Slow Cooked Cube Steak with Mushroom Gravy

Cube steak has never been my favorite cut of meat. However, my family sends me beef and some of that beef is in the form of cube steak. What am I supposed to say? "Could you please not send me any of that FREE cube steak?" I think not. In the past I’ve picked around these cube steaks in the freezer until I have used up all of my beef and there are about 8 packages of cube steak staring back from my otherwise empty freezer. No longer! Now I try to throw cube steak into my meal plan from time to time so it’s used up and my family doesn’t have to eat country fried steak for a week straight.

Some of you might be asking, what the heck is cube steak? Well, to make a cube steak, the butcher generally takes an ordinary, flavorful but tough round steak cut from the top or bottom round ,and runs it through a butcher's tenderizer once or twice, turning it almost into hamburger meat. This machine is sometimes called a cube steak machine, and leaves cube-shaped imprints on the surface of the meat, thus the name "cube steak". My husband’s favorite method of preparation for cube steak is country fried and smothered in white gravy alongside mashed potatoes. However, I prefer it slow-cooked so that the last bit of "chewiness" is cooked out over a period of hours. I did compromise though, and served this slow cooked cube steak with mashed potatoes. If you decide to follow next weeks’ meal plan then you will notice Shepherd’s Pie on the plan for Monday. So save 2 cups of the mashed potatoes for Monday’s Shepherd’s Pie.

The way that I prepared this cube steak was to rub it with a beef bouillon type seasoning and salt and pepper. Mmm. Doesn’t it look good? Not so much? That’s okay. It gets worse before it gets better.



Then I spread a can of cream of mushroom soup over the top and filled the soup can with water and dumped that in too. See, I told you it would get worse.


I set my crock pot on the lowest setting and left for church and lunch and the store…..you get the picture. Then around 6 pm I removed the lid from my crock pot to see this.


I cooked up some potatoes and microwaved some green beans and served up that so-tender-you-can-eat-it-with-a-spoon cube steak topped with mushroom gravy (a by-product of the meat and mushroom soup) for Sunday dinner. Mmmm mmmm



Slow Cooker Cube Steak

2-3 lbs. cube steak
flour
salt
pepper
oil
2 cubes beef bouillon or 1/2 packet french onion soup mix
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can (use mushroom soup can) water

Heat a little oil or butter in a skillet. Mix flour, salt, and pepper together. Dredge steaks in flour mixture. Transfer to hot skillet and brown on both sides. Remove to slow cooker. Mix together the mushroom soup, water, and bouillion or french onion soup mix. Pour mixture over the cube steaks. Cover and cook on LOW for around six hours or until the steaks are falling apart tender.