hot chicken fried steak

13 Aug 2012

So, I will freely admit that this dish had its genesis purely in the amusement I derived from the name: what possible dish could have a nest of more confusing terms than “hot chicken fried steak”?! I’m sure I’m not the first person to be amused by the concept, or even try it. Its construction was pretty straightforward. I took a basic southern-style chicken-fried steak recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. I made it, and then I made up a traditional Nashville hot chicken style paste. Et voila.

So how was it? Uhm. Not very good! I mean, not bad. It was basically about what I expected. This may be, in part, a symptom of the fact that I am not a huge fan of chicken-fried steak to begin with. There’s something about breaded beef that just doesn’t work as well as chicken, or even pork. Beef stands out too much on its own, and it gets in the way of the flavor of the breading or the heat. Something about chicken and sweat-inducing heat just really works in ways that it doesn’t with other meat.

I would make hot chicken fried chicken, but then you’re basically back to what Bolton’s makes and slaps on a stick.

And for all the northerners reading this and going “what the fuck”, here’s how it works: Fried chicken, you’ve had. “Chicken fried steak” is a process by which you take a cheap cut of beef, tenderize it rigorously and fry it “in the style of fried chicken”, hence: chicken fried steak. And “chicken fried chicken”, then, is a chicken breast cooked similarly: tenderized flat and fried in the manner of chicken fried steak. Simple, right?

All in all a fun experiment, but I wouldn’t add this one to your classics of southern cooking anytime soon.