Easy Chicken Fried Steak

A while back, I bought a few packs of cube steak on super duper sale at Target for, like, $1 for a pack of three steaks. I attempted making chicken fried steak for the first time about 6 weeks ago.

Epic fail.

The meat was tough, the breading was super crisp in some places, mushy in some places, and floury in some places. I'm lucky my husband will eat pretty much anything. The best part of my chicken fried steak was the gravy, which came from a packet. All I did was add water. {sigh}

I was pondering what I should do with the second pack of cube steak sitting in my freezer, since I am clearly not cut out to make chicken fried steak, when low and behold, Alton Brown read my mind and aired an episode (Cubing Around) on what to do with cubed steak! What are the odds?

In this episode, he made three seperate dishes with cube steak - country style steak, swiss steak, and {gasp} chicken fried steak. Neither James nor I were at all interested in the swiss steak - cross that one off the list. The country style steak looked ok, but I don't have a dutch oven (it's on my wish list). That left one thing...

Chicken fried steak, we meet again.

Alton Brown made it look relatively easy. But come on, he's Alton Brown the culinary king of everything. The man has so much cooking knowledge it blows my mind. But I decided to try it out anyway. After all, what's the worst that could happen? I've got Domino's on speed dial just in case. Of course, I always tweak recipes. I'm stubborn like that. So I'll show you what I did. This is based on Alton's recipe.

Here goes nothing!

I put some (a little less than a cup) all-purpose flour into one pie pan, and two beaten egg into the other. I am using less than the recipe calls for because I don't have as much cube steak as Alton used.

After I sprinkled the meat with salt and pepper, I dredged it in flour.

Alton says you're supposed to "tenderize the meat using a needling device." I don't have a needling device. But I do have a fork, so that's what I used.

After that, I dipped the meat into the flour again...

then into the egg...

then back into the flour.

Next, I coated the bottom of a pan with vegetable oil and let it heat for a bit. Then I put the steaks into the oil and browned them for a few minutes on each side.

...and set it onto a wire rack in a roasting pan. I figured a roasting pan is as good as any other type of pan, right? And it had a wire rack that fits nicely inside, so that was a big factor in that decision. Anyway, I popped it in the oven on 350 degrees and set the timer for 25 minutes.

While they were baking, I made the gravy. I made it from scratch from my own delicious recipe that I made up myself and... aw, who am I kidding. I used a packaged mix. All I really had to do was add water and heat it on the stove until it boiled. Even fabulous cooks like me {giggle} need a shortcut now and again.

After the steaks came out of the oven...

...I plated them and poured the gravy on top.

Ok, so I was going to make mashed potatoes too, but I forgot. Stop laughing. I'm only human.

The best part is, no Domino's required! It was pretty good. James really liked it. I thought it was ok. I am beginning to realize that I am just not a huge fan of chicken fried steak. If you like it though, you'll probably like this recipe.