Chicken Fried Steak

Logic suggests that Texas’ favorite comfort food, chicken-fried steak, traces its heritage back to the many central European immigrant cooks who found themselves in the Lone Star State but without a tender cut of veal to make wiener schnitzel. Instead, they took a hunk of cow and beat the chaw out of it (with an old glass Coke bottle, according to legend), battered it, then fried it up like southern-style chicken and served it with pan-dripping peppered milk gravy and mashed potatoes. This genealogical speculation is supported by the fact that the Hill Country, with its preponderance of German great-grandmas, is home of so many excellent chicken-fried steaks.