Abstract:

It's a good day in this house when I can cook something that both the kids and the grown-ups alike enjoy, and there are few recipes that do that as well as steak fingers. Steak fingers done right are a simple bit of comfort food that the whole family can agree on; and the way I do 'em is squarely more "steak" than "finger". These two-bite morsels of chicken-fired steak start by putting the seasoning where it belongs: On the beef and not in the flour. Quality cuts of bottom round and a little patience make for plenty of crispy, golden-brown breaded goodness that sets this dish apart from its school cafeteria counterpart.

Purpose:

There are certain types of youth-friendly foods whose name carries a stigma that seems to give them a bit of an image problem. Labeled as "kid cuisine", these are foods that receive their moniker often as a result of the established nature of their processed food equivalent. I do my best at home to put proper perspective on my family's food expectations, having successfully beat the bad rap with stove top macaroni and cheese, and even white bread. Last year, I had the occasion to eat lunch at school with my son. The meal: Steak fingers. They were pretty much just as I remember them from my time in elementary school; no steak and all finger, the beef equivalent of chicken nuggets. Crazy as it would seem to one's perceptions of a six-year-old's palate, my son wasn't having it. I really had to get on him to eat least eat one of them. After I left the school that day, I thought about the minor ordeal that transpired in the cafeteria with my kid. If someone didn't get him some proper steak fingers, the boy was going to have a distorted vision of what the dish oughtta be; and we all [should] know that early eating habits stick with your kids for life.



I have a difficult time letting problems lie when the solution is within my grasp. It's an almost obsessive compulsion I have to wrong a right. So the following week, I went back and whipped up steak fingers at home. In a bit of social engineering, I made it a point not to tell him what he was eating until after he'd run a beefy breaded morsel thru the ketchup and sampled a few bites. It was a successful gamble, and now my son now looks forward to a plate full of steak fingers at dinner (just so long as dad's doing the cooking).