I tried this (these) recipie from Fast and Easy last night and was pleased with the results.

The mushroom sauce was a pain in the patootie though, and took three times as long to make as she said. She says to reduce it down to "almost dry" after adding the chicken broth, but after half an hour of boiling and still nowhere near that I gave up and added the cream. I had to add guar gum to get it to thicken into anything resembling gravy and the flavor was pretty pale, so I added some white wine and onion powder. In the end it was very yummy and I'm sure it will be thicker when I reheat it.

The chicken fried steak was outstanding though! I liked it better than any I have ever had (not a big fan of CFS to start with) and Russ really liked it too. It was very fast to make, too.

Now that I have some bake and fry mix made up I want to try coating some shrimp. I don't have a deep fryer though, can I just heat oil in my wok and cook them that way? How can I tell when the oil is hot enough?

I've tried the shake and fry mix and it didn't work very well for me. I'm thinking I must be doing something wrong......

but when I put the mix in a baggie like suggested in Fast and Easy it just soaks the egg right off the stuff I'm trying to coat and I end up with no coating on my meat and a big bag of dough.

Do you have any advice for me? How did you do it? I had thought that drudging the meat in it would be better- maybe using small batches of the mix so it doesn't have a chance to soak up as much egg?

I would really love your help! My husband was so excited about the chicken fried steak until he found out it required that shake and fry mix (he had helped that first time I tried it with the fish and chips recipes and what a dismal failure!).

thanks so much!

Then be sure you let the bulk of the egg drip off the meat and dredge it in a dish of crumbs instead of using the baggie. I found that just plopping the meat in the coating dish and forking the stuff over the top worked best.

I have had the best luck with shrimp and the worst with fish. I think it's becuase the fish was big and thick and the shrimp was so small and easy to 'coat and float' The steak for the chicken fried steak is so thin it's not too hard to do. I made sure to leave it in the pan until the coating was crispy.

Keep trying because once you figure it out it's definitely worth doing!

Luck!

MB