Chicken-Fried Steak and Gravy

In Arkansas and Kentucky, they tend to call it country-fried steak; in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, it’s smothered steak; but down in Mississippi and Alabama, folks generally know it as chicken-fried steak. Whatever term is used, cube steaks that are battered and fried in oil and bacon drippings and served with a creamy gravy (“smothered”) were a Southern specialty long before western pioneers and Texas cattlemen corrupted the dish’s reputation by producing meat that was not unlik