Sauce after adding sour cream

Yumm!

Quick, easy, and delicious.  This dish can be made with just about any kind of meat you’ve got, and it turns out great.  From the title it is obvious that we’ve used venison for this recipe, but whatever floats your boat will do.  Hell, you could probably make a Rat Stroganoff and it would taste pretty good.  A Stroganoff is a traditional Russian dish served with some kind of sauteed meat (usually beef), and Smetana (a/k/a heavy sour cream). I have no earthly clue what “stroganoff” means in Russian, but it translates to “cleaned plates” at my house.  It’s probably named after some Russian culinary genius like Chucky Stroganoff or something.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds ground or 1/2 to 1/4″ chopped venison. You can use just about any meat here, but I have a freezer full of venison, and deer is great in this recipe.
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups fresh mushrooms (this recipe uses wild Oyster Mushrooms)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup of butter, or rendered bacon fat
• 1 1/2 to 2 cups Cajun Holy Trinity (about 1 onion, 1-2 sticks of celery, and 1/4 – 1/2 bell pepper, chopped and mixed together)
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups of beef broth
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup of flour
• 1 1/4 cups sour cream
• Salt pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• Noodles of choice (I used egg noodles for this recipe, but my kids love the elbow pasta, or as they call them “macaroni noodles”)

Directions

1. In a black iron skillet melt butter, and brown the Cajun Holy Trinity, garlic, and mushrooms.  Set aside.
2. Brown the venison. Add some salt & pepper while browning (easy on the salt because most broth is pretty salty). Keep in mind the more you brown the meat, the darker the end product.
3. Once meat is good and browned, add the browned veggies and mushrooms back to the skillet as well as 2 cups of beef broth, & Worcestershire sauce.
4. In a cup or jar, whisk the flour into the milk, and add to skillet.  Bring this mixture up to a boil, then reduce and simmer covered for 20-25 minutes stirring periodically.
5. Stir in the sour cream.  Keep it at a low simmer to prevent scorching the dish, and stir periodically to prevent sticking.  Add salt & pepper to taste.  Cook at a low simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes or until the sauce has thickened to desired viscosity. If you are using chopped meat as apposed to ground meat cook until meat is fork tender.

Wild Oyster Mushrooms collected from a dead willow after Emma killed her deer.

FYI

At a hunting camp, or in a pinch, you can just brown the meat, add water (broth is better), and a can of cream of mushroom soup, season, and let cook for about 25-30 minutes.  It’s pretty hard to beat for its simplicity.

NOSTROVIA!

Categories: Food, Foraging, hunting, recipe

Tags: deer, game, ground, mushroom, oyster, recipe, stroganoff, venison, wild, wild game recipe