[adinserter block=”3″]
Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff
Ingredients
Method
- Melt butter in a skillet.
- Season beef with salt and pepper.
- Sear the beef.
- Sweat the onions.
- Add the mushrooms.
- Dust with flour.
- Whisk in the beef broth.
- Cook in the crockpot for 4 hours on low.
- Stir in the sour cream.
- Serve over pasta or rice.
- Garnish with fresh parsley.
[adinserter block=”4″]
Thinking of something for dinner that will surely win everyone's favor? Serve something creamy. It always works, in our home at least. What makes this Stroganoff so delicious is that perfect marriage of brown beef stock and sour cream. Whoever invented this dish is a culinary genius. Well, I'm cooking mine effortlessly in the crockpot and that even makes me smarter.
Choose a relatively tender cut of beef for this. I'm stewing mine for a couple of hours so sirloin should do it. If you're going for a quick sauteed version, go with tenderloin. As a strict rule, cut your meat across the grain. The same cut of beef sliced along the grain would end up significantly tougher.
Season it with some salt and pepper. For aroma, some dried herbs like marjoram or oregano would be good. A slight coating of mustard would also give the meat some tang that would go well with the sour cream later. Mustard will also aid caramelization, giving the meat a more beautiful brown color.
Melt a good portion of butter in a pan. Go for butter and not any other oil. This will serve to give off a nutty flavor, a deeper brown-colored beef stock, and a perfect base for a roux to thicken the resulting cream sauce.
Get the pan very hot before putting the beef in. Starting with a cold pan would steam those beef strips instead of searing them. As a result – loss of meat juices.
Just before the meat browns completely, add in the onions. You want to fully sweat them at the same time the beef strips are seared perfectly.
Next, add in the mushrooms. I've used canned champignons as you can see due to the unavailability of good fresh ones. But fresh will always be better by a big difference. Go for any good mushroom you can find. Or even better, go for an assortment. Using various types of mushroom would diversify the flavors and textures of your stroganoff.
Dust flour into the pan. We're building a roux to eventually thicken our sauce. Roast the flour for about a minute in the pan or until the flour browns a bit. Doing so will give the beef sauce more color that will go in contrast with the sour cream we'll be adding in later. Going for a light-colored roux, and later adding in cream, would make our cream sauce too light-colored.
Next, whisk in the beef stock. Make sure your stock is at room temperature. This temperature contrast between roux and liquid will ensure that you won't have any lumps of flour in your sauce.
Transfer everything into the slow cooker and leave for about 4 hours on low.
Just before serving, whisk in the sour cream, distributing it evenly into the sauce. Season with additional salt and pepper if necessary.
Whisking in small nuggets of cold butter would also be a good idea. This'll enrich the cream sauce further and give it more sheen.
Stroganoff goes so well with any starch in my opinion. Pasta, rice, bread, even egg noodles. It's that good.
Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff
Ingredients
Method
- Melt butter in a skillet.
- Season beef with salt and pepper.
- Sear the beef.
- Sweat the onions.
- Add the mushrooms.
- Dust with flour.
- Whisk in the beef broth.
- Cook in the crockpot for 4 hours on low.
- Stir in the sour cream.
- Serve over pasta or rice.
- Garnish with fresh parsley.
Slow Cooker Curry Chardonnay Crockpot Chicken
Leave a Reply