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March 17, 2011
Are you strong enough for Stroganoff?
Tonight Dooley and Doolia cooked Beef Stroganoff. We used a $9.00 top sirloin steak rather than beef tips because neither Meijer or Kroger tells you what cut of meat is in their beef stew meat. We suspect that it's all sorts of different cuts, and not sirloin. The recipe in The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook
calls for top sirloin beef tips so we bought a cut of meat that was for sure top sirloin.
After pounding the meat to the specified thickness, Dooley cut it up into the specified size strips. They looked too big, so he cut them into even smaller pieces--just bite-sized. Then he cooked them up while I cut up the onion and mushrooms.
When it was time to put in the sour cream at the end, I discovered that we only had about 1 tablespoonful left. That was not nearly enough to lend the sauce that creamy look, texture, and taste. After rummaging around in the refrigerator, I came up with an alternative. Not a perfect alternative, but it was pretty good. Cream Cheese.
I cut about 3 oz of the cream cheese into 1/2 inch chunks and added it to the sauce, and whisked it around for a few minutes on low heat. It broke up into tiny bits but never did incorporate the way sour cream does. Still, it tasted marvelous. I wouldn't serve it this way to guests because it looks like it's curdled. But one of my daughters said at first taste, "this is orgasmic!" We missed the tanginess of the sour cream, but perhaps more than made up for it with the rich flavor of the cream cheese.
Posted by jdooley at March 17, 2011 08:01 PM