Hunkering down to watch sports on TV usually involves grabbing the traditional grub: chicken wings, sliders, nachos, that sort of stuff.
But with the Olympics in Russia looming, I thought it might be fun to turn instead to a classic of Russian cuisine, namely, beef stroganoff. A rich dish with a noble birthright (scholars disagree about which particular Count Stroganov the dish is named for), beef stroganoff was a staple at America’s tonier restaurants during the 1960s and ’70s.
The standard recipe calls for thinly sliced beef with a sauce of sauteed mushrooms and sour cream. But I’ve engineered a healthy version that delivers luxurious flavor using lean ground beef and low-fat sour cream. The obvious appeal of lean ground beef is that it cuts the fat. And if you can find 100 percent grass-fed ground beef, you’ll be using an ingredient that’s good for the environment, too.
Either way, you’ll need to do something to counterbalance the tendency of lean ground beef to turn into a dry burger. My usual solution is to reach for sauteed onions or shredded carrots or cabbage. But this time, out of respect for traditional stroganoff, mushrooms made sense.