Hamburger Stroganoff

It's a new year and one of my goals for the year is to continue cooking through my cook book collection!!!

I realized that, although I turn to my Betty Crocker cook book when I can't find answers to cooking questions on line, I never take advantage of all the fabulous recipes in the cook book.

So, I've added Ms. Betty to my rotation of recipes for my meal planning and this recipe was one I used for last week.

Evan loves beef stroganoff, so I figured he might like a hamburger version.

The ingredients: (I'm sorry that the ground beef in the picture looks so grotesque. No matter how much I asked and pleaded, it just would not put on it's pretty picture face.)

1 lb. lean ground beef; 1 medium onion, chopped; 1 clove garlic, finely chopped; 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup; 1 can (4oz.) mushrooms, drained; 1/2 tsp. salt; 1 C. sour cream or plain yogurt; 1 pkg. egg noodles, cooked; paprika, salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste.

Ok, so I did not buy soup because it was not on my grocery list because I neglected to write it on my grocery list and if it's not on the grocery list it does not get bought! (Or so I preach to Evan and Elisabeth and apparently need to preach to myself as well.) Thankfully, I had a bag of frozen mushrooms in the freezer and I decided to make my own ding dong cream of mushroom soup. It was surprisingly simple. Let me show you...

First, take 1/2 a pound of the frozen mushrooms and cook them in one cup of water for 15 minutes. No boiling, please.
Drain the mushrooms (but keep the liquid!) and put the mushrooms in a skillet with 2 Tbsp. of butter and cook them together for about 10 minutes.
Add 1 Tbsp. of flour to the mushrooms and stir until all the mushrooms are coated in flour.
Add 3 C. of milk (preferably whole, but I only had skim and it was just fine for this recipe) and
the mushroom liquid you saved. Stir and allow it all to cook together for about 5-10 minutes. Then, remove the soup from the skillet and save it for later on in the recipe.
Now, brown that beef (go ahead and use the same skillet because you're just going to combine them all again in it soon anyway) along with...
the onion and the garlic. Make sure you drain all of that icky grease!

Ok, I stink and totally didn't take pictures of the rest of the process, so just pretend like you are watching me do the next few steps, ok? Thanks.

Stir in the soup we made (or the can you bought), the remainder of the frozen mushrooms (or the can you bought) and the salt into the beef. Simmer, uncovered, until a good portion of the homemade soup we made has evaporated and then lower the heat to low. I'd say that I simmered it all for about 15 minutes and then let it cook on low for another 5 minutes.

Now, taste the sauce. Evan and I found it bland, so we added salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder until we found it perfect. Just keep sprinkling, stirring and sampling until you find it to your liking.

Stir in the sour cream until it is blended into the sauce and hot.

We served our hamburger stroganoff with green beens and salad.
This is definitely a comfort food dish. The girls loved the noodles (of course) and asked for the "stroganoff" part on the side. Elisabeth eventually mixed them together and liked them. Everyone (including our dinner guest, one of Evan's co-workers) had seconds. The leftovers were eaten just as quickly!!!

Enjoy!