My momma is the best cook. Doesn’t everyone say that? But truly, my mom, a Louisiana born and raised, Texas transplant has mastered the art of true home cooking over her 72 years. Don’t tell her that I spilled her age. And honestly, we don’t often cook the way our moms did for us, do we? It takes time, and patience, and an eyeball to know how you measure ingredients in your heart. That’s how my mom cooks. I will ask her to jot down recipes for her favorites and it looks a lot less specifics and more like “a little of this”, “you need about this”, or “when it looks like this, then…” It’s both infuriating and endearing – I’m a girl who likes a recipe and a solid process.
But that’s kind of the beauty in the home cooking, yes? And I want to embrace these kind of recipes more. Understanding that the results may not be the same all the time, but always delicious. And I want to pass these meals down to my kids, too. As much as I want to believe my mom will be here forever, the reality is, she won’t. So it’ll be up to me to feed my kids the way my momma did, so that they can learn from me, and then hopefully pass these time-honored meals and recipes down to their kids. When I think of my mom and cooking when I was little, it always comes back to Chicken Fried Steak. Well, that and her homemade spaghetti sauce, and red beans & rice, and pot roast… but I digress. Her chicken fried steak was epic. It wasn’t a regular meal in the rotation but something that definitely colored my childhood and oft requested by my white gravy loving daddy.
With pandemic and being so far from my mom and her home cooked love, I had to bring the chicken fried steak to life in MY kitchen this time. I will be honest; recipes that require frying things is typically not my jam. Nor is grease. Or butter. I am a whole foods loving girl and save my fried treats for the splurges. Let me tell you, this is worth the splurge. However, also being honest, I needed to make it a tad easier with just the same amount of comfort. After frying up these bad boys, I decided to use Pioneer Peppered Gravy Mix for that same, wonderful white gravy flavor with a lot less of the work. Success!
And no surprise that the gravy was a success! Pioneer is celebrating their 170th anniversary this year – talk about time-tested deliciousness.
*For additional fun, I did end up making some homemade gravy from the leftover CFS oil, flour and milk to see if my family could tell a difference, and y’all. They could NOT! They equally loved both – so now I’m down to make it a bit easier on this busy momma’s stovetop.
Mom’s Chicken Fried Steak
Ingredients:
- Round steaks {about 2lbs} and ask the butcher to tenderize it if they do not have the tenderized rounds {My H-E-B does carry pre-tenderized cube steaks which were perfect!
2 eggs- 1 cup milk
- Flour seasoned with salt/pepper
- Can of Crisco {You’re going to have to trust us here. It’s the only grease to fry CFS in the good ole fashioned way.}
Salt/pepper- Pioneer Peppered Gravy Mix {will need water only for this}
Directions:
- Beat 2 eggs in a bowl with one cup of milk
- In separate bowl/tray, put in 2 cups of flour seasoned with salt & pepper. You could also add garlic powder or even a little cayenne for a kick.
Cut your tenderized round steak into serving sizes and you will take each piece and start with putting each into the flour mixture, then into the egg/milk mixture, then back into the flour mixture.
Heat oil to very hot but not burning. Test this with throwing in a little flour to see if it rises & bubbles but doesn’t turn brown immediately.- Place each piece into the oil. Cook turning once when they have started rising to the top, and then place on paper towels while you finish all the pieces.
While you are cooking the CFS, get the water boiling for your Pioneer Peppered Gravy, 1 1/2 cups. As it boils, prepare the package and whisk in the gravy mix to 1/2 cup of cool water. Once the water has boiled, add the gravy/water mixture to the boiling, and then whisk until thickened. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.
The results? Deliciousness. In a perfect world, I would have had mashed potatoes alongside it but like with the gravy, I take comfort short cuts where I can, so oven fries it was. And a little green never hurt anyone.
This meal was 100% labor of love that my kids, now 11, so very appreciated. They, just as I do, associate my mom with chicken fried steak, and so this is aptly named “Gigi’s Chicken Fried Steak.” If we eat at a restaurant and they see it on the menu, they ask, “but is it as good as Gigi’s?”
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