Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Smothered Steak from a non-Southern Southern Boy

Good morning everyone!

Glad to have you here.

We’ve got some fun stuff for you today. I’m going back to my Southern style and continuing yet again with the homemade bread shit. I’ve gained such confidence with my bread dough that there’s not even a ripple of trepidation when it comes to making homemade bread. You are going to see it a lot more during the rest of the season.

Obviously one of the keys to bread making is having the proper equipment. If you would like to explore the power and glory of the homemade bread experience you really should consider a stand mixer. It helps so fucking much.

What I’ve discovered though is the most integral part to a successful bread experience lies right here.

Blooming the yeast. Absolutely fucking crucial. Again, the key to the proper bloom is the temperature of the water that you add to the yeast. You’ll see me fluctuate the temperature between 95-110 degrees depending on the type of bread you are making.

Say you want to make some flatbread pizza. You only need the temperature to be lukewarm. I didn’t even really test the temperature because we’re not looking for much of a rise on the dough. It being a “flatbread” and all.

Now let’s say you wanted to make homemade pita bread. You would want your water to be between 90-100 degrees since there will definitely be a rise, although not a huge rise. Call it a “semi”.

This week we will be making homemade rolls again, just like we made for the Spring Ham Festival last week because them little bastards were good! The water temperature for the yeast was a little more precise 95-100 degrees because we are looking for a specific amount of rise. Call it a “diamond cutter” rise.

All this is to say that them goddamn rolls on Easter were tasty motherfuckers and the meal I was making today would go really fucking good with some goddamn dinner rolls. The recipe for the rolls is right there in the Spring Ham Festival link if you are interested.

Here’s the dough after the mixer kneaded for 10 minutes.

Proof for 2 hours until the dough doubles in size. Cut and roll into 16 balls of dough and proof for another hour.

Cut an “X” or a cross on the top of the rolls and baste with butter right before baking in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes. Baste again with butter right as you remove them from the oven.

Mother. Fucking. ROLLS!

Spoiler alert! There will be another type of bread next week.

I’m fucking fearless with the baking right now!

I’ve given my family origin story many times before so I won’t be dragging up my dead grandmothers again and I’m certain you are all thankful for that. All you need to know is that my dad’s family has roots in Texas and Louisiana, Ma’s family had Texas and Oklahoma roots and every meal was homemade. 

No shit I’m old enough that the small ass town I grew up in had no fast food joints for years.

No. Fast. Food.

That’s key.

In fact, the town held the record for opening day sales when the very first McDonald’s opened there. They held that record for YEARS until the opening of a McDonald’s in Moscow finally broke it. Motherfuckers were eating there 2 and 3 times on the day it opened.

Goddamn Godforsaken town.

Long drawn out way to say I come by my Southern cooking roots honestly despite never living in the South.

Here’s a really interesting article detailing what the difference is between Southern Food and Soul Food from “Howstuffworks.com.” The money quote being “While not all Southern food is considered soul food, all soul food is definitely Southern.”

Without, hopefully, sounding racially insensitive I can simply say I cook Southern food because as a white guy I don’t think I’m allowed to call it Soul Food.

Today’s dish inhabits many soul food restaurants and it is fucking outstanding.

The name of this feature “Sunday Gravy” originated because when growing up you could slap a pile of mashed potatoes, some protein and a homemade gravy and I was fucking set.

Fuck it. Let’s make smothered steak.

Smothered steak!

You will need 1 steak per person. My preferred steak for this dish is top sirloin but I’ve even smothered a goddamn New York steak before. Sirloin is cheaper.

16 to 32 ounces of beef stock. Fortunately the cartons of stock you find at the store are 32 ounces.

1 onion chopped

16 ounces of fresh sliced mushrooms

4 cloves of garlic minced

2-3 tablespoons of oil for searing

1/2 cup of flour

Equal parts salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder

1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme.

1 tablespoon of demi glace – optional

Demi Glace is a heavily reduced beef stock cooked down with a mirepoix and some herbs and wine that’s reduced until it’s almost a paste. It’s rich in flavor and adds a nice intensity to any dish it touches. Glaze a steak with a demi glace before serving and step the fuck back.

Please note that we will not be dredging the steaks, merely coating them in flour.

Cut each steak in half and season with equal amounts salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder.

Place the flour into a bowl big enough to first of all hold the flour and be efficient for dragging the steaks in. Get the steaks nice and coated with flour. Reserve the unused flour.

Heat up the cooking oil over medium high heat in a large Dutch oven then get those seasoned and floured steaks in there.

Work in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. Give these about 4 minutes per side.

Let’s go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Repeat the searing process until all of the steaks have been seared giving you a nice stack of meat.

Be sure to leave the browned, crusty bits in the pot.

Next thing, well shit, you should actually do this while the batches of steaks are cooking but what the fuck ever, chop up the onions and garlic.

Dump the onions – not the garlic yet – and the sliced mushrooms into the still hot Dutch oven.

Season with a bit of salt and pepper and the 1/2 teaspoon of thyme. Use a wooden spoon and scrape up all those tasty leftover steak bits while you’re sauteing. After about 6-7 minutes go ahead and add the garlic, stirring just until the garlic smell punches you in the dick. About 30-45 seconds. Dump the reserved flour into the pot and give everything a good stir.

Next we will add the meat into the pot along with the demi glace – if using – and the beef stock.

The reason the recipe calls for “16-32 ounces of beef stock” is entirely dependent on how many steaks are cooked. I cooked 3 full steaks. This dish needs to braise so you want the liquid to almost fully cover everything. Plus this is how the fucking gravy gets made. Too little stock = too little gravy.

I likes my gravy.

Place the lid on the Dutch oven and stick this fucker into the preheated 350 degree oven for about 80-90 minutes depending on how thick the steaks are. We want this shit TENDER.

Remove from the oven.

Oh dear lord. See how the flour worked it’s alchemy with the gravy? Shit yes.

Remember me mentioning up there about the gravy, protein and mashed potatoes?

Mash some damn potatoes.

One potato per person, peeled and cooked in a pot of boiling, salted water until tender.

Drain the potatoes and dump into your multi-tasking stand mixer.

Check this shit out!

That’s the mixer using the hook attachment to knead the rolls.

Here it is with the paddle attachment mixing up them taters. I added a little whole milk and about 3 tablespoons of butter to the potatoes along with some salt and pepper.

I should work for Kitchenaid as much as I whore this motherfucker out. Buy One! Today!

Now we got us a nice biggol bowl of mashed potatoes.

As Jesus intended.

I rounded off the meal with some corn. You baseball fans may have heard the older baseball announcers call an easy pop fly to the outfield a “Can of corn.” It’s appropriate because we did more than enough labor on everything else today, so just heat up a goddamn can of corn for your vegetation.

Scoop those mashed potatoes onto a plate. Grab yourself a hunk of that steak and set it there too. Get a ladle and pour on as much of that gravy as you damn well please. Add a scoop of the corn, grab a hot and freshly made dinner roll and get ready for a true “Death Row Last Meal.”

Just looking at the photo makes me want to clock out, go to the store, drive home and make this fucking thing all over again.

I can’t do the usual food taste breakdown thing. I just can’t. That would be like properly describing your first love, or your favorite childhood pet. Or what Christmas morning felt like when you were in grade school.

Those goddamn homemade rolls too!

This was my favorite meal growing up.

Period.

Actually you could call it a tie with chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Or fried chicken with mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Or pot roast with mashed potatoes and brown gravy.

You get the point.

Now for a quick bit of Sunday Gravy heresy.

Season, flour and sear the steaks as listed above. Place into the Dutch oven along with a can of cream of mushroom soup that’s been thinned out with a can full of water. Add in a couple of minced garlic cloves and do the same cooking time and temperature.

You may feel a little guilty because you didn’t make your own fucking gravy dammit.

But oh boy it’s still pretty fucking delicious.

Forget you read that. You never heard that from me.

Thank you wonderful folks for being there while I bring back memories of my admittedly pretty goddamn strange childhood.

This was so fucking delicious and cathartic to make and you know where the inspiration came from? Something to serve the fresh rolls with.

There will be bread.

We’ll see y’all next week for another edition of Sunday Gravy and another fresh batch of bread.

Have a great Sunday.

PEACE!