Country-Fried Steak with Mushroom Gravy

Country-Fried Steak with Mushroom Gravy - July 17th, 2012

Okay....I have some explaining to do. Where have I been?? Migraines have been yet again causing more issues so unfortunately there was a string of days that I wasn't up for blogging. I managed to get a few of the recipes made, but they've been backlogging until now for me to write them up.

Country-Fried Steak with Mushroom Gravy - page 50

"You'll love our healthy take on this Southern classic!"

This recipe had me at the mere mention of 'mushrooms'...especially in a gravy. It's a well known thing that bacon makes everything better, and to me, so do mushrooms. I am particularly fond of wild mushrooms like Shiitake and Porcini.

The recipe called for dried wild mushrooms, but I much prefer fresh. I went with fresh shiitake.

I may have gone a little wrong on the coating for the steak but it was with the best of intentions. I didn't realize it when I was doing up my grocery list, but it calls for 'dried minced onion', only 'onion' registered when I read it. I had fresh onions on hand, thought I was covered. Since I was going to use fresh onions, I decided to also use fresh oregano (Thanks once again Craig!) and fresh thyme. What I didn't take into consideration was the moisture from said ingredients would cause my recently toasted bread cubes to re-hydrate when put through (my new absolutely fabulous) food processor. It was 'crumby' but moist. Live and learn...

Coating the steaks obviously would have been much, much easier with a crumb mixture that was completely dry, but I managed out ok in the end. Not perfect, but it's the taste that matters. With the state of my head and lack of a meat mallet I passed on pounding the steaks down to a thinner thickness. It took a little longer to sear the meat to medium-rare but I got it.

Oh, now on to the mushroom gravy. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

So very easy too. Sauteed the shiitake & button mushrooms, and added beef broth. After that a milk & flour mixture to thicken things up. A little seasoning....and you have yourself a perfect tasting mushroom gravy. If I make this again (which I'm almost certain I will), I will add a little bit of red wine into the gravy with the broth. Yes...I can almost taste it now.

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