P/P Project: Chicken Fried Steak

Some of my readers and I are cooking our way through Ree Drummond’s (aka The Pioneer Woman) cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  We’d love to have you join us as we mess up our kitchens and put on the pounds!  Join us any time!  The next assignment is at the end of this post.

Wow…this was a yummy, albeit fattening, experience!

Overall, this recipe went pretty well for me.  I decided to go with PW’s advice and set up an assembly line for dipping and dredging the cube steak.  I liked the fact that I had all of the simple ingredients on-hand, except for the meat.

So far, so good…

My only complaint so far is that I think the recipe called for waaaaay too much flour.  I bought just under 3 lbs. of cube steak (which was six steaks, by the way), and even after dredging them twice, I threw probably a good cup and half away.

In frying up the steaks, the crust seemed done, if not a little overly done on the second side, after about three minutes.  I put the steaks in a 9×13 pan and kept them in a warm oven while I made the gravy.  For the gravy, I didn’t have nearly as much grease as she did pictured in the book, but I had the 1/4 c. needed, so I started the process.  I found it much too thick with just two cups of milk, so I ended up adding a good bit more.  How much more?  I have no idea, since I was just pouring straight from the jug, but I’d say at least a cup.

I opted to not do mashed potatoes, as was strongly suggested in the book, mainly because I was out of potatoes.  I went with rice and a salad…

It tasted amazing, I thought.  Dirty Harry was the only one of our bunch who didn’t really care for it.  The only downside was that the middles of almost all the steaks were not done enough.  Next time I will heat the pan to only medium and let them fry a little longer.  I think this will also help with the lack of grease issue that I had earlier on.

While this isn’t something I would fix often, so as to not raise our cholesterol to dangerous levels, I will fix this again.  It reminds me of something my grandma would have made.  Mmmmm-mmmmm!

So, did you make a batch of chicken fried steak?  How did it go for you?  Like?  Dislike?  Raise your blood pressure?  Clog your arteries?  Make any variations?  Tell all!  Enquiring minds want to know!

For our next assignment, I’m going a little out of order.  (Yes, I have an order.  I’ve been mostly going through the various sections…Starters, Breakfast, Dinner, etc….in order and picking a recipe.)  I’m going back to the Dinner (read:  lunch) section to try her Macaroni and Cheese.  I usually make a version of mac and cheese for Easter, so this was a good fit for me.  But I’ll still give you a couple of weeks to get this on your tables.  I’ll post about this recipe on April 12.  You can find it on pp. 96-97.  This is a recipe she also has on her site here, so maybe some of you who do not own the cookbook can join us this time.

Happy cookin’!