We have our chicken fried steak.
Who can crush the saltine crackers for me?
Who's the best crusher?
John, come on, get in there
Yes, John, yes!
Yeah, crush them up. Perfect.
Yeah, normally I do it in a bowl.
I've never thought of doing it like this for some reason
You said crack them!
I can't say that you're wrong.
Right, so once these are crushed
these go directly into your flour mix like this.
These are actually perfect.
So once that's in the flour, we got our salt, pepper.
I'm keeping this really simple.
This is my mom's recipe, okay?
Oh really? What's your mom's name?
Lynn.
Hi Lynn!
Hi mom! So if I get too crazy with this,
she'll yell at me.
Just a little salt, pepper, you toss it together.
And what kind of meat did you use
for your steak choice, my friend?
My mom is from a little town called Cypress, Texas,
near Houston, so she keeps it really simple.
It's literally just cube steak
but you could use anything you want.
Cube steak was so popular when we were kids.
Yeah!
These always end up roughly overcooked right?
That's right.
So you need something fatty
and you need something
you don't really feel bad about overcooking, right?
Right, right, right.
So breading these,
basically, you'll just take one of these.
These have been marinating just only in milk.
It sort of makes it a little bit more buttery.
The lactic acid helps break down the steak.
It's not weird at all.
In lots of Italian dishes, you marinate in milk as well.
So you press that in there.
Oh, wow! Look at that! Get your press on.
Yeah, press it.
Get your press on.
Man, those are some good looking crackers.
See, you wanna hit this a little bit?
I feel like you've got the strong arms, you know?
Yeah, really get in there.
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah, there we go, there we go.
By doing that, look how beautifully this is breaded now.
And look how huge it is!
So then you take that steak gently
and always away from you, right?
Yes. Always away from your body
Into your oil.
Oh!
Perfect temperature.
I'm gonna flip this right now. Beautiful.
Wow!
Just like that easy peasy.
All right, now, get to your gravy.
All right, gravy. Super simple.
You could go vegetable oil, but why would we do that?
We're from Texas, right? We use butter.
I like butter.
All right. It's about three quarter cup butter.
You turn that up.
Roughly. Yep.
Got three quarter cup butter getting melted.
We got the three quarter cup of flour.
That's a roux. We love a good old fashioned roux.
So once this is melted, or somewhat melted,
you can let this go.
And we have a little bit of smoke paprika in here.
This is not traditional.
This is where my mom would start to be like
what are you doing?
So smoke paprika goes in.
We've got about two teaspoons, roughly.
And then just a tiny little pinch of cumin.
I feel like cumin is strong
Yes!
Also really earthy and smokey and what a nice balance.
Smell that.
Insane, honey, get your nose in that.
And while that butter's sort of cooking down
it's also lightly toasting those spices.
So you're intensifying the natural flavor.
Yeah!
And as our thickener we've got equal parts flour.
Yeah, of your fat to your flour.
Right. So you're gonna stir that together.
It'll start cooking out.
Oh, that looks great.
Roux I think is there so you can see how it's kind of
Gorgeous.
Moving around pretty fast.
We've got our milk and we're just gonna carefully add that.
And you know, a lot of people say,
oh you gotta heat your milk up. You really don't, honestly.
You really don't have to.
It'll come together.
You just have to be careful
and pour it in slowly, right?
That's right.
Light, light stream.
It'll thicken though.
It'll make it there and just keep adding and stirring.
And I think you can pop that guy out of there.
Oh he looks pretty good.
Pop him out of there.
You want him out?
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah!
There we go.
Look at that. Come on, look at him!
That's some sexy steak.
That's a big steak.
Sexy, big steak with some big old crackers.
Now, now that the roux is done,
or rather the cream gravy I should say,
you can thicken it or thin it out if you want,
it's up to you, right.
But the last bit
and this is the piece de resistance for me, right?
Two things, salt, pepper, always.
So we got the pepper.
Yes sir.
Beautiful.
Okay, gonna season that nicely.
Again, aggressively with salt.
We don't want to go too light here.
Little bit of pepper.
And then last thing, fresh grated garlic at the end,
not at the beginning.
Oh, I love that. Just at the finish!
At the end. The finish.
Nice.
So it does two things, right?
If you add it at the beginning,
what'll happen is it'll cook out.
And see, he's doing it's on the zester,
so it's like a paste, he's making garlic paste.
See how fine that is.
Dang.
That goes straight in there.
Oh, that's sexy.
Now what'll happen is,
the residual heat will basically,
it'll gently coerce the garlic into flavoring the whole,
and perfuming the whole thing.
An it won't be bitter at all.
It won't be bitter at all.
Oh, it's so good.
It'll be, and smell it, you can smell it.
Honey get your nose in there again.
Dang.
Oh yeah.
Yes, yes, sir.
So I've got all my cream gravy.
It's beautifully thick and emulsified.
And look, don't go too light on this, all right?
Oh!
Right across the top.
What!
Beautifully, generously.
So we'll finish with just a tiny tiny bit of black pepper,
little bit of hot sauce.
Oh!
Over the top like that.
Indeed.
Mama Lynn, you should be proud.
He is delightful.
He is an unapologetic chef
that is helping us all
have a little more fun in the kitchen.