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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Best Beef Stroganoff. Ever.

A few weeks ago I bought a container of mushrooms at Costco. I don't know why, but they were good looking and cheap--so I made some super mushroomy beef stroganoff.

I perused many online recipes and scoured all my cookbooks for proportions and seasonings. So the end result is the best beef stroganoff recipe ever. Ever. It is creamy, mushroomy, scrumptious. It freezes and reheats well. One pint easily serves two people over egg noodles or rice.

My recipe/method yields about 5.5 pints.

Step 1: brown about 1lb of very thinly sliced beef in a few tablespoons of olive oil. If you are more of a meat lover than me you could easily double the meat.
Step 2: Add two sliced onions and keep on cooking until the pan is dry and the onions are cooked down. The pan will look like it is all burned, but it isn't.Step 3: Remove the beef and onions. The pan will look scary, but don't freak out. That stuff is delicious.Step 4: Pour about 2-3 cups of any old white wine into the pan, bring to a simmer,and scrape up all that brown stuff.Step 5: Dump in a huge Costco sized package of mushroom that you've sliced (about 2 pounds worth). Simmer for a long time, until the wine is mostly gone. Then add 4 cloves of minced garlic and cook until the liquid is all gone (don't burn the garlic!).

Maybe I should call this "beef" stroganoff or simply mushroom stroganoff since there's not much beef in it relative to the mushrooms. I only put beef in because Dave likes it anyway...
Step 6: Remove the mushroom mixture and melt about 2 tablespoons of butter in the pan.Step 7: When the butter is melted, turn off the heat and sprinkle in 2 tablespoons of flour and whisk into the butter.Turn the heat back to medium and cook for just a few minutes while stirring so the flour doesn't burn. It'll be like paste.Step 8: Pour a little beef stock in and whisk immediately to get all the lumps out. It'll get mighty thick.
Then keep stirring stock in and whisking out the lumps until you've added about 2-3 cups of stock. Let it come to a simmer for a few minutes and keep whisking. It'll get a little thicker.

(Congrats...now you're a fancy chef who is worthy of your own cooking show because you just successfully made roux (the butter + flour concoction). You could have added milk and some cheese instead of the stock to make alfredo. Or used the stock + roux as gravy if you let it thicken a little more. Rule of thumb: use 1T butter and 1T flour for each cup of liquid for a gravy-like thickness sauce.)

Step 9: Stir in about a cup of softened cream cheese and about 2/3 cup sour cream. Then add 2 teaspoons of prepared mustard, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and a teaspoon of dill (I know that sounds shady with beef, but trust me it is goooooooooooood). Then add the beef and the mushroom stuff. Add salt/pepper to your liking.
Step 10: Stick it into freezer jars, label, and put in the freezer for quick dinners later. All you have to do is boil up some noodles to go with it. Yummy!

17 comments:

Ms. said...

oooo I'll have to do that sometime it looks so good and I love beef strogonaff I think I've attempted it once since being married!

Rileigh said...

Thank you for this recipe. I just made it and my family LOVES it!

Adina Caskey, mommy to Elijah, Merry and Micah said...

This IS the best beef stroganoff recipe EVER!! I made it with onions and a few mushrooms (it was all I had) and it was TOPS!! Yum!! I think the secret is the mustard, dill and cream cheese, three things most recipes don't have. Love it!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks..this recipe was excellent. Really enjoyed dinner. Though I would marinate the Sirloin I bought, the sauce was fantastic.
Thanks again
Anita

LASumm said...

This is a GREAT beef stroganoff recipe! I only made one change. I cooked the beef in stock over a very low heat for 3 - 4 hours to get it super tender. Then I cooked the vegetables, made the roux (using the stock from the beef to get the gravy consistency), then added the cream ingredients, vegetable and meat. Almost the same, just beef that is more tender. It was perfect!

Unknown said...

i have looked and looked and tried many strganoff recipes to try and immitate the one my german step mother used to make and i finally found it in your recipe. the secret? cream cheese!!!!
thank you so much for sharing. i make it all the time now and it is so good!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Darn I just made beef stroganoff tonight. (It was good, but could've been better) I wish I found your recipe first! Next time I make beef stoganoff, I'm definitely trying this recipe!

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say this is truly a wonderful meal! My hubby loves beef stroganoff and I am always trying to make different ways. This by far is his favorite and asks me to make it ALL the time. I wish I had leftovers to freeze, but that NEVER happens! So I wanted to say a big THANK YOU for sharing!! :)
Paulette- Chicago, IL

Michelle Stafford said...

I have just found this recipe and it sounds so yummy. Ican't wait to try it tonight.

Nancy said...

I made this last night for friends. They loved it. It is an excellent recipe and worth every bit of work. It did take quite awhile to make it but it was delicious. I made it exactly like the recipe.

Tina said...

Thanks for sharing this. I too scoured the net looking for a good recipe and then finally choose yours. The flavor was great. I skipped out on the creme cheese, initially because I couldn't get any, but also to avoid the extra fat. Next time I'd also use a little less mustard and sour creme. The mustard flavor was a little too strong for me. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

The time spent looking for a good recipe was well worth it now that I have this gem bookmarked. Hands down the best beef stroganoff I've had so far. Unfortunately, I tried to get fancy with the mustard and I don't recommend using dijon mustard or more than two teaspoons. Still awesome though! Whenever I don't need to add salt and pepper, that's always a good sign. Thanx for posting this!

Unknown said...

What if you used red wine instead of white? I seem to remember that...

The Bowers! said...

You can certainly use any wine you have on hand. Red or white, I think either would be great!

Unknown said...

Eating this now, it came out great! One of those recipes that is not too hard or long to whip up on a weeknight.

Unknown said...

I made this tonight exactly as written except with more beef. I was kinda iffy about the mustard and dill but I like to try a recipe exactly the first time and then adjust next time if needed. Well this recipe was a huge hit! Thank you for sharing!

Unknown said...

The Bower family stroganoff became the Borich family stroganoff the first time I made this. 2 years or so later, it still is and it will be passed down to future generations. That's how good this stuff is. Of course, I won't take any credit for this masterpiece of culinary inginuity. The Bowers deserve that recognition and a big thabk you for sharing this bliss in a bowl.