Chicken Fried Steak
What kind of meat is this?
(Credit: Author)
Not surprisingly, it’s beef. Specifically, it’s “cube steak,” which is round or sirloin that’s flattened by pounding it with a meat tenderizer. So it’s not a “natural” cut of beef – it’s processed a bit (and then, of course, it’s breaded…).
Why I Looked It Up
I’ve eaten this before, but it didn’t really taste like beef to me. I sort of thought it was some kind of pork. I think this is because the meat is hidden under breading and gravy, and we normally associate gravy with white meat.
The tenderization also changes the texture quite a bit. It’s much flatter than you would expect steak to be.
The picture here is a chicken friend steak I ate at the OK Cafe in Atlanta. I told the server I wanted something “very Southern,” and this is what I got.