Weekend Cooking: Beef Stroganoff

We've made several of British chef Tom Kerridge's recipes now. His last few series have been about how create healthy meals that should help you lose weight as part of a balanced diet. What we like about the ones that we have made so far is that they are very tasty. For example, the recipe for "fried" chicken (which I posted here) is a regular part of our meal planning now

Recently we were rewatching some of series and we saw a recipe for Beef Stroganoff that we thought that we would try. In the end we didn't quite make it as written as we didn't add in the cornichones or gherkins. What we did have was still delicious.

The husband does already have his go to recipe for stroganoff but he did say that he would use the technique that is described for the meat in his version going forward because it was very tender.

Beef Stroganoff

½ tbsp light olive oil
1 large onion, finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 beef stock cube
2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tbsp tomato purée
400g tin beef consommé (we used a beef broth)
150g/5½oz chestnut mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 rump steaks (175g/6oz each), visible fat trimmed
olive oil spray
60g/2¼oz cornichons or small gherkins, sliced
75ml/2½fl oz half-fat crème fraîche
2 tbsp finely chopped flatleaf parsley
2 tbsp roughly chopped chervil or parsley
2 tbsp dried onion flakes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
160g/5¾oz basmati rice, freshly cooked (to serve)

Heat the light olive oil in a large frying pan over a low–medium heat. Add the onion and cook gently for 10 minutes, or until softened and starting to caramelise.

Stir in the garlic and cook gently for 2 minutes. Crumble in the stock cube and stir in the paprika and tomato purée. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the beef consommé, mushrooms and mustard. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for 10–15 minutes, or until the volume of liquid has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, place a griddle pan over a high heat. Bash the steaks between two sheets of cling film, until about 5mm/¼in thick. Spray each side with six sprays of oil and season with salt and pepper. When the griddle is smoking hot, add the steaks and cook for 1 minute on each side. Remove and set aside to rest.

Once the sauce has reduced, remove from the heat and stir through the cornichons, crème fraîche, and most of the parsley and chervil (reserving some for garnishing). Stir in the juices from the resting meat and check the seasoning. Cut the meat into thick slices and stir into the sauce.

Mix together the dried onion flakes and reserved chopped parsley and chervil. Serve the stroganoff sprinkled with the onion and herb mix, with the rice on the side, if you like.

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