Steak Fingers (West Texas drive-in food, 1950s) (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Barry Popik]

Some Google numbers:
...
STEAK FINGERS--20,500 Google hits
STEAKFINGERS--1,080 Google hits
CHICKEN FRIED STEAK FINGERS--2,770 Google hits
...
Below is a nice interview about "chicken-fried steak" and "steak
fingers" in West Texas. (It's easier to read at the site, where the
questions are in bold.)
...
Again, OED and DARE do not pay me. If OED wants to say "we'll
disregard those 20,000 steak fingers hits," and if DARE wants to
ignore West Texas food, those are decisions for them to make.
...
...
...
http://www.texancultures.utsa.edu/library/JonesInterview.htm
How Chicken-Fried Steak Got Its Name
Virginia Jones
Birth: November 28, 1940

"Texas People Have Such a Love Affair"

Note: This interview with Virginia Jones from the Cactus Cafe in West
Texas was done at the 13th Texas Folklife Festival in 1984.

The principal reason that I've got you here, Virginia, is because I
want to know about chicken-fried steak. Are you coming from the Cactus
Cafe?

Yes, ma'am.

And how did you happen to call it that? And how do you happen to be here?

The Cactus Cafe got its name from a singer who is from Colorado City,
whose name is Jay Boy Adams. He recorded a song about a Cactus Cafe
that actually existed at one time in Colorado City. The song was about
this old cowboy that would go in and drink coffee early in the morning
and tell cowboy stories. And so we took the name "The Cactus Cafe" and
actually even brought the original sign up at one time. It is just an
old tin sign. Actually, the Cactus Cafe-that's not an uncommon name
for a restaurant in West Texas.

Uh-huh. I'm sure it isn't. Tell me how-what's the singer's name?

Jay Boy Adams.

Is it B-0-Y?

Yes, it's like John Boy, after his father; this is Jay Boy, after his
father. Texas people have such a love affair with chicken-fried steak.
Everybody has favorite cafes and favorite recipes and whatnot.

Have you any idea where all this started? Where is chicken-fried steak
coming from? And what, in your opinion, is the right way to make it?

My husband thinks that possibly it came from the wiener schnitzel in
Germany, because German people did come and settle in Southwest Texas.
He thinks that probably-and further west, where beef is so
popular-that they just kind of devised a recipe for themselves.
We make our chicken-fried steak pretty much the way I make it at home,
and that is, we get regular round steak, and we have it only
tenderized one time so that it will hold together. We cut it
ourselves, cut the cutlets into steak fingers, put it in a mixture of
flour, salt, pepper, and tenderizer. Then, in a mixture of eggs and
milk, kind of let it drip out, and then back into another mixture of
flour, salt, and pepper. And then we quick-freeze them to bring them
to the Folklife Festival.

You make them into fingers. That's not normal in a café, is it? Or in
a restaurant? Or in a home?

In West Texas, steak fingers are very popular. Except, usually, if you
order them out, you will get what we call pre-fab meat that has the
soybeans and is preformed. Ours is not. Ours is actually cut from the
beef.

You said flour and salt and pepper. Is there any-there's no hot
stuff-no chili-no picante?

No, nothing.

You fry it?

Yes.

What do you fry it in?

We fry them in just deep fryers. Yes, in deep fat. The way to fry
chicken-fried steak is to fry it quickly, where it will get crusty on
the outside and still remain tender on the inside as opposed to
chicken that, you know, gets crusty on the outside, but you have to
cook it a long time to get it done inside. You don't have to cook
chicken-fried steak really all that long to get it done on the inside.
Of course, you don't want it dried out. You want it to remain tender.


Well, now I-when you say tenderizer, is that that stuff like
"Adolph's" or something like that?

Yes, ma'am. We did that because if you would have your own done in the
grocery store, you might have it tenderized several times. You know,
run through the tenderizer machine, but ours would fall apart as we
have to handle it. So we just had it put through the tenderizer
machine one time, just to get it kind of tenderized and break it up,
and yet not have it where it was hard to hold together.

But you still, after that-run it through the machine once-you still
use some of that tenderizer powder.

Yes, ma'am. Actually, this is the first year we've done that. We've
done it several different ways, but this is basically the way we do
it. We want our meat to be tender, but we want it to be real, too. And
that's why we use the real cutlets.

You don't want it to be mushy either? Sometimes when you
over-tenderize it, it is just like eating mush. I hate it that way.
Well, now, Texans argue by the hour about the gravy.

Yes. (laughter)

The gravy that goes on chicken-fried steak, now, how do you make that?

People are fascinated by this. Apparently, not a lot of people make
their own gravy. And even less numbers must make the cream gravy -it
is what we make-the milk gravy-as opposed to brown roast gravy.

All right. You make-you put in some grease-and if you're doing your
chicken-fried steak-you just take some of the grease you fried your
meat in. . .

Oh.

So it has the flavor. You put some grease in your skillet, then some
flour and salt and pepper and make a roux. Then you gradually add your
cold milk, stirring all the time, and just stir it over the medium-hot
heat until it gets thick. And it's not real difficult to make, but you
will find that if you've made it four or five times, it will never be
the same consistency. Sometimes you'll come out with it a little
thicker and sometimes a little thinner. But this is the way to make
the cream gravy we have.

Well, that's interesting. You use the same fat that you did the frying in?

Yes.

You get some of the meat flavor that way.

Well, yes. That's the way we do it at home now. You can use just
shortening, and we have done that some here to have, you know, the
real clean shortening. I don't mean clean as opposed to dirty, but I
mean as opposed to not cooked a lot . . .

Used. Uh-huh. What kind of fat do you use for the deep-fat frying?

Lard. Shortening.

You do Crisco or one that's white?


Well, we buy commercial shortening.

But you don't use lard?

You could. I don't think it would make a whole lot of difference. But
we actually use shortening.

It's supposed to be less troublesome and lower cholesterol or
something like that. What is the reaction to people coming in? Do you
sell a lot? Is it a popular thing? In the Folklife?

Yes, it is a popular thing. The first year that we came, we had people
come up and ask us if we were selling fried cactus. Then they'd find
out that we were from West Texas, and they'd ask us if it was
rattlesnake meat. We had some people ask us if it was chicken.
But as we have been here over the years, this is our fifth year to
come, most people seem to know now what we have. And we don't have to
explain it. (laughter)

I have noticed-I read all the every weekend criticisms or critiques of
different restaurants around. And time and time again, chicken-fried
steak comes up. "They make the best chicken-fried steak in San
Antonio." "Their chicken-fried steak is tough." or "Their gravy isn't
any good." Time and time again. So I think the public is being
educated, but it seems to me that chicken-fried steak is very basic to
the Texans.

It is in West Texas.

It is in West Texas. Are you from West Texas?

Yes, ma'am. It's home.

Is it?

Oh, yes. In fact, I am a lover of chicken-fried steak, and I rarely
order it out, because I know the way I like it, and I am oftentimes
disappointed. And I think a lot of times the meat, maybe, isn't as
good as it should be. Or, they will use-they have packaged gravy
mix-and a lot of restaurants use that. We don't think that's as good
as making it from scratch.

No, I don't either. I think that's awful. Did you say-are you from
Colorado City?

Not originally, but I have lived there for five years. And I am a West
Texas girl.

Are you? So you know what's what about West Texas, don't you?

Well, I've eaten chicken-fried steak all my life. Although I didn't
grow up havin' it in my home, so much, but I had a friend. I think
it's interesting to note that probably a lot of poor people used to
eat chicken-fried steak, because a friend grew up in a home where her
father had been killed when she was very young. And they didn't have
very much money, but they had chicken-fried steak all the time.
Whereas my family, we weren't rich, but we were more middle class, we
had roast and steak and things. Of course, I had a rancher for a
granddaddy, so we had our own beef.

Yeah. You had meat.

But I think chicken-fried steak has been popular for a long time.

Well, I can remember when I was young, the round steak was a cheap
buy. And when you talk about your friend who didn't have much money, I
can remember my mother tenderizing it, pounding flour into it, with
the edge of a saucer.

Yes, or I've even done this myself-used a glass-and pounded it on the
cabinet. (pounding table) (laughter) Well, she always-I can still see
her doing that thing.

Is there a special menu that goes with chicken-fried steak? What kind
of potatoes? What kind of vegetables?

Usually, they serve French fries.

Oh, do they?

Or baked potatoes in West Texas. Now we are serving something that not
exactly-goes with chicken-fried steak but is a good addition to it-and
we call-they're hot puffs. And what they are is canned biscuits. And
you can buy the cheapest canned biscuits available. You deep-fry them
like you would a doughnut. They puff up, and they are good with the
cream gravy, and we also serve them with honey. And you can poke holes
in it like you do in a sopapilla and pour the honey in. And that's
what we serve at our booth [at Folklife], the chicken-fried steak, the
hot puffs, and the cream gravy and honey.

That's interesting. I was going to say you've got to have something to
put that cream gravy on. French-fried potatoes wouldn't do.

No. Well, yes. Oh, yes. We eat the cream gravy with. . .

On French-fried potatoes?

Oh, that's one of my husband's favorite meals. In fact, sometimes if
I'm not going to prepare supper or something, he will go in and cook
French fries and make a bunch of cream gravy. He loves that.

He doesn't mind it getting-getting the gravy on the . . . ?

No. In fact we have a restaurant in Colorado City, and it does have
very good chicken-fried steak. We always order extra cream gravy to go
with our French fries.

Oh, really? I've learned something I didn't know-that you deep-fat
fried that. You can see I'm not a native Texan-I thought it was a
piece of meat that was sautéed in fat in the skillet.

Well, of course you can fix round steak that way, but I don't think
it's as good. Now at home, you don't have to deep-fry. In other words,
when I say that, when we deep-fry it, we completely submerge it here
in the grease because we have the cookers. At home I don't do that
because I just don't want to use that much grease and be bothered with
it. I just use an iron skillet and fry it on one side and then turn it
and fry it on the other.

Uh-huh. But you do the fingers always.

No. Not always. Not always, no. The reason we're doing the fingers
here is because people are eating with their hands.

It's easier to serve.

And it's easier to serve. You will find it in fast foods, like Dairy
Queen sells chicken-fried steak fingers.

Your husband thinks that it comes from wiener schnitzel? That's
awfully interesting, you know. I never gave it a thought because
wiener schnitzel always has a fried egg on top.

Uh-huh.

And it is battered, though, isn't it?

Well, it's similar. You can see possibly how that could be the origin,
even though we've made a . . . And it's always veal in Europe, but in
Texas veal is not very popular. Well, it used to be. I've been married
about 22 years, and when I first got married, I bought veal cutlets
for chicken-fried steak.

Did you?

Uh-huh. But now you can hardly ever find veal to buy. And if you do,
it's so expensive. It is so costly. We couldn't buy it out in West
Texas-in small West Texas towns. We can now get it. Kroger's is
selling it now. It's white veal like I grew up with, and it's pretty
good, but it's not quite right yet. It doesn't quite suit me. You all
might be interested to know how we did come out here.

Oh, I think that would be interesting. Yes, of course.

My husband and I-we came to the Folklife Festival as a family on a
vacation six years ago-and we were fascinated by it like most
people-and he went back and said "You know, they've got everything
there but chicken-fried steak. And since that's the national food of
West Texas, I'm going to write them." He wrote them a letter, and in
the letter he said, you know, that they didn't have this and he
thought that they should. And he said, since I cooked the best
chicken-fried steak in Texas, I think you ought to invite me and my
organization to come out. (laughter) So that is how we got to come to
the Folklife Festival.

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