(Chicken) Stroganoff

Stroganoff is a dish that sits at the edge between two cuisines. The dish originated when Russian aristocrats requested a stew pe prepared for them by their in-house French chefs. The result was the dish we now call beef stroganoff, although variations with other proteins certainly do exist, most notably chicken. Because we eat a lot more chicken than we do beef in my family (probably 300:1, without exaggeration), this recipe, like so many others, will be presented with chicken as its main protein, with the understanding that you, the reader, can absolutely change out the chicken for beef if that’s what you have available or if that’s what you prefer.

Stroganoff has two kinds of tasks within it: some that are very hands-on, where seconds matter, and some that are very hands-off, where no work needs to be done for 40 minutes or more. This recipe is written so that the hands-off tasks can be set and left alone while all of the home cook’s attention goes to working on the immediate, hands-on tasks. The closer you are to the beginning of the process, the more hands-on it will be.

The 3 adults in my family can comfortably be fed by 1½ pounds of protein; feel free to scale this up or down as necessary given your family’s size. If you use chicken, like I almost always do, I recommend buying high-quality sustainable boneless and skinless chicken breast. If you opt for beef, then use an equivalent amount of the best sirloin steak you can find.

Stroganoff requires good resource management beyond just “having mise en place.” You need to have mise en place, but you need to get mise en place in the right order. This is doubly true if you, like me, have only one cutting surface (with dedicated “meat” and “not-meat” sides) but not two entirely separate surfaces. (This latter scenario is vastly preferable, and, even better would be to color-code your cutting boards: white or clear for non-meat and colored for meat, for instance).

Begin by dicing an onion, mincing 4 cloves of garlic, and washing and slicing 1 pound of baby bella or porcini mushrooms. Some people say not to wash mushrooms but instead to clean them just with a moist paper towel. I used to agree with that—to prevent saturation of the mushrooms—until I realized it was relatively quick to boil the water out of the mushrooms, so this didn’t need to be a concern. The mushrooms and the onion will first expel water contained in their cells. Then, they will begin to fry in the olive oil that should lightly coat the bottom of the pan, forming a thin film over the whole bottom surface, thus providing an interface between the food and the metal surface for more even heat distribution and thus better browning. It takes practice, but you’ll eventually learn to distinguish the sounds coming from your pan when the mushrooms are expelling water versus when they’re browning. Once the mushrooms are beginning to take on some color and have reduced in volume rather significantly, add balsamic vinegar to the mushrooms and the onions. Allow the vinegar to cook off its acidity for a minute or two, and then reserve the mushrooms, onions, and garlic.

Cut your protein of choice into slightly larger than bite-sized pieces. Quickly over high heat, allow your protein to get some good coloring as a result of the Maillard reaction. Do not cook your protein to its desired doneness (165 Fahrenheit for chicken; likely a lower temperature for other proteins unless you like your meat well-done) at this stage; all you want to do is to pick up some color.

Clean your board and utensils thoroughly, and cut 7 tomatoes, 1 bell pepper, and one onion into small enough pieces as to be manageable by a blender. You need a blender to make this sauce because it will ultimately be a cream sauce, and the particles of tomato and such need to be very small so that the fat from the cream can emulsify into them, thus eventually creating a smooth sauce that doesn’t split. Once the sauce has been blended, return the chicken, mushrooms, and onions to the pan, and cook on low heat, maintaining a simmer and stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through, and the sauce has reduced. (If your protein of choice does not need to be cooked through all the way, sear it off, give the sauce a head-start, and then let the protein finish cooking in the sauce.) Season this sauce as you would any other tomato sauce, with salt, pepper, thyme, basil, oregano, and dill. Allow this sauce to cook just as gently, for just as long.

Simultaneously, according to the instructions on the package, prepare the starch of your choice (we choose either rice or pasta depending on what we have most easily available) so that the starch finishes at the same time as the sauce.

When the sauce and the starch have both finished cooking, turn the sauce burner off and move the pan off the heat. Place most of the contents of an 8-ounce tub of sour cream (per 24 ounces of protein) into the sauce, leaving some cream behind. Then, place some sauce back in the tub of cream, and mix the two in the tub. Introduce this mixture back into the sauce. Stir. This last step is called “tempering” the cream sauce, and, together with introducing the cream to the sauce off the heat, this minimizes the chances that the sauce will split. (A “split” sauce will have a film of fat clearly noticeable on the top surface. This isn’t technically harmful; it just isn’t the best presentation, so we try to avoid this whenever possible.) Using a blender to liquefy the sauce in the earlier steps makes the particles of the sauce much smaller than simply chopping them in a food processor, and it’s much easier for fat to wrap around the liquified sauce particles from the blender; doing all of this makes it virtually impossible that the sauce will ever split.

Serve.