Peggy’s Prompt----“chicken”

Chicken, as in rooster, pullet, hen
Chicken as in coward, gutless
Fried chicken
Chicken-fried steak
I didn’t know it was called “chicken-fried” steak when Mama fixed it for our family. She just called it “steak” and a rare event it was for us, as we subsisted mainly on fish as a protein source. What her “steak” really was, was chopped steak, i.e. hamburger-like patties that had been tenderized to death, mostly by hacking at the patty with a knife, making criss-crossed knife cuts. These patties, somewhere between hamburger and flank steak, she coated in seasoned flour—just salt and pepper—and fried just like she would fry chicken.

I don’t know how old I was—certainly a teenager—before I realized that if you ordered steak in a restaurant what you were served was a whole different animal from what Mama fixed. No flour coating for one thing, and no hatch marks, at least none that cut the flesh. And they might not cook it all the way, unless you asked for “well done”, which usually drew a frown from the waiter and amazed glances between everyone else at the table.

Later, much later, I learned that country folks called Mama’s steak “chicken-fried”, and they would even serve it in a bun. Nowadays I don’t eat much red meat, but when I do I either want chicken-fried steak, as unhealthy as you can get it, or a nice NY strip steak, cooked rare, where all you have to worry about are the residual antibiotics and the immune critters that haven’t been killed by cooking it well done.

Come to think on it, there’s a lot to be said for chicken-fried steak!