The History of Chicken Fried Steak
Between our 3 restaurants – Huckleberry Square The 5 Point Cafe and the Mecca Cafe, we sell over 20,000 Chicken Fried Steak breakfasts and dinners annually. Chicken Fried Steak is definitely one of our most popular items, and also one that often gets questions and creates confusion. So I wanted to dig into the classic comfort food’s history and set the record straight.
What? It’s not chicken?!
Is it chicken or steak?? Our servers get asked this question all the time. The answer of course is “it’s steak!” People who aren’t accustomed to Chicken Fried Steak mistakenly think of Chicken Fried Steak to be a fried chicken recipe. But this home-style favorite has nothing to do with chicken except in the way it’s cooked.
Chicken Fried Steak (CFS for short) is thinly pounded out beef. People typically use the less expensive, less desirable cuts, such as cube steak, chuck, round steak, and occasionally flank steak. We use cube steak. After being pounded thin, the meat is dipped in egg and breaded and deep fried like fried chicken – or some would say “chicken fried”. We give the dish its signature finish by topping it with country sausage gravy. While others sometimes use a white pepper gravy or brown beef-based gravy. For dinner it’s typically accompanied with mashed potatoes and green beans, or eggs and hash browns for breakfast. We have also created a vegetarian version using Impossible burger meat, topped with vegetarian white pepper gravy (so Chicken Fried Steak that’s not chicken or steak!).
Some restaurants call the dish “country fried steak” to cut the confusion, which is pretty meaningless, and has instead added to the confusion making people wonder if there is some special difference between the two. Except for maybe the gravy – some will claim it’s Chicken Fried Steak if it’s with white gravy, and Country Fried Steak if it’s with brown gravy. Or maybe it’s the part of the country you’re in. Either way, it’s delicious.
The Origins
Although there are no specific records about the origin of Chicken Fried Steak, many American cookbooks from the early 1900s have recipes of breaded and deep-fried veal or pork. Indeed CFS is similar to the German or Austrian schnitzel, the Italian beef Milanese, the Scottish collops, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina have Bečki Odrezak, the Japanese Tonkatsu, Dutch and Belgian Gehaktschnitzel, Polish Kotlet Schabowy, in Russian Otbivnaya, the Hungarian Viennese slice, or Rántott Hús (breaded meat), in Romania Snițel, and in Serbia Bečka šnicla is served. As a result, many historians agree that German and Austrian immigrants who settled in Texas from 1844 to 1850 were the first ones to introduce Chicken Fried Steak, replacing the veal in the popular German dish Wiener Schnitzel with a cut of tough beef that was readily available and cheap in Oklahoma and Texas. And by the 1930s Chicken Fried Steak seems to have been accepted by all.
An early mention of appears in 1924 when A.L. Wyman describes the dish in the “Los Angeles Times” as ”beef steak rolled in flour, fried in a pan, and served with country gravy being poured on a hot platter and the fried steak placed over it.” Later recipes show up in publications like the “Winnipeg Free Press” in 1936 and the “Household Searchlight Recipe Book” in 1949.
But it remains a mystery when and where the dish gets its name “Chicken Fried Steak”. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest attestation of the term "chicken-fried steak" is supposedly from a restaurant advertisement in the 19 June 1914 edition of the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper. But I have not been able to find a copy of ad, so this might be another made up “fact”.
An oft repeated story from Texas (known for big stories with small amounts of truth) credits Jimmy Don Perkins, an unemployed draw bridge oiler working as a short-order cook in the South Plains town of Lamesa, Texas in 1911, who accidentally created Chicken Fried Steak by mixing up a chicken order and a steak order, misinterpreting the waitress’s hastily scribbled order reading “chicken, fried steak” and so chicken-fried a steak. But according to Mike Cox, he and a journalist friend Larry BeSaw made up the story which has now become “Texas Truth”, meaning it’s fake.
What is true is that on April 19, 1988, Oklahoma designated an Official State Meal consisting of “fried okra, squash, barbecue pork, biscuits, cornbread, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken-fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas”. The Texas House of Representatives, on October 26, 2011, declared it as Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day by praising the dish that supposedly reflects “the history and diversity of Texas”.
The popularity of Chicken fried steak has led to its increased availability from diners to five-star restaurants and diversity in serving styles from burgers to breakfast platters. We serve it as a Chicken Fried Steak Omelet or a Country Benedict. The experiments with the dish are still in progress (using tenderloin or rib eye), but the classic tough cut of meat always takes the edge in the competition.
Fun Fact: It is True - According to the Texas Restaurant Associate, an estimated 800,000 Chicken-Fried Steaks are served in Texas every day.
Is CFS cooked medium rare?
Most people believe a steak should be cooked medium rate. But, Chicken Dried Steak is typically served at least medium-well. To get that cook your steaks at 375°F (191°C) temperature.
So that’s all I learned about Chicken Fried Steak. The largest and often reported as the best Chicken Fried Steak in Seattle is at the 5 Point Cafe and Mecca Café, and at Huckleberry Square it’s by far the most popular item. Check it out for yourself and let me know which one you think is the best.
David Meinert