Southern comfort food - Chicken Fried Steak

We buy a side of beef every summer from a guy up near Athens. It's grass fed and grain finished, no hormones, and no antibiotics. Best of all - it's cheap. Works out to about $3.50 a pound, and we know where the beef came from, plus we're supporting a local farmer instead of a megastore.

I'd never cooked chicken fried steak until we starting buying a side of beef. Partly because I was clueless about what to do with cubed steak, and partly because I never fried anything. But when you have 200+ pounds of beef in the freezer, you learn how to cook it real quick. I learned how to make chicken fried steak watching Tyler Florence on Food Network....only he was making chicken fried chicken. Dip the meat in buttermilk, roll in flour, dip it back in buttermilk, roll in flour again, and then let the meat sit for awhile to let the coating do its thing.

Okay....so how to make chicken fried steak gluten free....after last night's attempt at using a predominantly cornstarch-based flour mix to dredge and brown chicken for Fruited Chicken (that's another post entirely) failed miserably, I debated what to use. For this first foray into gluten free southern cooking, I decided to go with one of the various boxed flour blends sitting in my pantry. Gluten free pancake batter had worked great for fish batter (yet another post for another night), so I grabbed a bag of that as well. After reading all the labels, I finally decided to use the Whole Foods 365 brand gluten free baking mix. It's white rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch and guar gum. Out of buttermilk, and not feeling the need to hit Publix at 5pm on a Friday afternoon with the eldest child in the car, I went through my gluten free cookbook and found a fried chicken recipe that used a mixture of egg and water as the wash for frying. I decided to go with a mix of egg and milk and then seasoned it well with Lawry's seasoning salt. Dip in the egg/milk mixture, dip in the gluten free baking mix (heavily seasoned as well), another dip in the egg/milk mixture and one more roll in the baking mix. Put the floured meat on a platter, let it hang out for awhile, then into the big ole cast iron skillet (is there any other way?) to fry.

The first indication that I might actually be successful was when the coating didn't fall off. When it started turning brown, I got happy. When it got crispy, I was thrilled. When it hit the plate and it tasted good, I was over the moon. (yeah, last night's failure was still fresh in my mind and my ego was still bruised) When the gluten-eating husband proclaimed that it was good....well, that was the crowning glory. Maybe tomorrow I'll take a picture of the finished product.

Oh, but I forgot to mention the gravy. Gotta have gravy with chicken fried steak. Hmmm....how to make gluten free gravy. Rather than experiment with the baking mix, I went with the gravy recipe on the Argo cornstarch label. It was supposedly for turkey, but being the brave and daring cook that I am, I decided to adapt it for cream gravy. So, I followed the directions, and when the cornstarch slurry hit the pan it turned into big lumps of gelatinous "stuff". Ugh.... Undaunted, and somewhat stubborn, I went ahead and poured in the milk...and then proceeded to whisk the hell out of it with the cuisinart gravy whisk. After a few discouraging minutes, I realized the damn stuff was starting to look like gravy. After copious amounts of black pepper (hey, I was raised in the south), it started to TASTE like gravy. Score!

Pass the fried okra!