A New Favorite

Can’t lie. Despite my much-needed afternoon off, I am still feeling a bit whirlwindish.

Yes, that’s a word. English majors are allowed to make up words whenever it suits them. It’s in the handbook.

Anyway…

It’s Thursday so I’m joining Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop again. This week I opted for the easy prompt. (Told you…can’t lie.) One of the prompts was to share a favorite fall recipe. Well, I have way too many of those to choose only one.  So I decided to go with something that has earned an instant place as a new family favorite.

Would you please welcome Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff I to the table! I Googled for this one because I was too whirlwindish to dig through recipes for the nine stroganoff recipes I know exist in my kitchen library. My search term? “Best crock pot beef stroganoff ever.” Truth. I ended up at allrecipes.com staring at what is arguably the easiest beef stroganoff recipe on the planet.

Six ingredients, two steps. What’s not to love?

Use the six ingredients as listed – beef cubes, water, Worcestershire sauce, chopped onion, a can of condensed golden mushroom soup, and cream cheese. Yes, cream cheese. I know. I thought it was odd, too. But Fab Hub isn’t the world’s biggest sour cream fan so even though he will tolerate it in the context of dishes like this, I wanted to try something he would appreciate since he is so awesome.

Did I modify this? You know I did. But not really. Here we go:

• Brown the meat before putting in the slow cooker. I hate pasty-pale slow cooker meat. Browning first just gives it a nice little bit of flavor.
• Add a little bit of salt and pepper when you brown the meat. Same reason.
• Sauté the onions before tossing them in. Same reason.
• If you want to lighten it up a bit, use Neufchâtel or no-fat cream cheese. (Philadelphia brand sells Neufchatel as their one-third less fat version. It’s what we use all the time.)

Serve over egg noodles. Or rice. Or potatoes. Whatever you like.

That’s it.

The cream cheese was a nice touch – it made it taste rich without feeling heavy. Fab Hub appreciated that variation as well as the fact that there were no actual mushrooms in the recipe other than what comes pulverized in the can of soup.

Fab Hub hates mushrooms.  Kidzilla and I love mushrooms, however, so we made our own little extra touch for this dish.

• Sauté a little bit of onion (we used about a quarter of a sweet onion) in whatever you like. For night one, we used butter; night two we were out of butter and used a bit of olive oil.
• When the onions are translucent and starting to turn that beautiful brown, add about half a package of sliced baby Portobello mushrooms (or whatever you prefer).
• When the onions and mushrooms are starting to look and smell wonderful, hit it with a tiny bit of cooking sherry to deglaze the pan and give it a lovely flavor boost. I had some of the plain old grocery store variety in the cupboard.

Zilla and I had our mushrooms on top of our noodles and stroganoff. Fabulous!

Zilla had her plate empty in record time and began to sing about how much she loved her food. When Zilla sings about her meal, it’s a good eat!

So good we had the exact same meal two nights in a row, which I never do. The leftovers were just as good as the first round. This was such a hit that when I told Zilla and Fab Hub I was doing an immediate repeat, Zilla cheered about how much she loved it the first time.  Told you this was good.

To reheat, I put the stroganoff on the stove in a saucepan and added some milk to help correct what the refrigerator had done overnight. I’m sure there is a technical culinary term for it, but you know what I mean.  Adding the milk was the right answer and the leftovers turned out perfectly.  Once the sauce was hot, I dumped the leftover noodles in just long enough to warm them up.

Dinner in minutes.

Pictures, you ask? I just couldn’t do it. First, because the camera battery and the phone battery were drained. Second, because let’s tell the truth – beef stroganoff is not a pretty picture. Period.

The mushrooms were quite attractive…but the whole dead battery thing was an issue. If you would like to see some equally lovely but unrelated sautéed mushrooms, please check out this post.

Still to come…all the goodies promised yesterday as well as a pile of stunningly gorgeous apples and homemade teas to cure whatever ails you.  Check back soon!

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