Cube steak is a cut of beef

Beef

Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially domestic cattle. Beef can be harvested from cows, bulls, heifers or steers. It is one of the principal meats used in the cuisine of the Middle East , Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the United States, and is also important in...

, usually top round

Round steak

A round steak is a steak from the round primal cut of beef. Specifically, a round steak is the eye round, bottom round, and top round still connected, with or without the "round" bone , and may include the knuckle , depending on how the round is separated from the loin. This is a lean cut and it...

 or top sirloin

Sirloin steak

The sirloin steak is a steak cut from the rear back portion of the animal, continuing off the short loin from which T-bone, porterhouse, and club steaks are cut....

, tenderized by fierce pounding with a meat mallet, or use of an electric tenderizer. Many professional cooks insist that regular tenderizing mallets cause too much mashing to produce a proper cube steak, and insist on either using specialized cube steak machines, or manually applying a set of sharp pointed rods to pierce the meat in every direction. This is the most common cut of meat used for chicken fried steak

Chicken fried steak

Chicken fried steak is a dish consisting of a piece of steak coated with seasoned flour and pan-fried. It is associated with Texas cuisine...

.

Minute steak

In Canada as well as in some parts of the United States, cube steak may be called a minute steak, because it can be cooked quickly.

Others distinguish minute steak as:

• simply referring to the cut, which is not necessarily tenderized;
• thinner than cube steak (hence does not need tenderizing);
• cut from sirloin or round, while cube steak cut is from chuck or round.

The term "minute steak" is also used in the United Kingdom, where the term "cube steak" is little known.