Country Fried Steak!

Yes yes yes! Country fried steak my friends! How can this not be good?!? Tender steak fried in oil, battered in egg and seasoned flour! OMG amazing! I have eaten this since I was a kid. This is my Mom's recipe yet I modified it a little bit.

What you will need

Depending on your family size you might want to modify it but here goes,

4 pieces of cubed steak (almost every store carries cube steak)
1 1/2 C of flour
2 1/2  TBS Johnnys or Lawry's season salt
1/4     tsp of pepper
Salt and pepper (to taste)
about 1/2 cup of oil
2 large eggs
1 C of milk
Heavy bottomed pan ( I use a large sized cast iron pan)
Spatula
Aluminum foil (optional)
Shallow bowl
Plates

Take your cube steak out of the fridge and place on either a plate or aluminum foil on a counter so it can get the chill off the meat. That would be about a half hour before you start cooking.

Mix together the flour, season salt (which ever you wanted) and pepper. Put mixture on a dinner plate.

Scramble the eggs in a shallow bowl.

Season the meat on both sides with salt and pepper. I would recommend seasoning well with the salt and pepper so the meat isn't bland but you can decide how much you want on the meat.

Dredge meat in flour one at a time.

After dredging dip meat in egg and again place in flour mixture. Give the meat a light push into the flour in order to get an even coating.

Place meat aside and take the cast iron pan to the stove and turn the heat on to about 7. NO OIL! We don't want oil because hot oil makes the meat stick to the pan. Hot pan cold oil!

You will know when the pan is hot enough when you place your hand about a half inch above the pan and you can't keep it there for more than a few seconds.

You are now ready to put the oil in the pan. I want to tell you now that less is more at this point. So put in about 1/2 a cup of oil in the pan and immediately put some of the meat in the pan. The key thing here is to not let meat touch! It makes for uneven cooking.

Also you want to make sure that the oil only comes up to the middle of the meat. If the oil wants to go over the meat scoop some of the oil out and put it in an old can.

While the first side of the meat is cooking you want to prep a cookie sheet with paper towels on it and preheat your oven to 200 degrees. You will put your already cooked meat on the pan while you wait for the other pieces to cook.

You want to cook the meat till it's crisp and golden brown on one side. After it is golden brown you want to flip it and cook it for about half the time.

When the meat is all done you want to go ahead and drain all of the oil out but 2 TBL of the oil and take 2 TBL spoons of the dredging flour mix them together with a spatula making sure you scrape all of the good stuff off of the bottom of the pan.

Slowly stir in the cup of milk constantly with your spatula. Add 1/4 TBS salt and a dash of pepper to the gravy mix. The gravy should have a thick but creamy consistency.

If you are not ready to serve place some plastic wrap on top of the gravy and that will stop it from congealing on the top (creating a skin).

Now you are ready to serve! Just remember to make sides that you would like. I made Rice-A-Roni natures way long grain wild rice and fresh salad. But you could do any type of rice you enjoy or any other vegetable that suites you.

Panko Chicken Nuggets

Chicken nuggets are a fun and healthy snack for kids and adults. Making chicken nuggets at home in the oven is a healthier alternative to going out to eat at a fast food restaurant or buying store bought ones.


I recently purchased a box of Panko bread crumbs for a recipe and had a large amount left over. I didn't want to let them go to waste so I went on a mission to find a recipe to use the rest of the Panko.


During my search I looked at many websites and created a collaboration of multiple recipes. For this recipe my bread coating is a combination of Panko bread crumbs and fresh grated Parmesan cheese.


What you will need for this recipe is the following:


Depending on your family size any where from 5-8 medium to small chicken breasts. I used previously frozen chicken breasts in a bag.


5              Chicken breasts pounded down to 1/2 inch thickness
2     cups   Panko breadcrumbs
1     cup    Freshly grated Parmesan cheese. (you can use a zester for this)
2               Eggs
1     cup    All purpose flour
4     TBL  Salt
1     tsp    Pepper
3     TBL Granulated garlic


Equipment


1-2 Cookie sheets
1-2 Cooling racks
Aluminum foil
Cutting board
Knife
Meat Tenderizing Mallet
Saran Wrap
3 Wider bowls
Non-stick cooking spray


Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Wrap your cookie sheet in aluminum foil and spray cooling rack with non-stick cooking spray.

Pour your flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder together and mix thoroughly. Set aside.


Crack open the eggs in a separate bowl whisk. Set aside.


Pour Panko breadcrumbs in a bowl. Grab your zester and Parmesan cheese. Run the Parmesan cheese on the zester like you would a cheese grater over a bowl. Don't press on the cheese too hard or you will get to big of cheese strings and it won't combine nicely with the Panko. Set aside.

Get out a cutting board, Saran wrap and the meat tenderizing mallet. Pull out about 2 feet of the Saran wrap. Place one piece of chicken on one half of the Saran wrap. Fold the other half over the chicken and lightly pound the chicken till it's about a half an inch thick.


Go ahead and throw out the Saran wrap. Get your knife and cut the chicken roughly into 1 1/2" x 2" squares. Don't worry if they aren't perfect mine weren't as you can see in the picture. You really just want to concentrate on the thickness for even cooking.

Now you want to take your chicken pieces and lightly coat them (dredge) individualy with the flour.


Take the flour coated piece and dunk them in the egg mixture. We coat them with flour first so that the egg will stick to the meat better plus that's where we put our seasoning.

Take the pieces and put them in the Panko mixture. You can push on the pieces into the Panko mixture to help the Panko stick.


Now that you have all your pieces coated and placed on your cooling rack you can go ahead and place them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. If you are unsure that your pieces are done you can cut one open to make sure that the pieces are not pink in the middlde.

If your pieces aren't as brown as you would like them you can put them under the broiler for a couple of minutes to help them brown a little. That's what I did. Don't do this for to long or you will dry out your chicken.

You can serve these with a variety of sauce anything from blue cheese, ranch, barbeque sauce, ketchup and mustard or whatever you like!


If you want to add other spices you can go ahead. If you want more of an adult taste to them you can add some Italian seasonings such as basil, thyme, oregano or rosemary. You can make them spicy by adding come cayanne pepper.


I know I enjoyed these and I hope you will find that you liked them as much as me. I know I will be making them again.

Pickle Pepperoncini Pork Chops?!?!

Yes my friends, I said it pickle pepperoncini pork chops! I'm a huge pickle fan, my favorite pickles are Claussin Pickles. They're never heated so they stay nicely crisp. Anyways back to the meal. So you might think that anything pickle flavored besides a pickle would be gross but I will have to ask you to think twice.

I found this recipe online and it only called for pickle juice and salt and pepper. So I tried it and well yeah it was good. I only marinated it the first time for about an hour or so in about one cup of juice and it had a slight pickle flavor.

Well I decided to try doing it for longer so I ended up stabbing the pork chop with a fork a couple of times to get some nice pores in the meat. Honestly I don't think it did anything but make holes in the meat. We soon found out we wouldn't be able to eat them that night so I froze them.

A couple of days later we decided to thaw them in the fridge and have them for dinner. I will tell you what, those are some gooooooooood chops! I also like to cook Mac n Cheese with my pork chops but you can use any side that you like.

Well the pickle juice is a really powerful flavor and I had pepperoncini juice in the fridge. The pepperoncini juice is actually a lot milder of a marinate than one would think. So tonight I have had pork marinating for one day in the fridge ( do not marinate in the fridge for more than 24 hours or the meat will be chewy).

The marinade was about
1/2   C. Pickle Juice
2/3   C. Pepperoncini Juice
2   TBS Lemon Peppper
1   TBS Salt ( Leave the salt out if you think the juice will be salty enough)
1/2   C. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I use this marinade for 3 pork chops bone in. I use bone in because the bone creates more flavor but you don't have to because then you are paying for the bone weight when you purchase them.

Place meat in a bag and pour ingredients over the top of them. I put the marinade baggie into another baggie incase of leaking.

Take meat out of fridge about half hour before cooking and place on plate out of the marinade so they can get the chill of the fridge off of the meat and excess juices can come out of the meat. The meat will have a greyish color to it, that's fine it just means the acid in the marinade cooked it a little. You never want to cook fridge cold meats they won't cook evenly. Please discard the marinade unless you want to use it as a sauce but then you have to bring the marinade juice to a boil.

Now for cooking I use a cast iron skillet so I can get a good brown color on the meat. Put about 2 TBS of olive oil in the pan and turn the heat up to 7 or 8 on an electric stove and medium high on gas. ( I'm not familiar with gas ranges so please adjust for your stove top).

Make sure that the pan is hot enough. You want the oil to be kind of smoking, it'll look almost like steam coming off of the pan. I like to sprinkle a little garlic salt on the pork chops before I cook them.

Go ahead and place the pork chops in a pan. Be careful as oils will splash when you put the meat in and we don't want anyone getting hurt.

I cook the pork for about 5-7 minutes per side. It really depends on the thickness of the pork chops. For thin cut you don't really need to cook them longer than 4 minutes a side. If you are unsure you can ask your butcher how long they recommend cooking them.

You should have a little browning on either side. ( I keep trying to upload a photo but it won't let me do it so I'll try again tomorrow).

So go ahead and remove the pork chops from a pan put them on a plate and you are ready to serve.

I would like to say that I tried them today and I personally would like to add more of the pepperoncini juice but that's me and I like a lot of spice to my food.

Well I hope you tried to make this I really think it's good and adventurous! Don't be scared of food, try new things and remember most of all have fun with it!

Brownies yum!

So I decided to start a blog today about food. I know there are many many food blogs out there so the chances of this one getting noticed aren't exactly huge but here goes. Today I made brownies! I'm not a chocolate lover but I like brownies and I wanted to see if I could find a recipe to make them from scratch.

Now if you are on a diet I don't recommend these brownies because they have a whole stick of butter in them. For the rest of you read on and get ready to have some yummy delights. I found that these brownies came out not necessarily "Fudgy" but they weren't like a cake brownie. I really liked the portion size of the recipe. I only cook for three people who don't eat a lot of sweets so it's perfect. If you really enjoy having a brownie as a treat, double the recipe.

The ingredients for this recipe are as follows:

1/2 C. of Butter Melted (one stick)
1    C. of Granulated Sugar (I almost wrote just the word sugar then realized that could be questionable ;-O )
1   tsp. Vanilla Extract
2         Eggs ( I used large eggs)
1/2 C. of All Purpose Flour
1/3 C. Unsweetened Baking Cocoa
1/4 tsp. Baking Powder (I use Clabber Girl but you can use any brand)
1/4 tsp. Salt
13x9 greased baking dish ( I used a glass one sprayed with Pam. You can use a medal pan if you like).

These ingredients don't take long to mix together so go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Place your butter in a pan and put the temperature at about 4 or medium low for a gas stove.

Proceed to put sugar and vanilla in a bowl. When the butter has melted all the way add it to the sugar and vanilla mixture.

Set this aside.

Now sift or blend together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder together.

Set this aside.

Take the eggs and whisk them together in a small bowl.

Make sure that your butter mixture has cooled enough and add the eggs to it. ( We don't want to cook the eggs).

Now you will go ahead and slowly blend in the flour mixture. ( You can use a blender if you like but I used a fork). Mix this so the dry and wet ingredients are combined. Don't stir to much because we don't want to add to much air and having a couple dry lumps in the mix is okay.

Go ahead and pour the brownie mix into the pan and place in oven for about 20-25 minutes. Be sure to do the toothpick check by dipping a toothpick into the center of the brownies if it comes out clean then they are done and you can take them out.

Well I really enjoyed writing this for you all and I promise to give you more and something more adventurous next time.