This is not your average stroganoff.
Before last night my only experience with stroganoff was that of the Hamburger Helper variety and let me tell you… I HAD NOT LIVED!
I used sautéed strip steak instead of ground beef. Thank you Top Chef!
Basically made a G-rated dish XXX-rated. Can you hear the hallelujah chorus?
Sautéing Stuff…
This lesson was all about sautéing and I learned I’ve been going about my stir-fry’s all wrong.
Here are the basics:
- cut everything the same size
- cook the ‘longer cooking’ ingredients first.
- use olive oil or vegetable oil to sauté, if you want to use butter (I DO) add it at the end because the fat in the butter cannot hold up to the high heat and it will burn.
- It’s okay to sauté something then remove it to sauté something else. Add everything back together at the end with butter, garlic and seasonings.
Sautéing is a form of cooking that uses very high (dry) heat. You don’t want a lot of steam so use a pan with low walls. And Deglazing is your friend!!!
Adult Beef Stroganoff.
Makes 2 servings. Takes 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 strip steaks
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 cups of sliced button mushrooms
- 1 shallot, minced
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 cup of beef stock
- 1/4 cup of heavy cream
- Fresh flat leaf parsley for garnish
Directions
Begin by slicing the steaks into thin strips. Season well with salt and pepper. Heat a large sauté pan over high heat and add a drizzle of olive oil. Add steak and sauté for 1-2 minutes until steak is nice and brown. Remove meat from pan and set aside.
Add a little more olive oil to the pan and sauté mushrooms and shallots until golden brown — about 2-3 minutes. use a wooden spoon to scrape up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Add mustard then deglaze with beef stock and bring to a simmer to reduce. Add cream then fold in steak. Season with salt and pepper then serve garnished with fresh parsley.
I deviated from the recipe and served mine over some bow tie pasta. But you don’t have to.
I did a bunch of stuff I had already learned from Top Chef University lessons in this recipe:
I deglazed. Which is when you sauté or sear something in oil then add a cold liquid to the pan on high heat to get all the crusty brown bits of flavor off the bottom of the pan (for a sauce or cleaning purposes).
It turns out Stroganoff is a Pan Sauce
I used my knife skills.
Pretty awesome right?! Let me tell you, I’m all for deglazing sauté pans. It’s pretty much brilliant and makes clean up so much easier.
Mis En Place:
My advice for adding beef stock… go by your gut. I think the 1 cup is a little too much and if I’d had added a little less my sauce would have been better. My sauce was more watery than saucy.
I ate my bowl then settled down to watch The Bachelor with a glass of wine. Everyone else had multiple servings and did the dishes!
Not too bad, huh?
