Ground Beef Stroganoff

MLK weekend, and the school gives us Monday, which in January means a three-day island of not-being-at-school surrounded by the cold Atlantic of winter, and I use it the way I use most unexpected time: cooking. I made brisket. Not because there was an occasion — brisket is not a weekday-in-January food, or at least it didn't used to be — but because after the blog post went up and the comments arrived and I spent three days reading about other people's grief and finding it both comforting and devastating, I needed the brisket. The brisket takes four hours. I needed four hours.

The response to "The Slow Tide" has continued through the week. I've received emails I didn't know how to answer and comments that made me cry in my classroom during my prep period, which is not the place or the time for crying but was apparently when it happened. A woman in Ohio whose husband has younger-onset Alzheimer's wrote me a long email. A man in Toronto whose mother had the disease wrote a shorter one. They were not looking for advice. They were looking for the thing that I was looking for when I wrote the post: the knowledge that someone else had stood in this particular kitchen, in this particular confusion, and kept the stove going. That we are not alone in the keeping-going.

Marvin had a harder week. Nothing dramatic — this is the thing about early-stage that no one tells you, the way the bad days are subtle, not cinematic. He repeated a question three times in one day. He lost his keys, found them in the freezer (he had no explanation for the freezer), lost them again, found them in his coat pocket where they belonged. He was frustrated. He knows, still, when he has forgotten. The knowing and the forgetting existing simultaneously is its own special cruelty.

The brisket was, as always, transcendent. It is not possible to braise a brisket for four hours with onions and tomatoes and beef broth and garlic and have it be anything other than transcendent — the physics do not allow for mediocrity. I served it to Marvin and David, who drove down to check on us under the pretext of "just being in the neighborhood," which White Plains and Oceanside are not, geographically, but which is what we say because it is less painful than "I am worried about my father and my mother." We said it. We ate the brisket. We did not say the other thing. The brisket said it for us.

The brisket is a four-hour commitment, which is exactly what I needed that weekend — but on a Tuesday, when the emails are still coming and Marvin is still misplacing his keys and David has driven back to White Plains, what I reach for is something that gives me the same grounded feeling in a fraction of the time. This ground beef stroganoff is that recipe for me: the kind of thing that requires enough attention to keep your hands busy, but not so much that you can’t let your mind be somewhere else while the pan does its work. It is warm. It is filling. It asks nothing of you except to stir.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef (80/20)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups beef broth
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup sour cream, room temperature
12 oz egg noodles, cooked and drained
Fresh parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Brown the beef. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef, breaking it apart with a spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess fat and transfer beef to a plate.
Sauté the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add butter to the same skillet. Once melted, add the diced onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms release their liquid and begin to brown, about 5 minutes.
Build the sauce. Sprinkle the flour over the mushroom mixture and stir to coat. Cook for 1 minute to eliminate the raw flour taste. Slowly pour in the beef broth while stirring, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, paprika, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine.
Simmer. Return the browned beef to the skillet. Reduce heat to medium-low and let the mixture simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens, about 5–7 minutes.
Finish with sour cream. Remove the skillet from heat. Stir in the sour cream until fully incorporated and the sauce is smooth and creamy. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed. Do not boil after adding the sour cream or it may curdle.
Serve. Spoon the stroganoff over cooked egg noodles and garnish with fresh parsley. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ground Beef Stroganoff — When the Stove Keeps Going for You