Living in the South, there are some meals that are so culturally ingrained in your life that the idea of removing them from your diet is a bit painful, like you are losing a bit of your history. For me, that meal is Chicken Fried Steak. (Or Chicken Fried Chicken, but that’s a recipe for another day I think.)
As much as I love that meal and it is 100% my go-to whenever we go to a “Southern Home-Cooking” restaurant like Black-Eyed Pea or Cracker Barrel, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Every part of it was determined to make me fatter. From the flour in the batter and the gravy, to the heaping scoop of mashed potatoes I always had on the side, to the vegetable oil it was cooked in. So, the hunt was on. I needed to come up with a way to cook this meal and have it taste awesome but get rid of all those carbs.
Step one was the batter and that turned out to be the easiest to deal with. Sub in Almond Meal for flour and it makes for an awesome coating for the steaks. It gets crunchy when you fry it and tastes amazing.
The next part was the oil. I haven’t really talked too much about the different oils on this site but ever since I read David Gillespie’s book Seed Oil many years ago, I only use saturated fats in my cooking so that means butter, coconut oil, or olive oil. There are a few others but those are the big 3. Sometimes I cook my steaks in coconut oil, sometimes olive oil. There’s no difference in the taste but sometimes I think the gravy tastes a little better with a coconut oil base but that varies on the quality of the olive oil I use. For some reason, the cheaper the olive oil, the better the gravy tastes. I have no idea why that is.
Finally, I needed to tackle the gravy and I have to say, this was tough. To the point that I thought it was going to be impossible. I tried every single low carb or gluten free flour you could possibly think and nothing would make the dang gravy thicken. That is until my Walmart started carrying Arrowroot and out of desperation, I picked it up. I’m happy to say that it actually works! It doesn’t work very fast and you have to whisk the gravy constantly but if you will stick with it, it comes together pretty nicely. Don’t use too much though, you will have a gummy mess on your hands.
Also, just as an aside, I also bought a plastic whisk so I could whisk to my heart’s content and not worry about scratching my pan with a metal one. Also, if you want a low carb mashed potato substitute, check out my recipe for mashed cauliflower.
If you decide to make this recipe, let me know how it goes! Send me a picture or tag @MySugarFreeJrny on Instagram so I can see. Please also subscribe to my daily email to never miss a post or to my YouTube channel to never miss a recipe. Thanks!
A tasty, low-carb Chicken Fried Steak recipe
Low Carb Chicken Fried Steak
Ingredients
Instructions
INTERESTING! Something I def need to consider trying!
milk? are you serious? that can be subbed for sure.
Then sub it
I definitely want to try this recipe, but I’m wondering why there are no nutritional facts for keeping track of carbs and/or sugar.
Mainly because I don’t track that info for myself. I just drop the carbs and lose the weight.
Regardless if you don’t track them, you should still include that information when sharing. Low carb can mean 100 carbs compared to 200 but that is still not low enough for me to be able to eat. I do appreciate you sharing your experience/recipe though!
Tried this tonight and we loved it. Thanks for making it available!
So glad to hear that! It’s definitely in our rotation as well.
This was really good. The only thing I did different was to change the 1 C of milk for the gravy to sub 1/2 C cream and 1/2 water. Thanks for sharing. Even my husband, who is not doing low carb, loved the gravy.
Awesome! I love that you loved it!
I tried your recipe, I used almond flour only and unsweetened almond milk. Thank you so much because it was amazing. I used my pan drippings and added sour cream,cream cheese, salt and pepper and made gravy it was really good. Thanks cause this Texas girl missed her chicken fried steak.
So glad you liked it!
This looks great! I understand that you’re only counting carbs but I imported it into MyFitnessPal and it came up with 4 servings at 342 calories (using whole milk, lower if sub almond etc). Thanks for a yummy recipie!
Thanks for this, I do the same just cut the carbs and lose. The arrow root tip is great. Can’t wait to try
You are at the start of an amazing journey! If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. You might consider joining the support FB Group at MySugarFreeJourney.com/28Day
My wife is on a keto diet, so we tried it today. It was delicious. It will become our go to for cube steak. Only problem I had was that the crust was coming off in the pan. I imagine I did not use enough coconut oil. I used a little whipping cream and almond milk to make the gravy. I will use more next time to get more gravy. I know the dish is advertised as low carb but I could not find any mention in the article. We were wondering about how many carbs were in the dish. Do you have a guestimate?
None of my recipes have carb counts because they aren’t important to me. There are a few carbs in the almond meal and whipping cream but not very much. The crust came off in the pan maybe because you didn’t dip the steaks in the almond meal twice. You dip the steaks dry, then into the egg, then back into the almond meal. I have no idea why that works but it does. Glad you found me!
As is, using whole milk, the net carb count on this recipe is about 8.5 net carbs and 410 calories per serving. Since whole milk is a no-no on Keto, try using unsweetened almond milk. That would bring carbs down to about 4.5 net carbs and 360 calories per serving. You could use 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup beef broth which would be about 5.5 net carbs and 450 calories per serving. There are other options you can do like cream cheese and sour cream, but to keep this recipe true to the original, the above would be my suggestions. Calories are based on steaks weighing a total of 4 oz each and using 3 tbsp of olive oil.
As is, using whole milk, the net carb count on this recipe is about 8.5 net carbs and 410 calories per serving. Since whole milk is a no-no on Keto, try using unsweetened almond milk. That would bring carbs down to about 4.5 net carbs and 360 calories per serving. You could use 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup beef broth which would be about 5.5 net carbs and 450 calories per serving. There are other options you can do like cream cheese and sour cream, but to keep this recipe true to the original, the above would be my suggestions. Calories are based on steaks weighing a total of 4 oz each and using 3 tbsp of olive oil. It is a good recipe.