Beef stroganoff with fettuccine noodles

I'm not entirely certain why I had a craving for beef storganoff. I have not really eaten the dish before, perhaps once or twice in the past, but not often. Somehow, the idea of beef stroganoff works for me. Creamy tender beef over noodles. It just seems such a warm, hearty meal - very comfort food.

I had talked about cooking this dish all week and finally got round to doing it last night, after (also) finally doing grocery shopping so that I had ingredients to cook it.

As I mentioned before, I had tweeted about it and got the recipe from a responding tweet. Very pleased with how it turned out.

This RECIPE comes from yummly.com and is called their Beef Stroganoff III (probably because there are so many others before it. :-) I thought that was cute!):

Ingredients:

• 500g beef chuck roast sliced thinly
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (ground)
• 60g butter
• 2 shallots / green onion (sliced white parts)
• 2 tbsps all-purpose flour (purpose)
• 160ml beef broth (concentrated)
• 1/2 tsp prepared mustard
• 1 small can sliced mushrooms (drained)
• 50ml sour cream
• 50ml white wine
• salt (taste)
• black pepper (ground, taste)

Instructions:

• Remove any fat and gristle from the roast and cut into strips 1/2 inch thick by 2 inches long. Season with 1/2 teaspoon of both salt and pepper.
• In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter and brown the beef strips quickly, then push the beef strips off to one side. Add the onions and cook slowly for 3 to 5 minutes, then push to the side with the beef strips.
• Stir the flour into the juices on the empty side of the pan. Pour in beef broth and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Lower the heat and stir in mustard. Cover and simmer for 1 hour or until the meat is tender.
• Five minutes before serving, stir in the mushrooms, sour cream, and white wine. Heat briefly then salt and pepper to taste

I must say, it turned out to be delicious (I don't like cooking bland food) and The Boy loved it. He had seconds and then complained that I made the dinner too yummy and fed him too much. :-)

I, of course, could not help myself and did a few things differently.

• I used about 80g of butter instead of the 60g mentioned 'cos I had a bit more beef as well, possibly about 600g instead of the 500g since it was 2 pieces of chuck steak that I cut up. It was an approximation.
• I sliced up the beef very, very thinly, though still keeping them long - lengthwise. I did not want big chunks of beef in the dish especially since I'm off red meat right now and can't stand the sight of large chunks of red meat.
• I was a bit confused by the recipe asking for 160ml of beef broth concentrated, so I used the beef stock that I had. I used 4 teaspoons of beef stock to 500ml of water, which is more concentrated that usual (such as when I am cooking soup and I use that amount of stock to 1 litre of water). This made for a lot of liquid that I had to reduce a little bit, but not by much because we liked it saucy.
• I only had a large can of mushrooms so I went with that. I figured a few more mushrooms wouldn't hurt, especially since I had so much sauce to go with the dish.
• We had a bottle of white wine that The Boy opened a few nights ago that he did not like for drinking and I asked him to save it for me so that I could cook with it. Since I had so much white wine leftover and I didn't have a small measuring cup, I ended up using 100ml of white wine.
• I went a little overboard with the sour cream. I knew that I would have to throw out whatever sour cream was leftover as I would not have a use for it, so I was generous with the sour cream. I used 150ml of sour cream (which was half the tub) rather than the 50ml recommended. That made for a very creamy (but very tasty) sauce. For those of you who do not like a creamy sauce, just follow the recipe exactly and just use the 50ml recommended.
• Where it said to simmer for 1 hour, rather than do it over the stove on an open flame, I decided to slow cook it in the oven. I had already planned on that from cooking the entire dish in a cast iron pot, so after it was ready, I put the whole pot, covered, into the oven at 120dC for a little over an hour to simmer. That worked out very well. The thing I like about doing it this way is that I do not need to watch it and with the cast iron pot covered (the lid seals really well), there was not chance of it boiling dry.
• Between the stock and everything else in the dish, it did not need salt for further seasoning. I did add a little bit of pepper to give the flavor a bit of depth, but not enough to overpower the dish. I don't think you could even really taste the pepper, which was great.

I served the beef storganoff on a bed of fettuccine noodles with a side of a mixed lettuce salad dressed in caramelized balsamic vinegar (1.5 tablespoons) and garlic infused olive oil (3 tablespoons).

I definitely think this one is a keeper and I'm going to do this again, though not regularly. It's just too rich a dish to eat on a regular basis.

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