Recipe: Venison Stroganoff

Here we are. Mother Russia.

I read in an article recently that people HATE, like hate hate, reading background stories on food blogs. The comments on this article further backed up that point. People are surprisingly violent and vicious about it and I was quite surprised to see that level of hatred on the internet over something so meaningless (and I am someone who reads Facebook comments about the NFL protests for fun).

If you are one of those people who hates everything about this blog besides the actual recipe (which, if Facebook tells the truth, is almost all of you), then accept my humble apologies and please feel free to skip ahead.

I’ve been waiting a long time to cook Russian food, because Russia had some of my favorite food in the world. It was also far and away the most difficult language barrier I have ever faced. This made mealtime all the more adventurous, as we’d just point to a bunch of random things on the menu and hope they tasted good (spoiler: they tasted good).

Overall Russia was a weird mix of strangeness and beauty. It was eerie and freezing. It was impossible to speak to the local people but at the same time, they were some of the friendliest and most helpful I’ve ever met. It was full of scary Soviet-era concrete towers adjacent Imperial, pastel-colored palaces. It had the most efficient metro system I’ve seen anywhere. It was full of some of the coolest history on the planet. And it was full of great food.

Venison Stroganoff

I’ve had some venison sirloin in my freezer for a couple of months and thought that this could be a great opportunity to do something cool with it. I sought after a Scandinavian or Icelandic dish, though my Googling led me to the interesting fact that it’s actually Russia that consumes more venison than anywhere else in the world. So off to Russia I went.

I halved this recipe and it made about 3 servings.

Ingredients: 2 lbs lean venison, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 chopped onion, zest of 1 lemon, 1/2 cup chopped parsley, 1/2 lb mixed sliced mushrooms, 1 cup creme fraiche or sour cream (but really you want the creme fraiche), 4 cups beef broth, 2 tbs butter, olive oil, 2 tsp paprika, 1 pinch nutmeg, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 tsp flour, splash of brandy, salt, pepper, and egg noodles or wild rice for serving (we used rice)

Dice meat and season with salt and pepper In a dutch oven over medium-high heat, heat olive oil and butter and quickly brown the meat, then set aside In the same pot brown the onion, then add the mushrooms and garlic. Season with salt and pepper, and add more oil if needed (though mushrooms tend to leak juices once they cook more, so don’t add too much). Dust with flour Add brandy and cook for a few minutes to let the alcohol out, then add beef broth and bring to a boil Return the meat to the pot and add the Worcestershire sauce, lemon zest, nutmeg, and paprika. Simmer covered on low heat for 1.5 hours, then simmer for an additional 30 minutes uncovered Add creme fraiche and mix well. Serve over egg noodles or rice

The Results

After doing this nearly 60 times, I think I’ve finally got a handle on how to make this project work:

Don’t skimp on ingredients. If you need to spend $7.99 on creme fraiche, spend $7.99 on creme fraiche (bonus points if half of that is your boyfriend’s money!) Read the recipe beforehand so that it’s not 7 PM when you realize you need to simmer this shit for 2 full hours. Can’t count how many times I’ve screwed up a potentially delicious recipe with that error When choosing between noodles and rice, why would you ever choose rice?

All that said, the dish came out pretty well. It would have been even better if I had followed rule #3 and went with egg noodles, but I had some wild rice in the pantry that was calling my name. Overall it was super flavorful and rich (in a good way). It was a little soupier than I had pictured it being which was its biggest downfall. Also 1/2 cup of parsley is wayyyyy too much parsley. I cut that down significantly to avoid another tragic incident a la the Turkish dumplings.

Overall Rating: 4 stars

St. Basil’s (Moscow) Creepy Kremlin photo Have you heard? There’s a rumor in St. Petersburg “Mario Church” the adorable town of Novgorod