From John T. Edge: Chicken Fried Steak, Steamed Sandwiches, Georgia Barbecue

By The New York Times
Texas-style chicken-fried steakAllison V. Smith for The New York Times Chicken-fried steak as served by Rosemarie Hudson in Clifton, Tex.

John T. Edge, who writes the United Tastes series on American cuisine for The New York Times, is answering readers’ questions and comments this week. Here’s the first batch:

Q: Is there a difference between country and chicken fried steak? And is one considered more authentically Southern?

John T. Edge replies: Country fried steak is, usually, battered and fried beef, smothered in gravy and simmered until solid crust and liquid gravy fuse. It’s a pan-Southern dish. Chicken fried steak is more specifically Texan. It’s pounded beef (oftentimes round), salted and peppered and battered and fried in a manner commonly ascribed to chicken. It’s almost always topped with or served alongside a puddle of creamy gravy.

Q: In Knoxville, Tenn., steamed sandwiches are prevalent and celebrated to a degree not seen elsewhere in the South, or the US for that matter. The Lincoln Fresh-O-Matic steamer seems to be the favored apparatus for this preparation, but I’m more curious as to how this sandwich gained popularity in Knoxville, which had numerous delis and shops serving up their own versions. Vick & Bill’s, Sam & Andy’s and Gus’s Good Times Deli come to mind as a few Knoxville outposts specializing in this Knoxville specialty. — John Scruggs

John T. Edge replies: Sounds like a talented steamer salesman hit Knoxville hard. Steamers are embraced elsewhere. Your story reminds me of the steamed cheeseburgers that appear to be omnipresent in south-central Connecticut. When I was writing my burger book I met a guy named Bob Giattani who sold something somewhat similar, the New England Cheeseburger Chest, which turned a hunk of cheese into a blob of oozing orange goo.

Q: A fellow Maconite here, wondering about Georgia-style barbecue sauce. My husband’s family was visiting from California (they are native New Yorkers) and we took them to the Jot ‘em Down barbecue shack here in Athens. We were all thrilled to try the seven or so different sauces that they offered (in squirt bottles at the table); most of them were variations on Georgia-style sauce, that is, very vinegary. (There was also one mustard-based sauce, and one that was thick with ketchup.) My father-in-law wondered if the vinegar was used, early on, as some kind of preservative, or if Georgians just had some kind of predilection for sour stuff. — Anne in Athens

John T. Edge replies: Defining Georgia barbecue sauce is tough. John Shelton Reed — who, along with his wife Dale Reed and a colleague William McKinney, wrote a recent book, “Holy Smoke,” on North Carolina bbq — once said “Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines or cheese; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.” In other words, there is no definitive Georgia barbecue sauce. When it comes to sauce, there are mutations of mutations and they vary county by county. Same deal with Alabama bbq sauce. And Arkansas. And so on. All that said, middle Georgia bbq sauces tend toward a vinegar-ketchup mix, comparable to the sauces of the piedmont of North Carolina.

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jamiealex April 15, 2009 · 1:52 pm

I agree that barbecue meats, methods, and sauces vary greatly even in a given region. I grew up in the Atlanta area, and to us barbecue sauce was definitely on the tomato-based side. A little spice, a tiny touch of mustard sometimes, always a little sweetness.

michael April 15, 2009 · 5:29 pm

omg. that photo. of the gravy over chicken-fried steak ‘n mashed. i’m from the South. please don’t do that to me.

Southlander April 16, 2009 · 2:06 am

The last question, though, wasn’t answered. “My father-in-law wondered if the vinegar was used, early on, as some kind of preservative, or if Georgians just had some kind of predilection for sour stuff.”

Tal Clapp April 16, 2009 · 2:26 am

I’m curious if country style steak is pan southern as well, or just a North Carolina thing. Anyone from other areas of the South used to seeing it?

jimbob April 16, 2009 · 11:04 am

Vinegar pepper sauce was commercially bottled all around the American colonies from the 18th-century onwards, as attested by a wreck of a Boston ship off the N. Carolina coast from around the time of the American Revolution. Where richer Yankees tended to have the fashionable metal pots for boiling meat before the Revolution, Southerners tended to cook their meats still over an open fire. Oddly, Tabasco sauce was the American condiment of choice before ketchup all over American and BBQ really was nothing more than the meat you could afford with the all-American sauce. The ketchup-Tabasco sauce of the Mississippi River was a product of 19th-century trends in commercial food. Barbecue, chili, and cornbread still are the all-American foods, to be sure.

TSC April 16, 2009 · 1:26 pm

Thank you for answering my lifelong burning question about chicken fried versus country fried steak!

jamiealex April 17, 2009 · 12:10 pm

@TalClapp —

I certainly had country fried steak growing up in Atlanta. The cut of meat used was always “cubed steak” — beef that had been run through a tenderizing machine. It was ubiquitous in grocery stores then, a little harder to find now. It wasn’t until I came to Nashville that I even heard of “chicken fried” steak.

Dan H. May 8, 2009 · 11:46 am

On the subject of Steamed Sandwiches, the reaction of most people is that steaming a sandwich would make it soggy. While this is possible, when the proper bread and steamer are used it doesn’t happen.

As for the proper steamer, the questioner correctly asserts that the Lincoln Fresh-O-Matic is the steamer predominately used. It has a hot plate on its surface that keeps the sandwich from sogging out. I’ve never seen anyone in Knoxville use a different type steamer.

The origin of the steamed sandwich in Knoxvllle can likely be attributed to a Greek family that immigrated years ago. I believe their surname is Captain. Who knows where they got the idea.

When I moved away from Knoxville, I didn’t lose my taste for a steamed sandwich. So I bought a used Fresh-O-Matic on ebay. It was a great purchase. Indeed, my taste for steamed sandwiches was the driving force to authoring a Wikipedia entry for “steamed sandwich,” but it has since been removed.

MellowRoast June 7, 2009 · 6:35 am

I’ve seen steamed sandwiches throughout the country, but Knoxville is famous for them.

Steamed sandwiches are also served in Chattanooga, about 95 miles south of K-town. I recommend the Flatiron Deli, Yellow Deli, and Glen-Gene in that order, with Daved’s Deli and Pickle Barrel as honorable mentions. There may be others.