Chicken fried steak

I was recently inspired by this Tyler Florence recipe in the Parade Magazine. I thought I would try making chicken-fried steak, since it's something I've never eaten before. Additionally, Samantha complained that the chicken-fried steak at school wasn't very good, so I wanted to see if I could make something that she would like. Although, if mine was worse than than cafeteria food, I would stop cooking!

I started with my recipe for deep-fry batter, which I use for chicken nuggets, but I've included it below in case you missed it. The original recipe calls for going back and forth between water and flour coating. I don't know why, but the results I get when trying to alternate between wet and dry for the purpose of coating something is that I end up with a bunch of flour in the milk or water or whatever I'm supposed to use to get flour to stick to the meat. Perhaps that's something you learn in culinary school. Anyway, here you go.

Batter

• 1/2 cup tapioca flour (I usually use rice flour, but Dona and Sam can't have it right now)
• 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour
• 2 Tablespoons potato starch (You also can use corn starch if you want)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (you might leave this out for chicken fried steak)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup water

Combine dry ingredients, add water, and beat until smooth.

If you didn't start in a wide, flat-bottomed container of some sort, pour your batter into one and place your pieces of chicken in it. Use a fork to turn them over until they are well-coated. Batter will expand a little, so if they aren't totally covered with batter, it's okay.

I tried following Tyler's recipe with a couple of inches of oil in a frying pan. That didn't work so well. As you can see from the pictures at the top, my steaks are a little burned.

I think I would put 1/4- to 1/2 inch of oil in a pan and then fry it. If that doesn't work, I'll put it in 4-6 inches of oil and really deep fry it. I'm afraid deep frying the steak would burn it as well, because the red meat might need to cook longer than chicken might need to.


I liked Bobby Flay's recipe for white gravy. You could probably make your own sausage gravy, too. Go with what you like.