Round – Chicken Fried Steak

Sunday afternoon. I think to myself, “Man. I’d really like a salad.”

Quick poke around the fridge. Not so much in the way of salad material. Some romaine hearts. A couple of veggies in the crisper that haven’t yet evolved into sentience, but nothing that really goes together. Hm. I guess I’ll just do a super-simple salad and knock together a quick vinaigrette to make it a little special.

Alright, so my salad can be a side salad. That raises other questions for dinner, since I can’t make that a standalone dish. I need a main course.

Let’s poke around in the freezer. Meh.

Let’s poke around in The Freezer.

I pull out a piece labeled “tenderized round steak.” I used some top round in jerky a couple of weeks ago, and it turned out really well. I saw these steaks back then, and they piqued my interest. Plus, I still haven’t used the new Jaccard I picked up the other day.

Let’s do Chicken Fried Steak.

This dish reminds me of home. I developed a fondness for it waiting tables at a pancake house in Kansas. It’s the perfect end to a long night of trying not to get your ponytailed ass knocked to the ground by a throng of drunken faux-cowboys. Good times.

For this one, I’m going back to Alton Brown.

The mise:

I warm the oven to 250. How do I know?

Hey, look! I'm not an idiot anymore!

No more trips to Chucktown for me.

The two round steaks are thawed and ready. I dredge them with seasoned flour. The “tenderized” on the label was no joke. These things have been thoroughly perforated.

But I wanna use my new, pretty Jaccard, so give them another once-over.

le jaccard

At this point I can almost see daylight through them, so I’m calling them sufficiently tenderized. I don’t want them to look like a meat doily on the plate.

I let the steaks sit for a few so the crust can cement to the meat. Meanwhile, I heat up a little canola in a stockpot (my frying pan isn’t big enough) and stare off into middle distance.

Basil's supervising.

She has flour on her flank. Not fussed about it

At this point, I start to think about the other veggies I have laying around. I just picked up some white onions. I don’t think they’d do well on my side salad, though. What else? I have a lot more canola oil, because we were running out…

Where’s my mandoline?

It slices! It dices!

Steaks go into a little hot, shimmery oil. Long enough to get some Golden Brown and Delicious on, then a flip.

Onions go into a lot of hot, shimmery oil. Long enough to get some Golden Brown and Delicious on, then a rescue.

Everything goes into gently warm – and accurately measured – oven.

Did I mention I'm not an idiot anymore?

Steaks done – into oven. Onion rings done – into oven.

Gravy time. I have too much cooking oil in the pan, so I siphon a little off. In goes some flour to make a little roux (while whisking). Then a quick deglaze with chicken broth (while whisking), add milk and thyme and cook it down (while whisking).  Pause to admire my work (while whiskeying).

Everything’s ready. We plate up, and I snap a shot with the focus-challenged remnants of The Great Camerageddon of ’09.

One of these things is not like the other.

Therein lies a problem. How am I supposed to keep gravy from getting on my lettuce?

That's how.

Denuded of vegetation, dinner’s ready.

Simpler times, indeed.

Verdict? If you like Chicken Fried Steak, this is better than most of those you’ll get in a restaurant. Plus, you know where it comes from. There’s no What-The-Hell-Am-I-Eating? mystery about this meat.

I enjoyed this dish, and it was a big hit with my son, who doesn’t generally dig meat. That said, I think I could have needled it a little more (despite my butcher’s prep), and probably fried it a little longer.

As a side note, if you dig onion rings, think very hard about making them at home. They’re not difficult, and they’re shockingly good. You just need a lot of oil and good temperature control.

In all, a great way to end a weekend.

Though I never did get that salad.

Round – Jerky

Alright, I’m climbing the highest mountain in the contiguous 48 in less than a week.

I need carbs, protein, and the hopes of a thousand children.

Let’s focus on the first two. Alton Brown will help me climb this mountain.

First, his homemade granola. Detailed elsewhere, and not to be replicated here. Detailed here.

Second, jerky. I like his recipe. And I like the Whys of his recipe.

But I have one cow. And one cow has only so much flank steak, which his recipe demands.

Most butchers use top round for jerky, because it’s cheap and vaguely low fat (and fat will make jerky turn rancid, defeating the point of jerky).

Top round is low enough fat, but lacks the grain structure of flank. If you slice flank with the grain, when you remove the moisture, the muscle fibers shrink along predictable, established vectors. In other words, they grow shorter. But they’re still a continuous piece of food.

With top round, however, that muscle fiber is sliced differently. It isn’t a single, continuous piece. So it winds up thinner and more brittle than flank.

I’m keeping it in a zip-top bag, however, and will eat it in a few days. So I don’t care. I can eat dust if I have to. And I have more round than Liberace has sequins. Let’s dessicate some top round.

I use AB’s generic jerky recipe. Ordinarily, I’d  double his liquid smoke and red pepper amounts, because I enjoy smoke and red pepper. But this top round is grass fed. It’s my first time working with it, so, again, this is a control experiment. I’ll stick to the recipe.

So I marinate, and then I strap it to a box fan between furnace filters. I differ from AB in this respect, in that I use paper towels as a moisture buffer between the furnace filters. In other words, fan-filter-papertowel-meat-papertowel-filter, repeat ad infinitum. The towels impede airflow, but you aren’t stuck picking filter fragments off your meat. I’ll take that trade.

It also takes longer. AB says 8 to 12 hours. I say 10 to 15.

Yes, you could do this faster in a cold or hot smoker. Cold, maybe four hours. Hot (i.e. 225 degrees-y) as little as two. But I have a toddler, a mountain to prepare for, and houseguests. I need idiot-proof. I need fire and forget. And a box fan on meat is hard to wreck.

The result? Delicious, but suboptimally formed. Smaller, more delicate, yet equally delectable pieces of grass-fed, top round jerky than if you’d rocked some grain-fed flank. But, as I said, I’ll eat it with a straw. It isn’t a stick o’ beef… it’s a toothpick o’ beef. But it will be there when it counts.

Also, from my experience, it’s moister than I’m used to. This could be a function of either the cut (flank vs. top round) or the beast (grass vs. grain). Regardless, it’s chewy and lovely, and I’ll reserve judgement for a later date.

See you on top of the country…