So you can take the boy outa’ Oklahoma, but...
I’ve lived in Colorado now for about 20 years now, and there’re several things I miss about Oklahoma: fried onion burgers, beautiful ditzy girls who say “Y’all” and “Fixin” as if everyone in the world knows what they’re talking about, menus that contain a “vegetable free” option instead of the “gluten free” one that’s become so ubiquitous around these parts. But honestly, if I had to pick one thing that I’ve missed the most about Oklahoma, it’s a good chicken-fried steak sandwich.
Sure, the Centennial State borders Oklahoma with a small stretch of a few miles, so there’s enough of a connection there to run across the occasional steak sandwich on a menu, or a guy in a cowboy hat skiing in jeans, or a lawsuit about trafficking legal weed across state lines, etc. But there’re no restaurants here KNOWN for their steak sandwiches. (Make it a point to stop in at Del Rancho on your next drive across the Sooner State’s portion of I-40.) So when I discovered @troy’s recipe for kettle fried chicken a few months ago, I saw hope on the horizon.
To say the Vortex (well, let’s be honest, my “Poortex”) has changed the way I cook chicken on the kettle would be an understatement. As many have said before me, it’s almost too easy. Could the recipe for perfect “almost fried” chicken batter transfer to my favorite Okie sandwich, given the proper amount of beef tenderization?
Well, it’s been a journey, but with the wife & kids out of town for a week, and plenty of high octane Colorado beers to fuel my confidence, I discovered something I’m proud to call ALMOST as good as the real deal. Here’s the fourth installment of my bachelor BBQ experiments- what a good buddy has now dubbed, “Jed’s Twelve Nights of Meatmas.” (It’s really only about seven nights, but I bet I can cram twelve nights’ worth of meat entrees into seven.)
I started with four cube steaks from the grocery store. Yeah, I ate two of them tonight. I mean, I cooked four. I’m not gonna’ eat ‘em all, right? No, seriously, I’m asking, AM I gonna’ eat all four? (Don’t judge.) Luckily, I had a couple good friends show up tonight, beer-in-hand, to eat the other two, or at least talk me down from eating them myself. Either way, I’m pretty sure in order to get out of their respective houses, they told their wives I was suicidal, which is not far off considering I’d just eaten two of these monstrosities. In Colorado, the healthiest state in the Union, that might be a low-level misdemeanor.
So without further adieu, I present to you a picture tutorial of the Kettle Fried Steak Sandwich. (With fries taboot!) These were cooked on Beyoncé, my go-to 26er. Looks like I’m limited to 10 pics for this initial post, but I have a few more. Please feel free to ask me any questions. When I wake from my food & IPA coma, I’ll be be happy to respond & post more pics/details about the cook. I’m pretty sure this is gonna’ be a thing.
-Jed
Topic: Bachelor Meal Chapter 4: Kettle “Fried” Steak Sandwich (Read 909 times)