Making Stroganoff

It's been a while since I made beef stroganoff, the last few times, I suspect it was chicken. The problem with using beef, at least beef from Whole Food's is that it's very expensive. By buying any reasonable amount of beef (a little over a pound), I've already made a dish that's ten dollars or more, for a dish that's considered, well, not the highest end.

The few times I've made it, the sauce has been too watery, and nor particularly thick. I used a trick by essentially making roux, but was still moderately unhappy with the results. I decided to follow a recipe from Cooking for Engineers.

Cooking for Engineers is run by one Michael Chu. Most food blogs illustrate the ingredients with pictures, showing step by step what to do. It's funny how, even good cookbooks often lack pictures, and how the average Joe can do something better than the pros.

The standard recipe in Joy of Cooking and also the one in Cooks Illustrated essentially also opt for the roux approach, requiring butter and flour to thicken the result.

Chu takes a different approach, and it works remarkably well provided you don't mind the amount of fat involved. In particular, the recipe from Joy of Cooking asks for 3 tablespoons of sour cream. Cooks Illustrated asks for 1/3 cup (that's about 5 tablespoons). Chu opts for an entire cup! that's 3 times as much as Cooks Illustrated, and more than 5 times used in Joy of Cooking.

However, sour cream isn't all that sour, and I feel that beef stroganoff needs a pretty strong sour cream taste. Plus sour cream is pretty thick, and you can mostly avoid a roux by using a lot more sour cream.

The one drawback of the recipe was the way I made the beef. In particular, it came out pretty hard (it might be the cut of beef I had) and kinda bland. I believe that I should have lightly salted and peppered the beef either prior to cooking, or slightly after.

I'm likely to try it with chicken again, just to see how that works out.

So, the trick, such as it is, is to use a ton of sour cream (one cup) instead of the roux. Oh, Chu also suggest adding a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Also, a good idea, as it gives a nice mustard tang. Cooks Illustrated opts for a lot of additional ingredients including tomato paste, brown sugar, wine, etc. I might give that a try, but the recipe is more complex (by just a touch) and I hate dealing with tomato paste, because even if I have a tiny can, I only ever use about a tablespoon at a time. I might use it more in my Indian cooking though, since I never seem to get through even a tiny can.

So lessons from this? Get a little less beef. Add salt/pepper to beef to season it.

But it is quite pricey, so chicken might be a better alternative, even if it lacks as much flavor as beef.