Stroganoff was a VERY common dish in my house when I was growing up. Since this was the 90s (low-fat everything), it was usually made with plain ground turkey, powdered mix from a packet, and some light sour cream (which is essentially tasteless mush–real sour cream was a revelation when I got older). It got to the point where I couldn’t even stand the smell of stroganoff because my mom made this dish so often.
Time has passed, and stroganoff & I have had a reconciliation. I make it about once every other month now for work, but from scratch and not with packet mix (but still using ground turkey since it’s leaner). Simply Delicious has two stroganoff recipes: 13-6: Mushroom Stroganoff (a vegetarian version) and this one, 8-12: Beef Stroganoff. I made both at the same time, as part of a stroganoff-off.
Beef stroganoff is a pretty well known dish, and it’s not surprising that it’d be included in a book like this with so many other “classic” dishes. Let’s see how far Simply Delicious strays from the norm–who knows…they might surprise us.
Looks like most stroganoff recipes I’ve seen/used, but I don’t usually see it with tomato paste. However, I think that there are versions (Wikipedia notes it as being added around the early 1910s) that include it out there–it depends on your preferences. I prefer it without, but since we’re cooking the recipes as close as we can get, in it goes.
Ingredients. The beef was a sirloin piece from a large Costco pack, and I swapped LF milk for the whipping cream. It’ll lose a bit in creaminess, but luckily I found LF sour cream, so that’ll help somewhat. Instead of tomato paste, I’m using some leftover plain tomato sauce from another culinary adventure.
Sliced my beef sirloin piece.
Browning the slices–make sure you use a big enough skillet so all the pieces make contact.
Should have gone hotter–it would have gotten a better sear on the pieces.
Added in the veggies.
After cooking down the veggies, I added the tomato sauce and mustard.
Looks creamier after adding the milk–if you use cream, yours will look thicker.
Beef version in the foreground, mushroom version in the background.
Stirring in my sour cream at the end.
Beef stroganoff (this recipe) on the right, 13-6: Mushroom Stroganoff on the left. The beef one was creamier, but the mushroom one was more flavorful. What kind of stroganoff do you like?
Grade: B+
