Surry County’s Ground Steak Sandwich Is Satisfying in Its Simplicity

It’s often cited as a relic of the Great Depression, when making meat go further was a necessity, and is believed to have originated in the early 1930s at the Canteen restaurant in Mount Airy (which closed in the 1980s). 

A proper Surry County–style ground steak sandwich is seasoned with only salt and pepper and then topped with a slice of tomato, coleslaw, and a little mayonnaise, making it simple and straightforward in flavor. 

To learn more, I first hopped on the Surry Ground Steak Trail, a tourism website created by Travis Frye, coordinator of the Surry County Tourism Development Authority. The site highlights 11 restaurants around Surry County that serve ground steak on their daily menus. 

Digging deeper, I uncovered an article in the Mount Airy Times (first published in 2014) that interviewed Bob Ward, a cook from the Canteen restaurant. His directions for cooking ground steak: Use a “black skillet,” mash the meat with a potato masher, make a roux by adding flour to hamburger grease, and add pepper before salt.

I called around to several sources in Surry County. And I learned about interpretations from Central Cafe in Dobson, where the ground steak is served on buttered Texas toast, and Rockford General Store, also in Dobson, where they pile the meat on homemade potato rolls. 

Freddy Hiatt, owner of Dairy Center in Mount Airy and ambassador for the Surry Ground Steak Trail, has been making ground steak sandwiches for 30 years. Hiatt told me that the “secret” to his ground steak is a well‑seasoned stockpot (that can hold a big batch of ground steak) that the restaurant has used for years.

He’s also particular about the order in which he adds ingredients to the meat. Hiatt boils ground beef in water and strains it, holding on to the liquid for later. He said that he “add[s] salt first, pepper second, and flour third.” To reach the desired consistency, he stirs some of the reserved liquid back into the meat and flour. “You want it to stick together, but you don’t want it so dry that you can’t serve it on a sandwich; there’s a happy medium. And you don’t want it so wet that it slides off the bun.”

Some sandwiches are looser, and some drier—a lot comes down to personal preference. “Each location [that serves ground steak] is going to have a different texture or even a different taste,” Hiatt said. If you need a little extra (besides the traditional tomato, coleslaw, and mayo) on your ground steak at Dairy Center, you can order it “all the way,” meaning topped with chopped onions. 

Martha Sue’s is a restaurant just outside of downtown Mount Airy. The food is homey, and the atmosphere is classic Americana. In the morning, the kitchen is run by Wilma Fleming, a proud octogenarian who has been cooking professionally for more than 40 years. During our phone conversation, she described herself as a “dump cook: I just dump it and cook it. Nothing fancy. Just plain country.” Fleming cooks her ground steak mixture until it’s the consistency of gravy. Her slaw is similar to Dairy Center’s, slightly sweet with mayonnaise, white vinegar, and sugar. “I love my slaw sweet. They say I make good slaw; I don’t know.” 

I wanted our version to serve six people, so I started with a pound of ground beef and thus was able to forgo the stockpot. As a nod to both Hiatt’s “seasoned pot” and the “black skillet” used for the original version at the Canteen, I employed a cast-iron skillet to sauté (rather than boil) rich 80 percent lean ground beef with pepper and salt and added the flour to the rendered fat before introducing a measured amount of water to thin it out to the proper consistency. 

To emulate the fine texture of the slaw traditionally served on the sandwich, I shredded the cabbage using the shredding disk of the food processor (a box grater also works) and added a tablespoon of sugar so that it was just sweet enough to complement the rich beef. 

The closer you look, the more you notice the subtle differences in the sandwich from stop to stop on the trail. Whether you prefer the ground steak tight enough to hold together or looser like a thickened gravy, served on a bun or Texas toast, “all the way” with chopped onions, or with an added swipe of zesty mustard, this melt-in-your-mouth sandwich will leave you with the taste of a special part of North Carolina. And as Hiatt says, “If you don’t like it, we’ll charge you double.”