What's the beef with stroganoff?

I’m from the generation that grew up on soup can dinners. Smart marketing departments came up with twists on traditional recipes that took out all the fuss and substituted in a can or two of their delicious Elmer’s-like goop and most of my generation’s parents ate it up.

I guess these dishes are still popular today, but I know that I pretty much grew up eating them. And while they actually taste okay, we can do better. One of the classic dishes where real ingredients get substituted for soup (of the mushroom variety) is beef stroganoff.

Here’s what I don’t get about the substitutions in this case: They really save you no time. Whether you use the can or real ingredients, it takes about the same time to prepare because you still need to cook the beef and the noodles and stuff.

You might save a buck or two, but we’ll completely make up for that in the flavor department.

Real Beef Stroganoff

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds beef tenderloin or sirloin, cut into 1 inch chunks
3 Tablespoons butter
1 large onion, sliced
8 ounces mushrooms, trimmed and sliced (I like cremini)
1/2 Cup chopped canned tomatoes
1 Cup chicken or beef stock
2/3 Cup sour cream
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard (opt.)
Salt and pepper
Chopped parsley for garnish (opt.)

1 pound egg noodles
2 Tablespoons butter (or the noodles)

Directions:

1) Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once melted, add beef and let brown well on all sides. This should take 2-3 minutes a side.

2) Add onions and mushrooms to skillet after beef is browned and continue to cook for a few more minutes until veggies are tender. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper.

3) Add tomatoes, stock, and mustard if you're using mustard. Turn heat down to low and simmer for a few minutes.

4) Finally, stir in sour cream and garnish with some parsley if you want.

5) Cook egg noodles according to package. Drain them and stir in a few tablespoons of butter to coat the noodles.

6) Serve stroganoff over noodles as soon as possible!

Adapted from How To Cook Everything.

The Ingredients

As you can see, the ingredient list here is pretty simple. It’s really not a complicated dish. All the soup version does really is substitute some of the mushrooms and the sour cream for a can or two of the goop soup.

There is some chopping involved (onions, mushrooms, beef), but it’s pretty simple work. The mushrooms and onions should be kept in pretty large chunks.

Keep it simple people.

To make the sauce, I used some chicken broth I had in the fridge. I wish I had homemade handy but I’m out of it at the moment. Also, I think if I were going to buy some stock just for this recipe, I would’ve went with beef stock just to enhance the beef flavor, but this is what I had on hand. You can use either.

Fresh tomatoes would be good, but not in the winter. It’s better to just use canned in my opinion.

No soup sauce!

And don’t forget the noodles! These are non-negotiable in my opinion for this dish. They do such a perfect job of sopping up all the delicious sauce.

No substitutions!

Cooking the Dish

Start to finish this dish took me 30 minutes and some of that time I was futzing around with my camera. I bet you could do it even faster.

When all your ingredients are ready, melt your butter in a sturdy pan over medium-high heat. Once it’s melted and bubbling, add your beef chunks and brown well on all sides. Try not to move the beef too much when doing this.

Cook for a few minutes on each side until the pieces are nicely seared.

I love this smell.

Then add the mushrooms and onions to the dish with a good pinch of salt and pepper. Stir this all together and continue to cook until the veggies are a bit soft.

This will probably take 5 or 6 minutes.

Yum.

Next, add the tomatoes, stock, and mustard if you’re using it. I recommend the mustard but I left if out for my version because Betsy has a horrible aversion to the stuff.

Turn your heat down to medium and let the whole pot simmer for a few minutes until the beef is nice and tender.

As a final step, stir in the sour cream which will make the whole thing deliciously creamy and thick.

Creamy and delicious.

As far as the noodles go, just cook them according to the package in heavily salted water. Once you drain them, add in a few tablespoons of butter and stir it together until the noodles are nicely coated.

The butter is optional but not if you’re eating at my table.

Egg noodles rock.

Then pile it high and deep!

Great winter dish.

Betsy and I both agreed that this version pretty much ruled. It has so much more flavor than the canned situation.

So, ditch the can and go with the real thing. You won’t lose any time and you’ll be happy that you did.

This meatloaf has none of those problems.

Seriously good meatloaf

Magnificent Meatloaf (adapted from Alton Brown’s recipe)

- 1 pound ground sirloin
- 1 pound ground turkey (Alton uses ground chuck)
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 red pepper
- 1 poblano chili
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1/2 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 Teaspoon chili powder
- 1 Teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 Teaspoon black pepper
- 1 1/2 Teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 ounces bread crumbs (I like Italian flavored Panko.)
- 1 egg

Glaze (below is double what Alton recommended because I love this stuff):

- 1 Cup Catsup
- 2 Teaspoons cumin
- 1 Teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 Teaspoon hot sauce (adjust to your liking)
- 2 Tablespoons honey

Preheat your oven to 325 and then make your glaze. Just combine all that stuff in a bowl and stir it up well. Taste it and adjust to your liking. It should be pretty strong if you are tasting it by itself.

Glaze and sauce. Pretty much the best.

Then get these guys ready:

Simple ingredients.

You need to make sure that these are very finely chopped. I recommend peeling everything and then pulsing it a few times in the food processor. You don’t want it to be a paste, but just really small piece. The only thing I chopped by hand was the poblano because I wanted some larger chunks of that in the final product.

Chopping practice.

Cook your veggies. This is really important. Not only does it draw out tons of flavor, but it will also help bind your loaf together later. If you were to put them in raw, it might work, but I wouldn’t trust it. Just saute your very finely chopped veggies (along with your chopped garlic) for about 3 minutes in bit of oil. You don’t want the veggies browned, just softened a bit.

Get a large bowl and combine all your dry ingredients. Mix these up well. If you don’t use Italian bread crumbs maybe add a bit more thyme and some oregano to get the same spices in the mix.

Dry but flavorful.

Then it is pretty easy. Stir in your veggies and then both your ground meats. Once it is all mixed together, add your one egg. You don’t need more than one.

This is not your normal meatloaf.

The real trick of this recipe is that you don’t actually cook it in a loaf pan. Instead you use the loaf pan to form it, but then you cook it free form. This is a great change from the normal way to cook meatloaf for two reasons: First, if lets some of the fat drain away instead of just sitting in the loaf pan. Second, you can glaze the entire surface of the loaf!

I’m using a 10 inch loaf pan for this guy.

In my opinion, there is no other way to cook meatloaf.

This needs to cook until it has an internal temperature of 155 degrees. For me this was about an hour of cooking. After it is in the oven for 15 minutes, take it out and give it a complete coat of the glaze mixture. I glazed it again after about 15 more minutes in the oven. Because the glaze rocks.

Glaze it up.

Once this is done, let it cool for 5 minutes before slicing and serving.

Makes a mean sandwich on day two.

This may not appear to be a very glamorous meal, but it is really tasty. The leftovers are best if eaten over the next day or two. While it will keep for a week probably, it starts to dry out a bit after a few days. Best application for leftovers: Meatloaf sandwich.

I’ve had a lot of meatloafs in my life and dislike most of them. This guy, however, was really packed with flavor and super-moist. For meatloaf, it is pretty freakin’ sexy.

After my last few posts, I got an email from a friend of mine, Julie (Hi Julie!). Julie has a problem of accumulating items in her pantry that she doesn’t know what to do with.

This was the list she sent me:

artichoke hearts
canned pumpkin
garbanzo beans
macadamia oil
avocado oil
basil dipping oil
chili paste
fish sauce
chopped spinach

Nine items. I thought about it for about two minutes before I concluded that it would be impossible to make one dish using all of these ingredients. At least it would be impossible to make one edible dish.

I did find a way to use all of them though. Let’s pick the low hanging fruit first.

Canned pumpkin – Honestly, I would just hide this bad boy until Thanksgiving next year and then make a good pumpkin pie. Cooking for Engineers has one of the best pumpkin pie recipes I’ve seen.

If you wanted to make something sooner though, I would recommend something curried. Pumpkin and curry go really well together. Maybe try this pumpkin curry soup.

Chopped Spinach – Considering you emailed me this list awhile ago, if you still have this spinach throw it out. It will be a bag of mush by now. If you have a new bag of chopped spinach, I recommend making a salad and sprinkling one of those lovely oils you have over the top (avocado sounds really good).

Basil Dipping Oil – Make this bread or this bread. Take the next bus to Delicioustown.

Macadamia Oil – This could also be used as a dipping oil. Personally though, I would use this stuff for a stir fry. Check out the recipe list at the oddly named site: Mac-nut-oil.com.

Avocado Oil – I almost bought some of this just so I could make this, but I would try making a simple bruschetta. Instead of olive oil though, use avocado oil. BAM. Guacamole bruschetta.

Artichokes and Garbanzo Beans

Two of the things on the list immediately called out to me:

Made for each other.

Homemade hummus is one of my favorite things. It is quick and easy to whip up, stores for a long time, and is packed with flavor. Traditionally, hummus has Tahini paste in it. I left it out of this recipe though and it was still delicious.

The reason why I left it out was because the whole idea of these posts is to get rid of stuff. It’s not much of a trade off to get rid of some artichokes and chick peas if you end up with a huge can of Tahini paste that you don’t know what to do with.

That said, we do need to add some flavors to this:

I consider these pretty common ingredients

This is the recipe I ended up with:

Artichoke Hummus

1 Can Garbanzo Beans
6 ounces artichoke hearts
3 cloves garlic (tone it down if you don’t love garlic)
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper
1 lemon, juice only
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt and pepper

Basically you just combine all of this stuff in a food processor.

Ready for blending

Pulse this for a few seconds until it forms a smooth paste. Add a bit more olive oil if needed.

Serve the end result with pita.

Healthy snack.

I really liked this and have been snacking on it for a few days now. The Macheesmo taste-tester was not in love with it. She didn’t like the artichoke/chickpea combo. It definitely tastes different than normal hummus, but I enjoyed it.

Also, I found that it is better on day two or three when the flavors have had time to really meld.

So we have knocked off seven of our nine ingredients. We are left with fish sauce and chili paste. I tried a few different things with these two ingredients. I tried a salad dressing (meh.) and basting some chicken wings (NO!). Try number three gave me something good though: Thai Beef Skewers.

Fish Sauce and Chili Paste

To our two ingredients, we are going to need to add some other flavors to get were we want to be.

Marinade ingredients

Did you notice my screw up? Julie had chili paste in her pantry. I used chili sauce. For this marinade, I’m just looking for something a bit spicy, so I think you could sub them out without too much trouble.

Thai Beef Skewers
(I adapted my recipe from this one. Thanks @ekerekes for the link.)

1 pound sirloin, cut into strips
2 Cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tablespoons fish sauce
2 Tablespoons sesame oil (maybe you could use macadamia oil?)
2 Tablespoons honey
1 Tablespoon chili sauce (I would use less chili paste. Maybe 1 Teaspoon depending on how hot you want it.)
Handful of cilantro, chopped
Pinch of salt and pepper

Mix up all your ingredients and add your sirloin.

Sweet sweet marinating meat.

Let this marinate for at least an hour. You could leave it overnight in the fridge.

I like to use wooden skewers. Always be sure to soak them in water because, ya know, wood burns.

Stabbed and ready for the oven.

Ideally, you would broil these guys for about 5 minutes. I don’t have a broiler that works so I baked mine at 450 for 5 minutes. Still delicious.

No need for a sauce on these guys.

So I think that pretty much covers it. These beef skewers were a real hit.

If you have an ingredient that you don’t know what to do with, or a pantry full of them… send me an email or leave a comment! If you wanted to be really cool, you could even include a photo of your pantry items.

But before we get to the meatballs, let’s make the sauce. I decided to make a very simple tomato sauce – basically a marinara. Of course, there are approximately 5 dozen different sauces you could serve with these. But let’s assume you want to be like me.

The Sauce
- 1/2 a chopped onion. No need to dirty a measuring cup. Just chop half an onion.
- 28 oz. canned tomatoes. Don’t get the ones with chiles or anything. Just normal tomatoes.
- 3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.
- Clove of garlic.
- Basil. Dry or fresh

Onions swimming in oil.

You want to start by adding the onions to the oil and sauteeing for just a few minutes. You don’t want them to caramelize (turn brown). Throw in the garlic (chopped) after a few minutes too. Then you want to put in all of the tomatoes (chopped also if you didn’t buy them chopped).

Tomatoes join the party.

You could use fresh tomatoes for this, but the canned work just fine. Also you have to make some judgement calls which I cannot make for you. Do you want a chunky sauce or a smooth sauce? Do you want it thick or a bit runny? I went with a thick, chunky sauce which in hindsight may have been too thick to actually use as a dip for meatballs. If you want it thinner, don’t cook it as long. If you want it smoother, chop the tomatoes finer. This isn’t rocket science.

One note: I probably should have taken the seeds out of the tomatoes. I forgot. Nobody called me out on it because it isn’t that important. Probably more important if you are using this as a pasta sauce.

In any event, you want to cook this down pretty substantially. If you are using dry basil add it at the beginning. Fresh basil you add at the end.

Simmer it down.

After about an hour, I ended up with like 2 cups of sauce.

The sauce is done.

Ok. That’s done. Let’s talk about the meatballs. You will need:

- 2 pounds ground meat. Something lean is good. I actually used sirloin which is a bit expensive, but basically you end up with steak on a stick which is awesome. Also, you could cut this in half if you are a whimp.
- 4 slices white bread soaked in
- 1 cup of milk.
- 1/2 onion chopped. You should have 1/2 an onion lying around if you followed instructions from the sauce.
- 1 cup grated Parmesan.
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley. (optional. You could use basil if you have some left over. Parsley works nicely though.)
- Salt and pepper.

So let the bread soak up all the milk. Takes just a few minutes.

That bread was thirsty.

The next step is easy. Just mix everything together in a bowl. Use your hands. It’s fun! The only note is to wring out the bread before you add it. You don’t want all of that milk to come along to the mix. Just what the bread can hold.

After you mix for a few minutes, just roll out little one inch balls. You can see that my recipe above makes about 40 meatballs. That’s a lot.

I like to make them all at once. These are ready to go.

You can cook these a number of ways. You can bake them for about 12 minutes at 400 degrees. Turn them a few times throughout. You can cook them on the stove top in some oil turning a few times. Probably only takes 8 minutes to cook them that way.

I read from this book that you can even boil them but I didn’t want to try that. I went with the baking method.

Meet the meatballs!

This was a really great appetizer for a football game. Although I do think the sauce was maybe a bit too chunky and thick. That’s easy to adjust. And that is what’s important about cooking. It is rare that you will get everything right when trying something new. But that’s what it is about. It’s about making some small mistakes and realizing that it doesn’t ruin your meal.

Good food will stay good food even if it isn’t perfect food. Once you realize that you will be well on your way to getting some Macheesmo. If you have leftovers from this meal, that is fine. You have the ingredients to a perfect spaghetti and meatballs.

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