Back when I was a teenager and apparently had an appetite similar to Mr. Creosote from the Monty Python skit, anything that wasn’t nailed down at the supper table was in danger.
My father and mother weren’t gourmet chefs but they knew their way around a stove, oven and deep fryer. Dad handled the latter, of course. One of my favorite things my mother would make was fried tenderized steak. Lightly battered with flour, salt and pepper, she’d get it just right and then pull out the pieces to finish sizzling on the serving plate.
I didn’t know until much later that you didn’t fry something completely to being done, because it will continue cooking for a bit after being removed from the grease. Fried fish in a pot of oil, definitely. Fried chicken, or tenderized steak or venison steaks, for sure.
And I didn’t learn until later that chicken fried steak wasn’t related to chickens. But good golly, do I love a good chicken fried steak and gravy. A few years ago my good pal Pete Robbins, a semi-famous outdoor writer type, and I were fishing at Falcon Lake in south Texas. The little town, Zapata, has a restaurant called El Paraiso and it serves a chicken fried steak the size of a small baby. Holy gravy boats, was it ever a good steak.
Our great friends at Food for Hunters whipped up this wonderful Chicken Fried Venison that definitely should find a place on your table if it hasn’t already. The gravy is wonderful over the steak, of course, along with biscuits or in an IV mainlined into your arm should you enjoy it that much. Be sure to visit their site for more great recipes, too.
I highly recommend visiting the Food for Hunters site for a trove of outstanding recipes. Rick Wheatley and Jen Nguyen create and explain amazing recipes like Ca Kho To, which is Vietnamese Catfish braised in a clay pot, and their Deer, Mushroom and Barley…
