Dinner – Red Apron

First of all, I’d like to thank Snickers for taking over the blog last week. I have been very busy and really appreciate his attempt to cover for me. He’s so sweet and helpful and I’m glad you all have had a chance to hear from him. I will let him do a lot of the writing when we take off on our adventure. For today, back to food…

I have been using a sous vide machine for about two months now. I had been thinking about getting one for over a year but it seemed kind of frivolous and I wasn’t sure I would use it enough to justify the expense. But when I decided to downsize my kitchen, and after doing a lot of research, I realized that this tool could take up a small space and do a lot of work!

Way too hot for fish! Needs 130 degrees for only 30 minutes! This was set up for something else!

“Sous Vide” is French for “under vacuum”. It describes a form of cooking where you vacuum seal a piece of food, submerge it in water, and cook it slowly at a low, steady temperature. This ensures that the food never exceeds the perfect level of doneness. Vegetables stay crisp and don’t lose any nutrition into their cooking water, because they don’t ever contact the cooking water. Chicken breasts cannot dry out because they don’t get hot enough to squeeze the moisture out of them, as so often happens when they are baked or sautéed. Beef remains at a perfect medium rare (my preferred temperature for the quintessential steak). I have even learned to enjoy cooking fish, my kitchen nemesis!

If you’ve checked out my yogurt post of a week or so ago, you’ve seen my sous vide machine in action. It’s perfect for keeping the milk and culture mixture at the perfect temperature for curd development. It makes the entire yogurt making process easy, and relatively care free.

There are a variety of machines on the market. Some will attach to your phone via Bluetooth or wifi. The benefit of these machines is that they come with recipes on your phone or the company’s website, which can make the process pretty foolproof. I don’t like the idea of any website tracking my cooking and kitchen habits (except this one) so I decided to go a little more basic. I just fill a container with water, clip the machine onto the edge, making sure that the water is between the minimum and maximum water lines and plug it in. I can set the water temperature and cooking time, then just press the “on” button and prepare my food while the water heats to the correct temperature. I have to do a little more research but my kitchen doesn’t tell anyone what I’m doing!

Today, I decided to tackle (hah!) fish in the sous vide water bath. I found some swordfish steaks at my local grocery store that looked pretty good so decided to give it a try.

I patted my swordfish steak dry with a paper towel and sprinkled both sides with salt and pepper. I looked in the spice cupboard and found some Za’tar, a Middle Eastern herb and spice blend containing thyme, sumac, sesame seeds and other herbs. This is one of my favorite mixtures for chicken and fish as it is flavorful but not overwhelming. I added a little extra sumac because it adds a citrusy tang and I didn’t have any lemon zest on hand. I placed it in the vacuum bag with a little bit of olive oil and sealed it up.

I heat the water bath up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the perfect temperature for swordfish, according to the temperature guide that came with my machine. After clipping the bag of vacuum sealed fish and spices into the water, I set the timer for 30 minutes. After the timer went off, I took out the packet, dried it off and sliced off the top. While flavorful and perfectly cooked, the appearance of my steak leaves much to be desired. It’s pallid, pale, and pasty looking! Easily fixed! I heat up my trusty cast iron skillet to rocket temperatures and slap that steak onto the blazing surface. Wait 30 seconds, flip it over, wait another 30 seconds and a perfectly golden seared surface appears. Crispy, tasty, and perfectly tender inside, the lovely swordfish steak becomes an elegant entrée.

Believe me, it tasted better than it looked!

Sous vide cooking is easy, takes up very little space, and does not heat up a kitchen on a steamy summer day. An added benefit is that my dish washing water is already hot. I just need to pour it into the sink and add soap!

I used to think that I didn’t like Beef Stroganoff. It wasn’t a meal that was served in my home growing up and, if it was, it was usually a ground beef-based boxed mix that was mostly salt and mushy noodles, combined with rubbery mushrooms. No wonder I thought Stroganoff was awful stuff!

As I have learned to cook over the years, I wanted to try some of the “recipes” my mother fed us as kids and see if they could be fixed and made, not only edible, but delicious. I discovered that Beef Stroganoff is really good, if cooked correctly.

There are three main elements to good Beef Stroganoff: mushrooms, sauce, and beef. The first is the mushrooms. You can make good Stroganoff and leave out the beef completely…if you cook the mushrooms correctly. Rubbery, gray, slimy mushrooms were the bane of my childhood and are the reason that many people believe that they don’t like them. The important thing to remember about mushrooms is that you have to cook them, and then cook them some more. I usually use about a pound of Cremini mushrooms, cut into 1/8 inch thick slices.

Place two tablespoons oil and two tablespoons butter into a large skillet (I use my cast iron). Heat your pan over medium until your oil starts to shimmer and add the mushrooms. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and start cooking over medium heat. There’s nothing wrong with adding some of the dried mushroom dust left over from making mushroom ketchup if you have some on hand.

You have to cook those mushrooms until all the water comes out of them and pools in the pan and the mushrooms are swimming in liquid.

Unfortunately, this is when many people stop cooking the mushrooms! Don’t stop! Keep cooking them until all of that liquid is evaporated and the bottom of the pan is almost dry. Now the mushrooms can develop some delicious browning, and acquire the rich, meaty flavor that they are destined to deliver to your dish!

Now that the mushrooms have browned, it’s time to add a medium diced onion and a sprinkle more salt and pepper (or mushroom dust). Push the mushrooms into a ring around the side of the pan and let that onion sweat in the middle for at least 5 minutes. The mushrooms will continue to brown and add even more flavor to the bottom of your pan.

Then add four tablespoons flour and stir it around for at least a minute, until every morsel of mushroom and onion is coated with that buttery flour mixture. Pour in two to three cups of beef broth, stirring constantly, until you have a silky sauce. A tablespoon of mushroom ketchup is another delightful addition at this point but make sure to adjust your salt accordingly.

Now for the meat. A sirloin steak is good for this. The pictures that accompany this show a leftover steak that I had cooked to medium rare and sliced up to stir into the mushrooms and sauce.

I usually let the beef simmer in the sauce just long enough to heat it through and let it share some flavor with the sauce. An alternative is to cook a steak in the cast iron pan before cooking the mushrooms, which adds some lovely flavor to the fat that the mushrooms cook in! Remember, mushrooms are little sponges and will absorb flavors and then release them into the sauce you serve them with.

Stroganoff wouldn’t be stroganoff without sour cream. My lactose intolerance makes this an issue. However, the lovely company, Lactaid, now makes sour cream! This makes me happy because now I can make this delicious dish once again.

After the meat has simmered for about 5 minutes, turn off the heat and add one half to one cup of sour cream to your sauce, depending on your taste. Do this off heat or the sour cream will curdle. You now have a lovely, creamy, mushroom-y Stroganoff to delight your taste buds.

Now all you have left to do is boil up some egg noodles and plate your delicious dinner!

Tag: Dinner

I love cooking with Sous Vide!

Beef Stroganoff