Adventures In Frugality

When I was young, my mother started teaching me to cook.  I took to some lessons, not so much to others, but she did require that I cook one dinner a week for the family.  On some of those cooking occasions, I only cooked for myself and my brothers, my parents having gone out for a “date” (generally, grocery shopping…ahhhh, romance).  And some nights I cooked for all of us.  Once I was old enough to be driving on my own, my mother started me on handling some of the grocery shopping.

One of my first solo forays to the grocery store with family budget money in hand was for a meal I had carefully planned out.  I was making beef stroganoff.  The real thing.  Sliced beef in a creamy mushroom sauce over noodles.  Heaven.  And I bought the meat that the recipe called for, a very expensive cut of beef.  When I came home, having spent a third of the family’s weekly food budget for one meal, my mother hit the roof.  First, she demanded to see the receipt.  Then she demanded an explanation, which I provided by showing her the recipe.  Then she calmed down (amazing, really…we were not wealthy and that was a financial hit for the week), and line by line, went through the recipe, showing me where I could cut costs.  And if I could not cut costs down to a reasonable amount, then we couldn’t eat that dish.  It was too rich for us.  She was actually very kind about it, and I learned a lot just from that one lesson.  I eventually took over the family’s weekly grocery shopping, mostly successfully; I still couldn’t resist double coupon day, which is how we ended up with twenty cans of tomato paste in the pantry.  That stuff was always on sale, and with a double coupon…well, it was a criminal waste of an opportunity not to buy.  I mean, I was saving us money by buying!  Don’t talk to me about false economy…that’s a myth when discussing double coupons.

These days, I still love beef stroganoff.  And I have discovered a recipe that uses ground beef which is a) the cheapest pound of beef you can buy, b) doesn’t need to be thinly sliced across the grain, and c) never comes out tough.  I’m sure I adapted this recipe from one I found somewhere on the inter-webs but I’ve had it for so long now that I can’t remember where I first saw it.  It’s not expensive (relatively speaking, since all beef is expensive these days) and if I feel like splurging, I splurge on the mushrooms.  The batch made for the pictures I took for this blog post has triple the amount of mushrooms required by the recipe: a very nice mixture of white mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms, which were on sale at the grocery store (but no double coupons, alas). Occasionally, I enjoy buying 3-4 big portobello mushroom caps and chopping them into 1” chunks. It makes for a nice “meaty” feel to the stroganoff.

First the method, then the recipe.  In some oil or butter, sauté the onions and the mushrooms until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms have given up their liquid.  Then pour all of it, liquid and all, into a bowl and set aside.  Next, brown your ground beef, and get rid of most of the fat from the pan.  Add the mushrooms and onions back in and add the rest of the ingredients except for the sour cream, the flour, and a couple tablespoons of the beef broth.  Mix it up over the heat, and while that’s heating up, mix together the flour and the remaining beef broth until there are no lumps, then add it to the pot.  When the sauce has thickened almost to where you want it, add the sour cream, and then serve over noodles, or brown rice.  Easy and fast, especially if you pay for a bit of convenience by buying mushrooms that are already sliced.  This freezes very nicely, so you can have some now, and then save some for a decadent dinner later in the week.  Enjoy!

Ground Beef Stroganoff

(click here for printable PDF of recipe)

INGREDIENTS

1 lb ground beef

1 1/4 Cup (10 oz) low sodium beef broth

8 oz sour cream

2 Cup sliced mushrooms

1 Tsp garlic salt

1/3 Cup ketchup

1 small onion, chopped

2 Tbsp flour

buttered noodles or brown rice

olive oil

DIRECTIONS

With a little olive oil, sautee the onions and mushrooms together until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms have yielded their liquid. Remove from pan, discarding any liquid.

Brown the beef, discarding any fat.

Into the browned beef add the onion/mushroom mixture, 5 oz of the beef broth, garlic salt, and ketchup.

While this is warming, add the 2 Tbsp of flour to the remaining beef broth and mix until smooth. Add this mixture in with the rest.

Fold in the sour cream and serve over the buttered noodles or brown rice.