Now let’s cook
The beef and the sauce each get their own pan and only share one for the last two minutes.
Ingredients
- 454 g beefthe meat of domestic cows, bulls and oxen
- 330 g onionbulb onion: the bulbs are peeled and cut
- 60 ml vegetable oilmade from plant seeds or fruit
- 2 tsp wheat flourground from wheat grains
- 120 ml waterplain tap water
- 198 g sour creamthick soured cream made from cream and a starter culture
- 1 tsp mustarda ready-made paste of ground seeds, water, vinegar and salt
- 3 g saltfine table salt
- 1 g black pepperground black pepper
Method
Slice 454 g of a tender cut of beef, such as fillet, across the grain about 5 mm thick, then into thin strips. Cut 330 g of onion (3 medium ones) into thin strips.
Heat 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a deep frying pan over a medium heat and add the onion. Season with salt and pepper and fry over a low heat, stirring often, until the onion is golden: this takes about 20 minutes.
Sprinkle the onion with 2 tsp of sifted flour and stir for 1 minute.
Add 198 g of sour cream and 1 tsp of mustard and mix well. Pour in 120 ml of boiling water and bring the sauce to the boil, stirring. Cook over a low heat for 5 minutes, stirring now and then.
While the sauce cooks, heat a second frying pan over a high heat and add 2 tbsp of oil. Fry the beef in small batches, so that the strips lie on the bottom of the pan in a single layer, for 2–3 minutes each, turning them, until they have a crust. Do not salt the beef at this stage.
Transfer the fried beef to the sauce, mix well and simmer over a low heat for another 2 minutes, until the beef is tender: the middle of a strip should be at least 63 °C.
Season with salt and pepper: the whole dish takes about 3 g of salt and 1 g of black pepper. Divide the Stroganoff among four plates and serve at once.
Where this dish comes from
Beef Stroganoff is a Russian dish known around the world: small pieces of beef, fried and served in a mustard and sour cream sauce. The name goes back to one of the Stroganovs, a Russian noble family, though which of them is debated. The first known recipe, “beef à la Stroganov, with mustard”, was printed in 1871 in Elena Molokhovets’s book A Gift to Young Housewives. The recipe in the 1887 edition has no onions, no mushrooms and no alcohol: beef cubes, a sauce of flour, mustard and broth, and a little sour cream at the end.
