Jill Can Cook: Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

Joe likes Beef Stroganoff. I am not a big fan. I hate mushrooms and the entire dish is pretty much mushrooms and cream of mushroom soup. Yuck. Somehow, Joe talked me into eating it. To be truthful, he also talked me into making it, too. "But it would be good to make for your blog," he said in a whiny voice. Stupid blog, making me cook food I hate so I don't run out of stuff to post about!! I curse the day I created you!! OK, that's a little over dramatic, but I was having major second thoughts about this particular dinner. But, here goes nothing:

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

(Adapted from this recipe: Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff)

Ingredients
2 lbs stew beef
1 can condensed mushroom soup
1 cup chopped onion or 2 tbsp. onion powder
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 14 oz can beef broth
8 oz button mushrooms, cleaned and quartered (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup sour cream
egg noodles

Directions:
In the crockpot, combine the meat, soup, onion, Worcestershire sauce, beef broth, mushrooms, salt and pepper. Cook on low for 5-6 hours.
Stir in sour cream about half an hour before serving, stir enough to break up any lumps.
Cook egg noodles to directions on package.
Serve over cooked egg noodles. (or add the cooked egg noodles into the crockpot along with the sour cream so they can pick up the flavor of the gravy).
If the sauce is not thick enough for you, add some cornstarch and water.
Makes 7-8 servings


I love the ease of dumping everything in the crockpot to cook, but it makes for a boring, pictureless blog. So no cooking pictures.

Like I mentioned before, I am not a mushroom person. This recipe originally called for 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup, but I quickly decided to cut that down. That really did cut down on the mushroom flavor. If you're a mushroom person, feel free to add an additional can if you'd like. Just letting you know that we ended up with WAY more sauce than we could've possibly eaten, so with extra soup, it would be super saucy.

Not too bad looking.. Added some dried parsley to the top to make the picture look better.

We also ended up with a very liquidy sauce. Joe pulled some of the sauce out, mixed it with some cornstarch, and then put the mixture back into the pan. It did a fantastic job of thickening it up, but it also made it slightly bland. That's why, in the picture, it's really loaded up with salt and pepper.

 Not too bad tasting either!

Anyway, this wasn't a terrible recipe. I'm in no rush to eat beef stroganoff again, but should I ever, I'd use this recipe again. It really wasn't terrible at all. It wasn't overwhelmingly mushroomy, it was easy enough to cook, the ingredients weren't expensive, and it made enough that Joe had some leftovers for work the following day. Not a bad dinner at all.