Chicken fried steak super crispy on the outside, with incredibly tender steak on the inside, all smothered in a flavourful gravy is finally something I can make at home!
For years now chicken fried steak was something I got when we were on vacation. If I’m being completely honest, it’s something I ordered once and it was AMAZING – a super crispy coating loaded with flavourful, tender beef, and covered in a warm pepper gravy. Every time I ordered it since that first time though, I was just chasing the dream. It was never that good again.
Chicken Fried Steak or Country Fried Steak?
Humour me for a second, incase some of you have come here looking for country friend steak. Isn’t it the same thing? You may be asking, if you’re like me. But no, it’s not (huh, who knew!).
Country fried steak is just dusted with flour, and served with a brown gravy and onions (typically).
Chicken fried steak is this beautiful recipe (and my preference). A breaded steak served with a peppery white cream gravy.
Back to the important details, like…
Not even restaurants get it right all the time!
Even the restaurants seem to struggle with finding the sweet spot where all three parts of chicken fried steak (breading, steak, and gravy) are awesome. Most of the time the coating’s soggy, not crispy, and the steak is often incredibly tough (I remember ordering at one restaurant and not even being able to cut through it, but I don’t know if it was just a steak issue, or if their knives were crap too). And you can’t forget the gravy. When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s bad though, it’s HORRIBLE. Bland and too thick are not what we want.
Homemade is always better. Eventually.
I finally decided to try making it at home. Two years ago. Yeah, that’s right, this has taken two years of trial and error to finally get it right because there were SO MANY THINGS to go wrong.
Over and over again I was screwing up the coating. First, I tried a thin coating – soggy. Then, I tried a thick coating – soggy. Finally, I tried a coating with cereal in it – it was like I dipped it in a soggy bowl of cornflakes.
After that I tried switching up my cooking method. First, I tried shallow oil in a skillet – soggy. Then, I tried an inch of oil in a skillet – soggy (seeing the pattern here?). Finally, I tried deep-frying. Dun dun DUN: SUCCESS. There’s no way around it, you can’t shallow fry this in any amount of oil, you’ve got to deep fry it if you want that crunch.
How about some warm Cheesecake Factory bread to go with your Chicken Fried Steak?
As if the coating nightmares weren’t enough, the beef had to be sucky too!
Now I had the coating right, but I still had super tough beef. Chicken fried steak is only as good as its beef is tender. Preach it, am I right? I tried all the typical (at least what I thought was typical) types of steak for it – meaning cheap cuts of beefsteak. Those pre-tenderized cube steaks everyone says to use. It was always tough. I tried tenderizing it again at home, I tried marinating it in buttermilk, nothing was working. The “A-ha” moment didn’t come until I stopped thinking those cheap cube steaks were my only option.
One day I walked into our local grocery store and they had started doing something new – taking the good steaks, and offering ¼” thick “fast fry” option. I grabbed 4 fast-fry rib-eye steaks and hi-tailed it outta there quicker than a Texas tornado <- FYI as a Canadian I don’t even know if that’s a thing, but it sounded good, lol.
Chicken Fried Steak perfection, only two years later.
That was it, that was the difference it needed. I still gave them a quick pounding with my tenderizing mallet just in case it would make a difference. A little salt and pepper on the steaks, then into the breading mixture and we were good to deep fry.
The gravy was the easy part, just don’t be afraid to season it. You want this to be nice and peppery (well, as peppery as you can handle, I’ll admit when I do it to my taste the kids find it a little too much). Also, make sure it isn’t too thick. It’ll thicken up more as it cools, so have it a little on the runny ride before you bring it to the table.
Eating this chicken fried steak was like being in Heaven. I wanted to go on a pro-bono tour of all the restaurants I had ordered this at that were struggling to get it right. I wanted to invite every single person I’d ever met over to our house to try it. I wanted to hide the leftovers for myself to eat for lunch the next day.
I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which of those things I actually did.
Busted, lol!! And it was still delicious the day after. I just put it in the oven at 400ºF for ten minutes and warmed the gravy up on the stove.
Enjoy!
Chicken Fried Steak
Chicken fried steak that's crispy, tender, and full of flavour is possible at home! I spent two years perfecting this recipe, and it was worth every single step (and there were a lot of them) to finally get to this delicious, finger licking good perfection!
Ingredients
- 4 Good quality "fast fry" boneless steaks 1/4" thick (I prefer ribeyes)
Breading
- 1 cup cornstarch
- 1 egg
- 1 1/3 cup buttermilk, divided
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tsp kosher salt
- 3 tsp paprika
- 3 tsp black pepper
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
Gravy
- 1/4 cup canola oil (or vegetable oil)
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 1/2 cups milk (preferably whole milk, but any will do)
- Pepper to taste (1 tsp to 1 tbsp depending on what you like)
Instructions
- Get yourself set up to deep fry, and bring your oil up to temperature. We have a stand alone fryer, but a nice deep pot and some oil is all you need.
- Dry your steaks, give them a quick tenderize with a mallet, and season both sides with salt and pepper.
- Set up a breading station with three dishes (I use pie plates). In the first, put the cup of cornstarch. In the second, whisk together the egg and 2/3 cup buttermilk. For the third, whisk together the flour, salt, paprika, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, baking powder, and cumin. Drizzle the remaining 2/3 cup buttermilk over the flour mixture and use your fingers to squish it all together until it's coarse and crumbly.
- Take your first steak and dip it into the cornstarch, making sure it's coated everywhere. Next, dip it into the buttermilk. Finally, press it into the flour mixture, flipping and pressing until it's completely covered. Set aside on a baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining steaks.
- Once your steaks are all breaded, let them rest for a minute while you get your gravy going.
- Put the canola oil in a medium saucepan set over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk together for about a minute, until the flour just starts to turn a light brown. Slowly whisk in the milk, then add the pepper. Simmer over a low heat while you fry the steaks.
- Fry one steak at a time, for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes per side, just until golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack set over a baking sheet, and tent loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm while you finish the rest.
- Serve the steaks topped with a generous helping of gravy. It's also awesome with mashed potatoes!
Notes
If your gravy thickens up too much, just whisk in some more milk.
Big shout out to Serious Eats, whose spice mix I tweaked for the breading!
Sean Mahan
Homemade is always better, no doubts on that! This recipe is sure delicious, I’m just thinking maybe add half a teaspoon of curry too..think that’d work well.
Tiffany
What temperature for the deep frying oil? Thank you!
Katrina
350°F (though it creeps up to 360°F on me most times). That was a great question, and I’ll add the temperature to the actual recipe tomorrow. I hope you love it!
Yvette
Looks delicious! Wish I had found your recipe, before my dreadful experience making it, last night, for my Family! ? God bless you, and I look forward to making some Chicken Fried Steak, the “right” way! May I ask you why, you do not use your grease for the gravy?
Katrina
Hi Yvette! Trust me, I have been there with the disappointing chicken fried steak!The last time we drove down to Florida for vacation a few years ago, I ordered chicken fried steak at every single restaurant in an attempt to figure out what made the great ones great. Thank goodness I had two weeks to walk all those steaks off at the theme parks, lol!
About the gravy – honestly, when I made it like this, I really liked it, and didn’t bothering trying to tweak it any further. Being from Canada, white gravy isn’t very popular. My love of southern food has just come from all those family trips down south. Lots of March breaks in Florida, and a few summer trips to Tennessee and Georgia as a kid, and I’ve been hooked ever since. You’re right though, I should give it a shot with some bacon or sausage grease one of these days. I’m a big believer that every recipe can and should be tweaked – everyone has different tastes. I’ll say that the steaks themselves are pretty darn perfect, but if you’ve got a gravy that you love, or some bacon grease lying around, bump this one up with some extra flavour!
Anonymous
I’m from Texas and we know Chicken Fried Steak. This is the best recipe I’ve found. It’s every bit as good as the best restaurant around. Thank you, thank you.
Anonymous
This recipe was awesome! My husband loves chicken fried steak and I can never get just right. Fathers Day brunch was great with this recipe. White pepper in thr gravy helps layer flavor a little and if you make bacon or sausage, use that pan and/or leftover oil.
Katrina
I’ve finally got white pepper stocked in the pantry! Thank you so much for the tip!!
CJ
Sweetheart, your recipe made my husband’s birthday. He loves CFS and the few times I’ve made it was always disappointed with the breading. It has to be crisp like fried chicken. Well, thanks for all your testing because you’re on to something here. Now I can hardly wait to use this on fried chicken. Thank you!
Katrina
Thank you so much CJ! I’m so glad that your husband loved it, and so appreciative that you took the time to come back and tell me. This recipe is definitely one of the ones I’m most proud of. I have to try and forget about it so I don’t make it every week, lol!
Denise Walters
There’s a problem with your instructions: In your lead-in you say that “deep frying” is the key to avoiding soggy chicken-fried steaks, then in the instructions you say to fry one steak at a time, 1-1/2 to 2 minutes PER SIDE. The definition of deep frying is that the item is SUBMERGED in hot oil, which means that ALL sides are being fried simultaneously. Now, are you deep-frying or not? You didn’t give a particular size of pot or quantity of oil, so it’s impossible to discern exactly what you mean by deep-frying.
Katrina
Hi Denise, Because the chicken fried steaks tend to float and not stay submerged in the oil like you want for deep frying, I ask you to flip them half-way through the cooking process so that both sides get evenly browned and crispy. You can use a stand alone deep fryer for this, or just a few inches of oil in a large pot (I like to use my dutch oven for this if I’m not using our stand alone fryer).
Sonia
I finally found the one! Really tasted great! I forgot to drizzle the buttermilk on the flour. It still turned out great. I’ll have to try that next time. I kept trying to figure out where the other 2/3s of buttermilk went haha! Thank you for the recipe!
Angie
Growing up here in Texas both my Mammaw’s always used the flour, egg and milk method. I really don’t think any seasoning other than S&P. I was in the mood so I thought there has to be a better method and why not go for some seasoning. I’m 52 and just now getting into cooking. Mammaw’s food was amazing but it was always same things no changes. Nothing new. I thought cooking is just meant to be boring. Boy was I wrong! This breading was just absolutely amazing! I did mess up and allow all that stuck to the meat to stay and cook with the meat so some bites on the ends/edges was just breading. Oops. I really do appreciate all the hard work and time you put into perfecting this recipe and technique. (2 years?? What?!?!) I am subscribing and picking up more of whatever you have to offer!!
Anonymous
This chicken fried steak recipe looks absolutely delicious! I came across it while taking a break from my jura hilfe research, and now I can’t wait to try it. The detailed instructions and tips are very helpful. Thanks for sharing such a mouth-watering recipe!
Steve B
Thanks for explaining the issue about “deep frying” about the steaks floating; that makes sense.
I have a suggestion with the gravy…..add a pinch of sugar to it. A small amount of sugar will bring out the flavor so much more with what you’re cooking, especially vegetables. I learned this from my mother when I saw her adding a pinch of sugar to some green beans. Believe me, it will make a difference! Also, adding a little fresh thyme is a nice touch too.
Katrina
Love this suggestion! Thank you so much for sharing Steve!