Table for One is a column by Senior Editor Eric Kim, who loves cooking for himself—and only himself—and seeks to celebrate the beauty of solitude in its many forms.
On long road trips through the South, I always seem to find myself at Cracker Barrel, where my order has been chicken-fried steak for as long as I can remember (they call it "country-fried steak" here, but that might be a misnomer). It’s most prominently displayed on the breakfast menu, but you can order it for dinner, too.
I suppose this is why I associate the dish with restaurant food. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of chicken-fried ("(esp. of steak) dipped in flour or batter and deep-fried, in the manner of fried chicken") was in an advertisement for a restaurant called Phelps in the Colorado Springs Gazette on June 19, 1914. “A summer dainty,” they wrote of Phelps’s chicken-fried steak.
Though I can’t imagine scarfing down a plate of breaded, deep-fried steak and mashed potatoes smothered with milk gravy in the middle of a hot June summer, I certainly long for it whenever I’m missing home.
The exact origins of chicken-fried steak are contestable. Food historians like James McWilliams have attributed it to German immigrants who came to Texas in the mid 19th century. Legend has it that these settlers brought with them Wiener schnitzel, a breaded and fried cutlet of veal, which would later be replaced with cube steak (usually a cheaper cut of beef that's been pounded out by a meat tenderizer).
But as Robert Moss, a Southern food correspondent for Serious Eats, writes, "Such accounts draw more on romantic imagination than on historical evidence." More likely, according to Moss (and backed by the 1914 ad in the Gazette), "chicken-fried steak is a product of early-20th-century commercial kitchens in Kansas and Colorado, where it was a popular restaurant dish."
Though we may never know the dish's true genesis story, we can safely say that it certainly grew legs in Texas, home to America's cattle industry. This probably explains why Texans will forever lay claim to originating chicken-fried steak as we know it today.
But steak aside, if there’s any state that knows chicken-fried chicken, it’s Georgia.
My relationship with Georgia is a long and winding one. Classic story: gay Asian Southern Catholic boy with immigrant parents. I always felt just a little out of place, like I didn't belong. Fleeing to New York—and vowing never to return—was paramount to the slow and steady process of building up my self-worth and confidence in my 20s.
And yet, over the years I grew to realize that I can never truly detach from the sweet, inexorable grip the South has on me. Contrary to the old adage, you can go home again. Especially when your family, friends, and boyfriend all still live there.
My parents have since moved houses, but my mother keeps a bedroom just for me with all my old things. Georgia is where I fly to for Thanksgivings, Christmases, weddings, and birthdays. And funerals.
On each drive home, I stop at Cracker Barrel for a big, fat plate of gravy-smothered chicken-fried steak. There's something about eating the same thing each time like this, and making a ritual out of it, that charges a dish with decades of meaning and memory. It's food that gives me comfort, sure, but more importantly it's food that I never really eat anywhere else.
Chicken-fried steak is so carefully situated in its place that I have a hard time associating it with anything but my homecoming, which in turn means I automatically associate it with comfort.
There was a tragedy in my family last week, but I couldn't catch a flight out in time. It's hard to want to be somewhere else when that somewhere else is so far. When I heard the news, a part of me left my body for a bit and floated up.
This suspension lasted for about a week, as if an astrally projected version of myself was looking down on my earthly self. In many ways, a part of me has always been in Georgia, which means only a part of me is present here in New York. It's hard to feel whole when you're emotionally, and spiritually, displaced like that.
It makes me think back on all those years in New York when I ached most for this dish but couldn’t find an adequate version, so I'd float from restaurant to restaurant, hungry, scouring menus and asking, "Do you serve chicken-fried steak?" Hardly anyone does, by the way, except for a kitschy cowgirl-themed restaurant in the West Village, which serves a terribly cooked $19.50 chicken-fried steak with a bland, gloopy gravy. The nearest Cracker Barrel is an hour's drive away from Manhattan.
Regarding this hunger, M.F.K. Fisher probably said it best in her Alphabet for Gourmets, in a passage titled "S Is for Sad," where she describes
the mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem about to break and our lives seem too bleakly empty. Like every other physical phenomenon, there is always good reason for this hunger if we are blunt enough to recognize it. ... The truth is that most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak. What is more, they need a steak.
For those days when you need a steak, little else is as comforting as homemade chicken-fried steak.
My chicken-fried steak recipe is pretty classic, save for the panko breading (which, for me, fries up way crispier and requires less time in the oil than the traditional flour-egg-flour situation). I’ve always felt that frying at home was never worth the mess, but when you’re cooking small-scale like this, the oil feels somehow more manageable.
I like to make a classic milk gravy with some pan drippings, essentially just a cowboy's version of a béchamel. The most important ingredient here for me is the nutmeg, that deep, earthy cure-all for homesickness, because it tastes of everything good and familiar: Christmas, pumpkin pie, milk gravy.
Alongside mashed potatoes and finely shaved cabbage, chicken-fried steak is comfort food for when you need comfort food most.
| 1/2 | pound cube steak (about 1 to 2 steaks, depending on the size) |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste | |
| Cayenne pepper, to taste | |
| 2 | tablespoons all-purpose flour |
| 1 | egg |
| 1 | tablespoon milk |
| 1 | cup panko breadcrumbs |
| Vegetable oil, for frying | |
| Mashed potatoes and coleslaw, for serving (optional) |
| 1/2 | pound cube steak (about 1 to 2 steaks, depending on the size) |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste | |
| Cayenne pepper, to taste | |
| 2 | tablespoons all-purpose flour |
| 1 | egg |
| 1 | tablespoon milk |
| 1 | cup panko breadcrumbs |
| Vegetable oil, for frying | |
| Mashed potatoes and coleslaw, for serving (optional) |
| 1 | tablespoon flour |
| 1 | cup milk |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper | |
| Cayenne pepper, to taste | |
| 1 | pinch freshly grated nutmeg |
| 1 | tablespoon flour |
| 1 | cup milk |
| Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper |
| Cayenne pepper, to taste | |
| 1 | pinch freshly grated nutmeg |
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Written by: Eric Kim
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31 Comments
loved to cook. I have no idea where he got his recipe for "pounded" roundsteak, but his
technique was to take a round steak, 3/4" to 1" thick and cut it up into suitable sized pieces
a very sharp butcher knife and "some flour" seasonings and put the mound of flour on top
of the steak pound/cut it to death with the knife, all the while turning and mounding the flour back on top of the steak & then turning it over and doing the same, until it resembled
the cube steak your recipe calls for except that if now has the flour and seasonings that
have become part of the steak its self. (You do all this on a wooden or plastic cutting board) As you can well imagine this is a long and messy process, especially if you are feeding two adults and 3 very hungry teanagers! At this stage of the game, I do appreciate
your recipe, I'm almost 73, and my wrists and fingers will no longer take the work-out! (Rheumatoid Arthritis) Here in the Pacific Northwest it's Patty's Egg Nest instead of Cracker Barrell...they are very few and far between up here. I can certainly understand your
pain, my parents have been gone for over 20 years, but oviously I still miss them a lot!
The shaved cabbage was inspired by the best tonkatsu I've ever had in Kyoto (wish I could remember the name of the restaurant). The cutlet came with shaved cabbage—superfine, ice-cold crisp, and barely dressed if dressed at all.
I love this moniker: "ex-pat Southern." Will be borrowing that!
Eggs,flour,garlic salt n pepper,and I know some don't like it it but a good sprinkle of MSG will enhance the flavor X10. Ok maybe not that much but try it both ways with or without. The pankow bread crumbs will burn pretty easy . Try using a can of Pet Milk for your gravy , some of the cfs crumbles an flour for your rue and thicken to preference. Regular milks good also. season to taste. Enjoy....🤓
http://gullahgravy.com/chicken-perlou-k-chicken-bog/
I've only eaten chicken fried steak at Cracker Barrel while traveling cross country. Loved it, much to my surprise. My sister, who lived in Oklahoma and Texas for decades, used to make it often though I never had her version (and shhhh!-she's a dreadful cook!)
For some reason, it never seemed "doable" in my kitchen. You sold me with the panko. Your use of nutmeg is clever, too. As a certified aromatherapist, I can tell you that some of nutmeg's properties are anti-depressant, anti-insomnia, a pain reliever, improves brain health (gives an uptake in serotonin and dopamine-"feel goods" for the brain) and aids digestion. Time to get the Lodge skillet and the tenderizing hammer out!
Best take away for me, though, the name "summer dainty!" When the temperatures start to really climb here, that's how I am going to identify.
Thank you for another toothsome Table for One treat of an article. <3
p.s. You're my favorite.
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