Tired of ground beef?

 

Sometimes you just get tired of ground beef casseroles. My family certainly does. Jacob said last night that it’s not that he doesn’t like hamburgers—what teen won’t eat a hamburger? —but he doesn’t like ground beef in a lot of other dishes, like meatloaf which he despises (and I happen to love). So I give you the humble cube steak.

Granted, it’s not as cheap as ground beef, but it’s not nearly as expensive as steak—and it is usually cut from sirloin. When I looked today, ground beef was $6.99, sirloin steak $14.99. Cub steaks are $8.99 a lb. They are not appealing to the eye—all pounded and uneven but get past that. Some recipes say when you buy cube steak, you should pound it for tenderness. My feeling is the butcher has already done that, and if you keep pounding you’ll end up with lace.

Tenderized sirloin is, of course, the meat most generally used for one of Texas’ classic dishes—chicken fried steak. I’ve never tried to fix it, figuring that a select few restaurants do a better job than I could ever do at home (and some do a truly awful job, so it pays to be picky). As a transplanted northerner, I refused to eat what I considered a fat-producing, overcooked item—until I went to work on weekends managing the cash register at a friend’s steakhouse where chicken fried was one of the staple orders. I learned to love it—but not to cook it.

I used to fix cube steaks for my kids when they were young. I cut the meat into strips, about an inch wide, seasoned it with salt and pepper, tossed it in flour, and seared it at a fairly high heat. At serving, I squeezed lemon juice all over the strips. Amazingly good, and Jordan today still remembers it.

But I am also a gravy person, and I fixed cube steaks with gravy last night. My problem was, a it often is in my kitchen without a proper stove, how to cook four steaks at once. I don’t have a pan big enough to hold more than two—oh, how I long for that griddle I used to have! I remembered that dish from years ago and cut the steaks into strips. That’s a lot easier to do if they are frozen and you catch them when they are only partly defrosted. Cutting them also balances out portions, because as they come from the meat counter, cube steaks are varying sizes—one I had last night was really small.

Cube steaks with gravy (serves four)

4 cube steaks

4 Tbsp. butter, divided

1 yellow onion, diced (a smallish onion, not one of those huge things the grocery foists off on us)

¼ cup flour

Salt and pepper

2 cups beef broth (I use Better than Bouilon)

1 tsp. Worcestershire

Sauté the onion in 2 Tbsp. butter until translucent. Remove the onions (actually I omitted them in deference ot Jacob, and the meat still tasted great)

Toss the steak pieces with salt and pepper (one recipe I found called for paprika, but I don’t care for the taste)

Brown the cubes on a fairy high heat, until cooked on both sides. Remove to a plate with the onions.

Melt remaining 2 Tbsp. butter (more if needed) in skillet and stir in flour to make a roux. Gradually stir in beef broth and Worcestershire. When the gravy is thickened and smooth, return meat and onions to the mixture.

Serve warm. Again, trying to please Jacob, I served the meat over buttered egg noodles. He liked it. So did the rest of us. Great the next day if there is any left over.