Foods change. Immigrants learn to improvise with ingredients when moving to a new land or substitutions are made when a recipe travels to a new land when the original ingredient is not readily available. Beef stroganoff is no exception. Beef stroganoff originated in Russia. From there it migrated to China were it was served with rice. Later, beef stroganoff came to the United States where the dish was served over egg noodles. So what starch was beef stroganoff originally served with in Russia? Believe it or not, french fried potatoes.

I like to serve my beef stroganoff over hand-cut, french fried potatoes with a dollop of dilled sour cream. I will share my tips for making great fries in a future post. Here’s my beef stroganoff recipe:

Ingredients

1 ½ Pounds beef tenderloin or sirloin top loin
4 Tablespoon butter
1 Large onion, thinly sliced into half moons
½ Pound mushrooms, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 Tablespoon oil
¼ Cup flour
1 ¼ Cups beef broth
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 Teaspoons freshly chopped dill
½ Cup sour cream

Directions

A couple hours prior to cooking place the steak in the freezer to slightly freeze. Freezing the steak for a couple of hours helps to firm up the steak allowing you to more easily slice the steak. Also, take all but two tablespoons of the sour cream and stir in the dill. Refrigerate sour cream allowing the dill and sour cream to marry.

Trim beef of all fat and slice thin strips against the grain.  Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large frying pan and fry the steak about three minutes. There should be a considerable amount of red showing on the meat. Remove steak from pan and set aside. Melt remaining butter and sauté the onions until translucent, about five minutes.  Add the sliced mushrooms, and sauté 2-3 more minutes.  Lightly salt and pepper onions and mushrooms as they cook.  Transfer to a bowl and set aside.  In same pan heat 2 tablespoons of oil, whisk in the flour and add beef bouillon to make a gravy-like sauce.  Stir in the Dijon mustard and two tablespoons of sour cream. return the beef, onions, and mushrooms and simmer 5 minutes more.  Adjust salt and pepper seasoning.  Serve over french fried potatoes and top with dilled sour cream.