Welcome friends! I woke up this morning with a hankering for beef stroganoff and
the reason for that? It's kind of funny yesterday I was looking through some
photographs the Julie and I took on a trip through China in 2005. We spent six
months traveling across China by train and one of the cities that we stopped in
was a city called Harbin and Harbin is a city it's in China it's close
to the Russian border and it was actually built by the Russians as a
railway depot. So the old part of the city is completely Russian architecture.
And so by the 1950s though, most of the Russians had left. So now it's a completely
Chinese city with onion domes and everything else, and I'm gonna tell you
why that's significant in a moment. So in here I put salt and allspice and I'm
just going to put that over top of the meat. We're going to let that meat sort
of soak or marinade in that spicing and the salt, I should probably put a little
pepper in there too, while I prep the rest of the dish. So today's story is a
little bit about beef stroganoff as a recipe and a dish, and a little bit about
our trip to China. Give that a stir and set it aside. Now beef stroganoff is in
my mind the worst recipe ever. It's credited to be invented by a French chef
working in Siberia for a family called the stroganoff's.
It was first published in a Russian cookbook around 1870 and almost
immediately people said that's a crap recipe, that's horrible. I'm gonna put the
recipe in the description below so you can look at it, and the deal is here we
had a recipe that was horrible but it had a really cool name!
So almost immediately people started making up
new recipes that they called beef stroganoff. And pretty much today's
recipe, the recipe that everyone makes today, the only thing it has in common
with the original is the name and they have beef in them. And as we go along
I'll sort of point out where everything changes. Slice up the onions and
interestingly enough onions - not in the original recipe - they start showing up
you know 10 or 15 years later. Next up mushrooms. Mushrooms are closely tied to
this recipe, but not in the original recipe. Along the way mushrooms have been
added, you know in the 1950s people used cream of mushroom soup for just
about everything and I love cream of mushroom soup so I have no problem with that.
But today I'm going to use fresh mushrooms. So back to Julie and I and Harbin.
We're on this epic six-month journey by train, we end up in Harbin,
end of January, beginning of February, Harbin is close to Siberia it's like
minus 40ºC they're having their winter ice festival, I'll throw up some
pictures for you, and it was just amazing to be outside these giant ice sculptures
and the architecture was just incredible really incredible. So we end up in a
restaurant, and it's a Russian restaurant in a Chinese city in a building with an
onion dome really kind of cool.
Everything's written in Chinese or Cyrillic and at that point really what I
had learned along the way to you know to get us through Julie had learned
Mandarin she did really well with it, I could read certain words and I pointed
to the menu and said I'll have this one because I recognized beef. What
arrived was beef stroganoff. I've got to tell you up until that point in my life
that was the best beef stroganoff I had ever had!
No cream of mushroom soup there was no tomato in it, it was really clean and
pure tasting. It was just amazing, and I've tried ever since to kind of get
back to that moment. Another great thing is they served it with what were
essentially McDonald's french fries. Fantastic, fantastic over McDonald's
french fries. And a teapot filled with a bubbling boiling hot coca-cola and
there's an experience for you. So I'll finish cutting up these mushrooms and
we'll move on.
I've got this cast iron pan hot, we'll put in a splash of oil and we'll fry off the
beef.
I haven't really spoken about the beef yet I have no clue what they used in Harbin,
the original recipe is pretty vague and most recipes today just call for Chuck
or stewing beef. I see recipes that say to slice it thinly, I see some that
say to make it into little cubes there are even recipes where they call
for ground beef. And you know what? Because this recipe is a non recipe,
it's all fun and games it's all fair. I think you could do whatever you
want, as long as there's beef in it you can call it stroganoff.
That beef is done we're gonna pull it out and set it aside in this bowl while
we cook the rest. Built up a great fond in the bottom of that pan so in goes
some butter and we'll melt that off.
maybe turn the heat down just a tad.
in with that butter go the onions and the mushrooms.
The mushrooms and the onions have released all of their liquids at this point and
are starting to brown and I can get that that nutty mushroom Tang in my nose.
Which means it's time for the next step and that is white wine. Not in the
original recipe but white wine did start to show up maybe in the 1930s?
So did Madeira and port those were used, as you get into the 1950s people started
using red wine, and as you get into the 1960s it was brandy or cognac.
People would flambé it. I just don't get where that adds flavour.
You really want the acid from the wine to release all of the other umami
flavours going on here. So we'll reduce this by about 2/3 and then we'll move on.
I see you eye in that loaf of bread on the back counter. Not yet it's coming soon.
So this is thickened up nicely now, we're gonna add some flour, pour that in
and stir it in and just cook the flour you want to cook the flavour out. And this
is gonna help thicken the sauce in a moment.
Now some beef stock if you don't have homemade beef stock use chicken stock.
Chicken stock probably tastes better than then purchased beef stock that's my opinion.
Put that in turn the heat down now to sort of a medium low, and that
should thicken up nicely into a sauce. Now hot mustard hot mustard was one of
the ingredients in the original recipe and it's one that makes an appearance
every once in a while in modern day recipes. I'm gonna put it in because I
really like the flavour of hot mustard. I like what it brings to a dish, I like
what it releases in other flavours. I think it really adds something to this.
So stir that in what we've got here now is a sauce that
is is quite nice it's quite thick if you want it a little thinner add some more
beef stock you can adjust this to what you like. But first you should add the
next ingredient or the final ingredient and that's sour cream. Creme fraiche
would probably be ideal, but I didn't make any, it's something that's difficult to buy
here in the grocery stores. So sour cream. I really like this sour cream -
because it only has... where are the ingredients... only has three ingredients.
Milk, cream, bacteria. That's it. It is sour cream. There's there's nothing else in
here hiding the fact that they've left all the good stuff out. So a couple of
dollops of the sour cream, the original recipe calls for one tablespoon of sour
cream for twice as much meat as I'm making. Modern-day recipes are really
heavy on the sour cream so you know take from that what you will. And we put that
in we start to heat it through, stir it in. Now we put the beef back in and you
stir the beef in you coat it with the sauce and at this point we're not really
cooking the sauce. I've got it on a really low low simmer. I'm gonna put the
lid back on and we're just gonna let this heat through and flavour some of
that beef, and the beef can flavour the sauce a little bit more. Keep stirring.
J: All right looks pretty good. There are no noodles? G: So across the
world people will eat this on mashed potatoes, rice, french fries, noodles.
J: Noodles! G: Yeah and when you get into noodles you're getting into
sort of like there's a Hungarian dish that is very close to this. J: Okay. G: I think
my favourite though is french fries. J: what a lovely hearty
beef and potato kind of meal. Some very uh...
hearty cold weather kind of... yeah oh yeah warms your belly. G: So I mean since
this is the biggest non recipe recipe in the world. Do what you want with it.
As there's beef and sour cream.. J: you're good to go. is that the only rule?
G: pretty much I mean there there is nothing that is from the original recipe
really. J: in this? G: So there's from the original recipe yes yes so
from the original recipe I did use beef. I used beef, allspice, hot mustard, and
sour cream. okay but everything else is something that's people have put in
since so you can really play with this recipe.
Do what you want everyone's going to eat it over something different however you
serve it I think it's great. J: make it warm make it comforting, good to go.
J: I'm gonna have some bread with mine