Chicken fried steak is a ubiquitous road food everywhere down South, but they say the folks in Texas take it most seriously. In the Lone Star State, you'll find CFS featured on most breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, and diners happily order it for all three meals. Two Texas towns, Lamesa and Bandera, both claim to have originated the dish, though Lamesa's claim gets the most traction in light of their annual Chicken Fried Steak Cook-off, festival and balloon rally, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year.
There is no "chicken" in a chicken fried steak. At its most basic, CFS is a tenderized beef cube steak coated in seasoned batter and pan fried, much they way you'd fry chicken (if you did such things, which of course we vegans and vegetarians don't...), thus the moniker "chicken fried..." Southern white gravy (and lots of it!) completes the dish...
This 100% vegan chicken fried steak not only contains no "chicken," it is "steak"-free as well, and (oh, the sacrilege!) it is not fried... But it could fool a Texas trucker, guaranteed!
The "Steak"
Ingredients:
About 1/3 of a 15 oz can of chick peas
1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/4 cup soy milk
1/4 cup water
The coating:
Ingredients:
1/3 cup flour
3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup soy milk
You will also need:
1 spray bottle filled with water
parchment paper
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Thoroughly puree the chick peas in a food processor.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the pureed chick peas, vital wheat gluten and onion powder. Mix thoroughly.
4. Add the water, soy milk, liquid smoke, and soy sauce. Knead by hand for a few minutes until a nice dough is formed. If you have a kitchen mixer with a dough hook (I use a Bosch), put the dough in there and let the machine knead it on the highest setting for an additional 5 minutes or so. Then let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
5. Cut the dough into 4 roughly equal portions and stretch each into a thin cutlet shape. A rolling pin might be helpful here as well. A traditional CFS cutlet is rarely more than one inch thick. These seitan versions are going to swell in the oven as they cook, so they need to start out no more than half an inch thick, at most.
6. In a large mixing bowl, combine all of the coating ingredients except the soy milk. Put the coating on a plate and your soy milk in a bowl large enough that you'll be able to dip the cutlets in there.
7. Dredge both sides of each cutlet through the soy milk, then in the coating. Make sure they are thoroughly coated all over. Shake off any excess coating and place the cutlets on the parchment lined baking sheet.
8. Turn the spray bottle to the "mist" setting and gently spray the tops of the cutlets. You want to get the coating wet, but don't make it soggy.
9. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Then turn the cutlets over, mist again with the water bottle, and return the baking sheets to the oven for an additional 20 minutes, until lightly browned and crispy.
10. Remove from heat, and let the cutlets rest for 5 minutes. Top with Southern White Gravy and serve!
Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons vegan margarine
4 Tablespoons flour
2 cups water in which 2 "no chicken" vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved
2 cups unflavored, unsweetened almond milk
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt
Directions:
1. In a large sauce pan, melt the vegan margarine. Whisk in the flour.
2. Add the “no chicken” broth and almond milk very slowly, stirring continuously. Cook another minute or two, until gravy thickens.
3. Stir in the black pepper and salt.
NOTE: Generic, off-the-shelf pepper gravy mix like everybody uses for biscuits and gravy works great with Chicken Fried Steak. If you're looking to save time, that's my recommended shortcut!