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Beefsteak Fried with Onions
Prepare a nice steak; pepper, salt, and roll in flour; fry in hot lard; take the steak from the pan when done; add onion chopped fine, pepper, salt, and water enough to make a good gravy. Cook a short while, return the steak to the pan-let it stand in the gravy a few minutes. Serve while hot. Very nice. -Mrs. Morehead.
A plain pan-fried steak with an onion pan gravy, written for a cook who already knows how a skillet behaves. The one thing worth fixing is the order of operations: the onions go into the fat after the steak comes out, and they need longer than the recipe implies.
- Cut and thicknessThe recipe names no cut. Household books of the period used steak loosely, and a thinner cut of round or sirloin would suit this treatment. A thicker modern strip or ribeye works, but sear it and rest it rather than frying it flat until well done.
- Lard, and how hotLard is still sold and gives the best browning; beef tallow or a neutral oil is fine. Get the fat shimmering before the meat goes in, and dry the steak first or the flour coating will steam instead of crusting.
- The flourRolling the steak in flour is what thickens the gravy later. The scorched flour left in the pan is the whole point, so do not wipe the skillet between steps.
- Onions need more than "a short while"Raw chopped onion added to a hot pan and simmered a couple of minutes stays sharp and crunchy. Soften them in the fat for five to eight minutes until translucent and lightly browned, then add the water.
- Water enough for gravyRoughly half to three quarters of a cup for a single steak. Beef stock in place of water gives more depth; scrape the fond up as it comes to a simmer.
- Returning the steak"Let it stand in the gravy a few minutes" is a resting step as much as a cooking one. Keep the pan at a bare simmer or below, since a thin steak held in boiling liquid tightens quickly.
- YieldAs written, one steak serves one or two. Scale the onion and liquid with the number of steaks, and fry in batches so the pan stays hot.
Steak with onion gravy of this kind was a staple of American home cookery in the decades either side of 1900, when the skillet did most of the work and a "gravy" was simply the pan drippings loosened with water and thickened by whatever flour had come off the meat. The technique shares its flouring and pan-frying with country-fried steak, and it reflects the economics of the period: tougher, cheaper cuts benefited from flour, fat and a few minutes' braise in liquid. The attribution to Mrs. Morehead is typical of community-compiled cookbooks of the era, which gathered contributions from named local women and printed them largely as submitted, terse measurements, editorial verdicts like "very nice" and all.