Crispy Chicken Fried Steak w/ Country Gravy

Hi guys, today on Divas Can Cook we are frying up some steak to a crisp. It goes in perfection and we are going to smother it in some country style gravy because we are making none other than chicken fried steak. Pure comfort food. Y'all ready? Let's go. Alright, so the first thing we're going to do is tenderize our cubed steak and this cubed steak already comes tenderized but I like to tenderize it a little bit more and also flatten it out a little bit. So get yourself a little meat mallet and just bang it on. I was so happy that my kids were not in the kitchen because normally they take over this part and I like doing this part because it's fun. Okay, so that looks great. Nice and thin. I like mine real thin because I like for my fork to just glide through. I don't like having to use a knife to cut my steak. No, not with chicken fried steak. So I like to really flatten it out just like this right here. You don't have to do it that thin if you don't want to though. Okay, so this looks great. They're nice and thin and ready to go. So now I'm going to add some seasonings. I'm keeping it basic here you guys. Just some salt, pepper, a little bit of garlic powder because we're also going to add seasoning to the flour. We're going to put on that gravy so you don't want to, you know, we don't want to over season it too much. You know what I'm saying? Just a nice little coating of seasoning on the front and the backs. Now we can move along to our next step which is dredging and dipping. Alright, we're going to dredge this steak through flour and then dip it in our batter. So I'm going to add some flour into this large casserole dish. Use a really big dish because this chicken fried steak is big. You need something big to kind of, you know, dip it in. I added a lot of spices in there. I'm going to whisk this around and get it all combined. I got pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, Cajun seasoning. Just some yummy yummy spices. Now I'm going to remove about half a cup of this seasoned flour. I'm going to place it into my little dipping station number two. Alright, you need two dishes. I'm going to add in an egg and then I'm going to add in just enough milk to make it a nice thick batter. You don't want it to be too loose because you want it to be able to cling to the steak. So just add in just enough milk so that it's like a, you know, a batter, a thick batter. Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is dip our steak into the flour on both sides. Shake it off and then place it into the batter and let it just sit for a bit to kind of absorb that egg batter. Okay, we're going to do both sides. Make sure that both sides are coated and let that excess drip off because we don't want to clump up our flour. So I'm just going to let all of that excess egg wash mixture just drip off and then we're going to place it back into our flour and just we're going to coat both sides of the steak with flour and this is our final. Okay, you can coat it again in flour if you want to after it, you know, absorbs a little bit but that's it. Flour, egg wash, flour, done. Okay, easy peasy and here are our steaks. They're all coated. They're ready to be fried up so let's move along to the next step. We're just frying these beautiful steaks. I have my canola oil at 350. It's nice and hot. Make sure it's nice and hot. Okay, add those steaks into the grease and let it fry on up and now you see why it's called chicken fried steak because, you know, it really does look like chicken. Okay, country fried steak, chicken fried steak, whatever you call it. Okay, I know that it's called both things. I call it chicken fried steak. All right, so go ahead and just fry those up on both sides. You really don't need a whole lot of oil because it's so thin. You know, I love it, love it, love it, love it. Fry it up until it is nice and crispy. Won't take long at all because you guys saw how thin that steak was so it fries up super duper quick. Place these on a cooling rack just like that and when they are done, you can preheat your oven to about 200 and you can place these into the oven just to keep them nice and hot and crunchy and crispy while we make our gravy which is the next step. All right, okay, so let's make our gravy. Very, very easy. I'm going to add some butter into my large skillet here. I cleaned my skillet out. Now, you're going to have some little brown bits in the skillet after you fry your steaks. If you want to leave those in there, that is perfectly fine. You can but I want a really, really white gravy so I went ahead and removed those little flavorful bits but you can leave them in. Okay, now I'm going to add in some little bit of flour once that butter has melted and we're going to cook this flour down just until it is golden, lightly golden, kind of like this right here. Very, very, you know, lightly golden. Not brown, just lightly golden. That looks great just to cook out all that flour taste. We don't want that in there. Okay, that is looking perfect and then it's my cue to add in my chicken broth. I love adding chicken broth to my country style gravy whenever I'm making like a savory dish. Whenever I do like biscuits and gravy, I use all milk. I don't use any chicken broth but for like these type dishes, like savory style, I love to use chicken broth and milk. So yeah, you can use all milk if you want to. Okay, but go ahead and add that in there. We're just going to cook this until it starts to thicken up. Keep stirring it, keep stirring it. It'll get nice and smooth and silky and it will begin to thicken up perfectly. If you want it to be even thicker, you can just let it cook down. It'll cook down. As it cools off, it'll get thicker. If you want it to be thinner, then you can add more milk or more chicken broth. You really can't mess it up, you know. Okay, now here is the most important part ever when it comes to making gravy. You gotta season it up. You gotta add pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, some thyme, some salt. You really have to add those seasonings in there to bring everything to life because if not, it is like the most depressing thing. A gravy that is not bomb tasting is so sad. It really is. So this gravy should be good enough to drink when you get done. All right, that's when you know you're done. Okay, and when it's time to eat, go ahead and remove those steaks from the oven. Get them plated. They're so crispy and crunchy. I love it. And next, just pour on all of that creamy country style gravy. Now, if you prefer a brown gravy, I would put that recipe on my blog as well in case you want to use that one. Add on some more pepper. I always add on more pepper. I love pepper in this gravy. And now you are done. Crispy, tender, crunchy chicken fried steak. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Don't forget to subscribe and check out my other videos. Later!