Real Chicken Fried Stake

A real chicken fried steak is hard to come by these days.  Many places offer the poor excuse of a pre-breaded grey meat thing that goes in a deep fryer..... Yuck.

Making chicken fried steak is a great way to take a simple cut of meat like Chuck and turn it into a wonderful, tasty, treat. 

Another benefit to making a chicken fried steak is you can take a small cut of meat 4 oz, 6 oz and turn it into a fully satisfying main dish.

Ok so here is how you make a real chicken fried steak.

Ingredients;

4 - 4-6oz cuts of chuck (I like to buy a chuck roast and just cut a couple stakes off of it, than I can make a roast the next day with the rest)
1/4 cup of butter milk
2 eggs
2 cups finely crushed saltine crackers
2 cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1 tablespoon of Kosher Salt
1 teaspoon of dried oregano leaves
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1/4 cup of beef tallow (I have another post on here for making your own beef tallow called "Traditional French Frying, Making Beef Tallow from Suet")

Note:  in the following pictures I was only making a half batch of the above recipe, 2 steaks

Take the saltine crackers and put them into a plastic bag or between a couple pieces of wax paper.  Using a rolling pin crush them up into a fine consistency.  Add the flour and seasonings. Mix well in a bowl or shake in the plastic bag.

Put the butter milk and eggs in a flat bottomed bowl and whisk together well.

You will want your steaks cut about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.  Pound them with the back side of a chef's knife one way, than turn 90 degrees and pound them again.  Turn them over and do the same thing on the other side.  You want to reduce the thickness by 30-50% by this pounding action.

Melt the tallow in a thick bottom pan, a cast iron is the best. Get it hot to around 375F - 400F, just below the smoking point.  Take the steaks and dip them into the buttermilk/egg mixture, than dredge them across the breading mixture coating both sides well.  Sometimes it is best to use a fork to do this with. Now put it back into the egg/buttermilk mixture and than back into the breading mixture.  Place them into the pan (which should have about 1/4-3/8" depth of tallow in it).

Fry them until a nice golden brown color.  I like mine about medium to medium well inside.  If you want them more done or less done adjust the time you cook them and the thickness.  So if you like them rare or medium rare you may want them to be originally 1" thick before you pound them down to 3/4"

With the remaining grease in the pan you can make a gravy if you like.