While this may be an old thread it’s nostalgic for me, too, reminding me of my childhood comfort food. Round Steak was one of three dishes in our home: Chicken Fried Steak, Swiss Steak or, rarely, a Poor Man’s Beef Stroganoff. The Chicken Fried Steak was the star dish as far as I was concerned. For CFS, the round steak did get pounded with a mallet or passed through the butcher’s tenderizer (as another poster mentioned). The steak was cut into little individual “steaks” which were then dunked in an egg wash (with a little bit of water added to stretch the eggs to last through both slabs of steak). It was then dipped into a mixture of mostly corn flake crumbs & some flour (seasoned with garlic powder, onion flakes, salt & pepper). Then they were pan-fried in Crisco until crispy brown on both sides. Unfortunately, from there they were put into a pan, covered with foil and put in the oven for a half hour, completely “sogging” the formerly-crispy coating. And she wondered why her coating never stuck to the steak… It wasn’t until just recently that my oldest brother (aka the Gourmet Black Sheep) showed her how to coat the steaks with flour before the egg wash to help the corn flake crumb mixture stick better. As an added bonus he showed her that if the steaks were pounded thin enough they wouldn’t need the sauna in the oven to complete the cooking. She was delighted and amazed and said “Old Bohemians can learn new tricks!” (her parents were from the Old Country). She would always save the piece that had the bone in it for me because she knew how much I liked the marrow. The Swiss Steak was from a recipe that was in the booklet that came with her Presto pressure cooker (very 50’s!) which she received as a wedding present. The pressure cooker would make the steak fork tender. It also made an excellent (if thick) gravy for mashed potatoes (which all four of us brothers would fight over before it was gone). I’m not sure of the recipe since she has it memorized and doesn’t have to get the recipe booklet out anymore (it’s buried somewhere in one of her kitchen drawers). I know the round steak is coated in seasoned flour and browned in a little bit of Crisco inside the pressure cooker. After that’s it’s a mélange of tomato sauce & green peppers and I’m not sure what else (I do recall celery salt but not much more) and on goes the lid. She still uses the, by now, 47 year old pressure cooker though she did have to call Presto and order another gasket (They had it in stock. Way to go Presto!). If anyone is truly interested in the totally retro Swiss Steak recipe, I am sure she won’t mind me excavating through her kitchen drawers to find it. As for the Beef Stroganoff, it was thinly cut strips of round steak in a delicious brown sauce/gravy with mushrooms and some sort of (egg?) noodles and I’m not sure what else. We knew it was a “la-dee-da” dish because she would add sour cream (not an every day item back then for us) into the dish just before serving. Plus, instead of serving the usual ubiquitous brown-and-serve dinner roll with the Stroganoff, she would have my dad slice soft rolls (a kind of egg bread?) in half, dip the cut sides in butter and brown them in a skillet. They were delicious when used to sop up the “gravy”. Yes, I am truly a fan of round steak.
