Beef--It Was for Dinner

WARNING: This post is rife with potential for off-color jokes. Proceed with your mind firmly entrenched in the gutter.

Recently the human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker were sitting on the couch watching the "Easy Skillet Suppers" episode of America's Test Kitchen, and the boy declared he wanted us to make "those round noodles" like he'd had before.

"Which round noodles?" we asked, completely clueless.

"Those round noodles!" the boy insisted, as if repeating his description exactly would somehow make clear what he was referring to.

"Are they like the noodles you have in your regular macaroni and cheese, or are they like the spiral noodles you have in the special macaroni and cheese?"

"Yeah, like those noodles."

Wow, talking to a five-year-old is such fun.

Luckily, Christopher Kimball and dear sweet Bridget Lancaster started whipping up a one-skillet beef stroganoff. Upon seeing it, the boy declared--much to his parents' dismay--that he wanted to have that dish sometime.

At this point, Gentle Reader, you have to understand what meals are like at Chez Boeckman-Walker. We're not all-American eaters. Blech! Sure, we eat a lot of chicken breasts, but they're always prepared with Mexican or Indian flavors. Hell, we don't even do pizza "normal." No, ours are made with chicken, red onions, pineapple and a BBQ sauce that draws on traditional Thai flavors. In fact, the closest we've come to all-American dining in recent memory is the tuna noodle casserole I made (and then remade when it was time to clean up the leftovers). So you can understand, Gentle Reader, why something as commonplace as beef stroganoff seems so extraordinary and special to the boy.

Let the Misadventure Begin!
Executing the skillet beef stroganoff recipe required us to acquire a few out of the ordinary ingredients--and gave me an excuse to buy a new kitchen tool.

First item: the beef. Thank the FSM that dear Bridget and the fine folks at America's Test Kitchen put so much effort into determining what type of beef you can buy cheaply to make a good stroganoff, and thank our local HEB for having nicely flattened sirloin beef tips. Otherwise, I would have needed to make a trip to The Surly Table to acquire a meat pounder (insert your own dirty joke here) to flatten a more typical cut of sirloin beef tip. (Trust me, I was *very* tempted to go nevertheless because, hey, who am I to resist a trip to The Surly Table to buy a new kitchen tool?)

Second item: beef broth. Even though it's not Cook's Illustrated's favorite chicken broth, I like Pacific Foods' organic, low-sodium chicken broth, but that company unfortunately doesn't make a low-sodium beef broth. After searching two HEBs and a Wally World, we wound up with the Wally World house brand of beef broth, which claimed to have only 160 mg of sodium. Those measly 160 mg sure beat the hell out of Swanson's lower-sodium beef broth, which has a whopping 440 mg of sodium (Swanson's organic beef broth has 550 mg, so the reduced-sodium content seems negligible, at least to me).

Third item: brandy. I don't drink alcohol, which is probably no surprise since just a week before I set out to make this recipe, I went to my first bar. Until this past Saturday, I'd been inside a liquor store three times: once back in 2000 to buy rum for something I was baking and twice at the beginning of this year to acquire single-serving bottles of sparkling white wine for our of-age guests attending our marriage recommitment ceremony and reception (because we were too cheap to pay The Renaissance's fees to serve mimosas). I had to look up via Google recommendations for cooking brandy and made sure to jot down the brands. And I'm sure I cracked up the clerk at the local Twin Liquors when I asked if the store by chance had smaller bottles of E&J because I didn't want to shell out $10 for 750 mL of bottom-shelf brandy when I only needed one-third of a cup.

So what was the new kitchen tool I acquired if I didn't make it to The Surly Table for a meat pounder? Well, Gentle Reader, shortly before preparing the beef stroganoff recipe, I ventured out to the Marshall's at Arbor Walk, wanting to scope out what kind of culinary bargains it might have. While I passed on an R.H. Forschner by Victorinox boning knife for a dozen clams or so, I did find what two Kuhn Rikon safety can opener models for $5 and $8, respectively. The slightly more expensive one boasted an ergonomic handle, but I didn't see that its upwardly curved handle (I guess to better fit in the palm of the user's hand) would give it an edge, but I wasn't sure. I picked up both so that the husband could help decide which one to keep since he'd be using it too.

Turns out the $5 Kuhn Rikon Safety Lid Lifter--the one that I tried out first to open the can of mushrooms--is not recommended by CI. Bummer. I thought it worked fine. The $8 model is in the Marshall's bag waiting to be returned.

Dutchie to the Rescue
While the folks on America's Test Kitchen made their stroganoff in a skillet, I used Chive the Dutchie because none of my skillets have lids. (But, hey, they're damn fine skillets, and I got them at great prices.) Who knew I'd have my wish to get another chance to use my Dutchie so quickly!

Good 'ol Chive performed like a champ. The cook, however--not so much, but mercifully I only overheated my left fingers once grabbing Chive's handles without a potholder or towel. Chive browned the beef quite well, and browning the onions and mushrooms was easy as pie.

Speaking of 'shrooms, did you know they'll jump when in a pot of heated canola oil? I didn't. It was quite fascinating to see that happen. Jumping 'shrooms is probably not a good sign, either.

Mistakes Were Made....
Mistake #1: I forgot to follow Bridget's advice to dry off the beef with paper towels before browning it so that it would get a nice sear. I still think my beef seared nicely enough.

Mistake #2: I totally forgot to sprinkle salt and pepper on the beef before browning it. What's worse is that I had the friggin' salt and pepper right in front of me. I'm such a dolt! I chalk this mistake up to how infrequently I prepare beef in my kitchen and to how insane I am about avoiding salt.

Mistake #3: I'm not sure if this qualifies as a mistake, but during the first 15 of the 30 to 35 minutes that the beef and sauce are supposed to simmer and braise, I had the heat turned up a bit too high, subjecting the beef and sauce to a mild boil instead of a simmer. But in my own defense, this one's not entirely my fault: my antiquated stove makes achieving and sustaining a simmer incredibly difficult, and I did try to compensate for this hurdle by setting the timer to alert me after 15 minutes had passed so that I could check the simmer and adjust the heat as necessary. And that's exactly what I did.

You Got Served--Dinner
Needing to "square-ify" the meal, I sliced up a small sweet potato and some carrots to accompany the beef stroganoff. Since the husband doesn't like carrots to which any kind of heat has been applied, I set aside some freshly peeled slices for him and the boy, while I steamed a few more carrots and the sliced sweet potato along with some fresh-ish cilantro in my wonderful Oster steamer. Yummy!

After slightly over an hour of kitchen work, dinner was served. My verdict?

Meh. Give me good, robust Mexican or Indian or Thai or Korean flavors. Screw the bland, all-American stuff.

I wound up eating all four ounces of 'shrooms (the recipe calls for 10 ounces) because the boys won't touch 'em. But I don't think they're the reason the dish didn't sit well with my stomach. No, I think my stomach isn't up for much oil (I didn't reduce the 4 tablespoons called for in the recipe) or for much beef. The stroganoff was also awfully salty to me, thus I question the accuracy of the Wally World beef broth's nutrition label because the only other salt sources in the recipe had very little added salt: chicken broth (70 mg per 1 cup serving), mushrooms (25 mg per whatever the serving was) and whatever salt might have been in the whole-wheat noodles (which probably shouldn't have been much). Then again, I think I'm just more sensitive to it because I avoid it.

I'm not sure if I did something wrong in the cooking or just used the wrong type of ingredients, but the beef in the stroganoff wasn't "fall-apart tender" as it allegedly was when the pros in America's Test Kitchen made the recipe, nor did the sauce thicken as it appeared to on the show. Sure, I could have probably thrown in some cornstarch toward the end when I saw that the sauce hadn't thickened, but I'm not all that experienced with "fixing" these kinds of problems. Plus I was concerned about the added carbs or whatnot such a "fix" would add to the meal.

I doubt we'll be making this recipe again at Chez Boeckman-Walker. I'll leave the all-American cooking to others.

Now where did I put my new curry cookbook....