Beef Stroganoff in the Instant Pot

For this meal, I'm going to be using one of my favorite toys, the Instant Pot brand electric pressure cooker. (Not a sponsored post, I just like it.) I really like mine for making broth from bones and vegetable scraps, as well as making a lot of one-pot dinners. I like the set it and forget it aspect, as well as the fact that I can cook something and leave it on Keep Warm until my wife gets home from her late shifts so she gets a hot meal.

For real, if you don't have an Instant Pot yet you should consider one. I use mine a ton and will likely be posting more recipes that use it. 

For the beef stroganoff you will need: ground beef, onion, garlic, flour, beef broth, cream of mushroom soup, pasta, salt, pepper, and sour cream. We'll have to make some concessions here. Normally, I use a leaner package of meat but 80/20 was all I could salvage from the tiger food bucket. Get a good dice on your onion and garlic. Use however much feels right to you.

Normally I use egg noodles, but the store was out. I blame Carole Baskin. I used an equal amount of garden rotini that was in the cupboard, 8 oz.

Turn the pot to saute, and start to brown your ground beef.

I like to get a little bit of browning going and release a little fat before adding my onions.

If you don't have beef broth from a box or can, now would be the time to make it. I used Better Than Bullion (again, not sponsored, just a fan) and made 3 cups worth.

When the meat is browned and the onions softened, toss in the garlic and stir it around until fragrant.

Add in one tablespoon of flour and stir around. Hard to tell from this picture, but it will make the beef mixture kind of pasty and thick.

Pour in your beef broth and really scrape and deglaze the bottom of the pot. This will help prevent a burn warning when you put it under pressure. If you're using freshly boiled broth like I did, try to avoid splashing it on yourself, like I did. If you do splash yourself, I suggest yelling your favorite swear word, like I did.

Mix in a can of cream of mushroom soup and as much salt and pepper as you like. When the world isn't crazy anymore, we're going back to name brand but for now, store brand soup is fine. Concessions.

Throw in your "egg noodles" and stir it all up. 

Cancel the saute mode, seal the pot, and set to pressure cook for 8 minutes. If you've never used an Instant Pot before, don't look here for details. Figure out what you're doing before you blow up your kitchen. If you're not making this in an Instant Pot, disregard this step completely.

While it cooks, go outside and tell your dog he's an idiot.

Once the cooking is complete, allow it to rest for 5 minutes. This is called a "natural release" if you're into the Instant Pot lingo. Once 5 minutes is up, release the rest of the pressure and open the lid.

After a stir, this is what you've got. This honestly doesn't look very appetizing, but trust me. It's a lot soupier than normal. The egg noodles usually soak up a lot of the liquid and it looks like these "egg noodles" did not. Thanks, Carole.

Stir in 8 oz of sour cream, or half the container I showed earlier. In my previous post I mentioned that I swap Greek yogurt for sour cream in most of my foods. This isn't one that I've tried that with. Hypocrite, I know. It'd probably be fine. 

The finished product! This sort of looks like dog food. It tastes waaaay better than it looks, I promise. Using egg noodles gives you a more traditional look. As I said before, this is soupier than normal. It still tasted great, and my wife and son both had seconds which I will always take as a win.

Notes:

• If you're not using an Instant Pot, I'd probably get some noodles cooking in one pot while browning the beef, onion, and garlic in another. Stir in the flour, broth, and soup and bring to a boil for a few minutes, then stir in the sour cream. Drain the noodles and add to the beef mix, or pour the beef mix over the noodles. I have never tried it this way, but if I didn't have an IP it would be worth a shot.
• I think using a full 16 oz bag of pasta would have produced better results and a thicker finished product. I might try that some time and report back. If anyone else tries that, I'd be interested to hear the results.
• If you haven't watched Tiger King on Netflix, there are at least 3 references above that likely make no sense.
• I have never been more self conscious about the foods I eat than when I decided to take pictures of them and share them with the internet.