I have 3 Boston & Round Beef Cube Steaks that I’d like to make for dinner…if I can get an idea of a good way to prepare them.
Can I just fry them in a skillet? Or do they need slow-cooking?
Any good recipes?
Thanks!
karol
Flour, seasoning, fry.
Easy but my experience is there is a lot of variability in the toughness/stringiness of cube steak so it is hit-or-miss on the end product.
Slow cooker or pressure cooker are more trouble but improve the odds on the finished product.
There are a zillion ways to do it, but the tastiest in my opinion is battered and pan fried.
Get a wide skillet and full canola/peanut oil to a depth of about 1/2–3/4 inch. Turn on to medium heat or use a themometer and get to 325–350
Whisk together 3 eggs and place in a shallow bowl.
Put a couple of cups of AP flour in a shallow bowl, add some salt, pepper, pinch of cayenne.
Go Egg–>Flour–>Rest for one minute to let it solidify.
Add to oil, fry on one side until Golden Brown Delicious, flip over with tongs and GBD the other side.
Let it rest for a couple of minutes on paper towels.
From here you can make a gravy, or simple lemon juice or even a vinagrette would be tasty.
Enjoy!
I rarely make it, but always the horrifically fattening way Mom did.
Seriously dredged in salted and peppered flour and then fried in a little shortening in a cast iron skillet. Remove to a warm oven and make milk gravy in skillet. Pour gravy liberally over steaks, serve with smashed potatoes and corn on the cob.
Dip in beaten egg, coat with highly seasoned bread crumbs, and fry it up, ideally in bacon fat, otherwise whatever is handy. Not too long or they’ll get even tougher than they already are. Pan gravy or ketchup.
Oh, I really, really wanted to fry the heck out of these…but I declined, more due to the cleanup involved than the calorie count. 
I made a pantry stroganoff instead. When the Weeping Princess looked at it, she said, “Oh! I love Hamburger Helper!” Apparently Dad makes it at his house.
It was really good! I loves meat, and don’t cook with red meat often, but I got it free so had to make good use of it.
Thanks for the ideas…I’m plannning another cubed steak meal soon.
Frying it doesn’t mean deep frying, it refers to sizzling it on each side the way you’d fry an egg. So it’s not that messy. Glad it turned out well!
I rarely make it, but when I do I just put garlic salt and pepper on it, fry it in a skillet, and eat it in a sandwich.
Or you could make easy stroganoff. Cut up the cube steak and brown it with (garlic) salt, pepper, chopped onion, and maybe some sliced mushrooms. Add Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, sour cream, and Worcestershire. Serve it over egg noodles. (Though I liked it on rice.)
Yes yes yes! The quintessential and gloriously unhealthy chicken fried steak. Every time I serve it I can feel my arteries congealing, and I love every minute of it. Minor differences; I add a healthy dose of garlic powder to the flour, and use butter instead of shortening. Also prefer hash browns to mashers…if you’re gonna harden your arteries ya might as well do it right!
My Dad’s recipe is damned good:
Do as dbx says in the above post.
Get a big pot (crock pot or stove top, it doesn’t matter). Make 1-3 cups gravy - white or brown, depends on your tastes. Put gravy in pot as you put in cube steaks. Gravy should cover top steak.
Let simmer for as long as you can stand it (at least an hour). Add water if necessary, and if you have to add water, turn down the heat - I said simmer. Don’t be afraid to stir.
Add whatever drippings you care to, but don’t worry too much about them - the steaks will be adding enough drippings by themselves.
Eat. Collapse. Take 2 days off your life, but enjoy.
Lightly flour the cubesteaks from own natural moisture. Fry in butter and oil till well browned, crisp, and cooked through. Remove the steak³ to reserve. Add mushrooms and onions to the oil sautee on low til soft, brown, and lilty, add the worchestireshire and a bit of beef stock as laison to the flour butter and oil…fish sauce, mushroom, beefy, menage’. Add the crispy beef back to the mushroom and onion sauce at the last minute and dump on a plate. Something that could be called Salisbury Chicken fried steak.
My way, the deal is more akin to Jaeger Schnitzel.
I use cube steak for Chicken Fried Steak sometimes. After browning the meat, I make a roux based gravy, then let the steak simmer in the gravy for while to further tenderize it if necessary. This is a big improvement over the CFS I had growing up, where very thin slices of steak were fried, and turned to leather if they went just a little overdone.
I make swiss steak in the pressure cooker - comes out very nice and gets done fast.
The Alton Brown recipe works fine but cooks in half the time - about 45 minutes is good enough.
Chicken fried steak with sausage gravy. Hot damn. I also used to make Swiss steak with it years ago.
I do something very similar to a stroganoff: salt/pepper/flour the cube steaks, brown them in a pan on both sides. Remove to warm plate.
Add sliced onions, cook until softened. Add cube steaks and beef broth. Simmer for 20 minutes while you are cooking a batch of noodles. Serve meat/onions & thickened sauce over noodles. I never have leftovers!
Im’ not being all up in your grill 'bout it. But cube steak³ is the wrong cut for Swiss Steak. Need a Round steak for the proper swiss steak. A proper thick cut bone-in round steak. practically a roast it is so large.
I just got turned out to cube steak a few weeks ago, because I saw it at the supermarket and it was cheap. I just seared it like a steak and ate it between bread.
Didn’t know there were actual things to be done with it. Damned good stuff, though.
ETA Goddamnnit. Chicken-Fried Steak with that? Get out! I’ll never buy another cut out beef again.
A grocery store near me also sells cube pork steaks, which are especially good.