It’s gonna thicken more as it sits. Check seasonings and add more salt and cracked pepper according to taste. Add more milk if it gets too thick.


Not Bad

Jerry

[Arkansas Frog]

the Martha Stwart of Big Game Hounds. Thank you