NEVER Fry CUBE STEAK! Try These 45 Appalachian Farm Tricks (Appalachian Mountains)

🔗 Grandma never wrote hers down, so I finally did. All 118 plus much more. Get em before they're gone: https://www.opalrowe.com Opal Rowe pulls up a chair and lays out forty-five ways her people took the cheapest cut in the meat case — cube steak — and made it fall apart tender, without frying it hard and fast the way most folks turn it to shoe leather. From the diamond-dent trick her mama swore by, to a buttermilk soak, a spoonful of baking soda, and the long slow way she saves for the very end, these are the old mountain habits that turned two dollars of tough beef into a proud supper on the leanest week. In this one, Opal covers: • Why frying cube steak hard and fast ruins it — and what she does instead • The tenderizing tricks: pounding, buttermilk, pickle and kraut brine, baking soda, green tomato • Building real gravy from the brown bits, the breading flour, and pot liquor off the beans • How a cheap cut fed a whole family through the weeks the money ran thin • The foolproof slow-cooker way she saves for last Opal reads every comment herself — tell us in the comments who taught you to stretch a cheap cut, and what your people call this supper where you come from. CHAPTERS 0:00 The two-dollar cut that falls apart tender 2:02 The diamond dents are Mama's trick, not the butcher's 3:06 Pound it thin yourself 3:59 Soak it overnight in buttermilk 4:51 Pickle juice and kraut brine do the same job 5:39 Why the mountains built a whole way around cheap steak 6:25 Season the flour, not just the meat 7:21 Let the floured steak rest before the grease 8:04 The double dip: milk, flour, milk, flour 9:00 Let the chill leave the meat first 9:47 Brown it hard and fast, then stop 10:34 The brown bits are worth more than the meat 11:18 How Chicago renamed a tough cut 12:06 The war years, when the country caught up to the mountains 12:55 What the company-store meat case really held 13:46 A lid and a splash of water when supper can't wait 14:33 The timing trick she carried wrong for years 15:19 A heavier hand of pepper in the dredge 16:14 Cast iron browns even, edge to middle 16:58 Heat the iron before the meat goes in 17:51 Chicken stock beats water, potato water beats both 18:38 The cold cube steak sandwich in the dinner bucket 19:35 Cold steak at the icebox before daylight 20:25 The truck-stop plate every driver bragged on 21:15 What a spoonful of baking soda does 22:14 Rinse the soda off, or you'll taste it 23:08 A slice of green tomato tenderizes too 24:07 Never salt heavy till right before the pan 25:11 The breading-pan flour that starts your gravy 26:01 Stock from a carcass you'd have thrown out 26:54 Same steak, two hollers, two gravies 27:52 When a cube steak supper meant company stayed 28:40 Keep a heavy pot and set an extra place 29:41 Mashed potatoes were never just the side 30:48 Rice under the gravy was no shortcut 31:43 A whole egg in the last of the gravy pot 32:43 Thin the gravy with pot liquor off the beans 33:32 The meal for company that dropped by unannounced 34:28 Gravy on the biscuits the next morning 35:14 One more meal over a hot biscuit at daybreak 36:20 The mallet that did what a saucer edge always had 37:28 Explaining those little diamond marks 38:19 When a cube steak night felt like a holiday 39:14 The meat that stayed when the check ran short 39:56 The supper that fed a hundred worried weeks 40:58 The long slow way: brown, then braise in the crock 42:08 The humblest plate of all 43:36 A word before you go