Stroganoff
posted in Frenzied Daddy, Shaping Up |I’m not the best of cooks, I admit. I am, however, my family’s main cook. I’m not in the same league as my friend Julia, who is awesome in the kitchen (and in any other room; she makes me feel as talented as a clam).
However, there was a fascinating article on ‘braising’ recently in the newspaper. Braising, if you don’t know, is “slowly simmering some ingredients together … the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Pot roast? Braised. Which brings me to the slow-cooker I got from my in-laws. When I toss some potatoes, carrots, a slab of beef, some red wine, and some broth into the crock pot and simmer it for six hours, that’s braising, and it gets rave reviews around the dinner table.
One of the things I do with leftovers, whether it’s pot roast or turkey roast (which I’m also doing in the slow cooker), is make pot pie; it’s a trick I learned from my mother Peggy. Take the left overs, chop them up, toss them into a pie shell, pour gravy over them, toss another pie crust over the top, and bake until it looks done. Well, my pie crust sucks, so I get it out of a can (wth, it’s just flour and lard, right?) and my gravy leaves something to be desired, so that comes out of a can too. It’s tasty, but I always feel like I’m cheating by using gravy from a can (it’s not really that hard to make, but my thickness is never consistent). But four weeks in a row of roast, then sandwiches, then pot pie got a little old.
Last week I changed it up by making a beef stroganoff (more cheating: hamburger + vegetable beef soup + water + simmer + sour cream over rice) and putting in the leftover gravy, beef, potatoes and carrots. It was delicious.
So, I dunno. What I’m saying is — even if I am not the best cook in the world and rely a lot on premade ingredients, the slow cooker brings a new dimension to my cookery.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a stack of pork chops and some apples to try braising together.
This is posted in ’shaping up’ because eating out really has done a wonder on my physique, and the slow cooker changes that dynamic.
