Name: Beef Stroganoff
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: 5 serves
Ingredients: 1.1 kg Beef Chuck; 10 g Fine Salt; Black Pepper; 1 tbsp Neutral Oil; 450 g Swiss Brown Mushrooms; 10 g Dried Porcini; 40 g Butter; 2 large Brown Onions; 3 Garlic Cloves; 15 g Tomato Paste; 1 tbsp Sweet Paprika; 60 ml Brandy; 200 ml Low-Salt Beef Stock; 1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce; 4 tsp Dijon Mustard; 15 g Butter, Plain Flour; 280 g Full-Fat Sour Cream; 1 tsp Lemon Juice; 2 tbsp Dill; 1 tbsp Flat-Leaf Parsley; Cornichons; 500 g Dried Egg Pappardelle; 40 g Butter

I love a retro beef stroganoff. This one's upscaled to the max: a weekday version that lives in the multi-cooker to save on dishes, and a Next Level version that gets whatever it takes.

It went through the full AI competition: Claude, Grok, Codex and, for the first time, Gemini, four rounds, blind. All four landed in the same place, and none of them would call it a 9.5 before it's been cooked. Their prediction is about 8.5 for the weekday and 9.2 for the Next Level. It hasn't been made in this exact form yet.

The 8-hour slow cooker version most of us grew up on has three problems. The mushrooms stew grey, the sauce stays thin because a slow cooker doesn't reduce anything, and the sour cream goes into a boiling pot and splits. So here the mushrooms are browned hard and kept out of the cook until the end. The chuck goes in big cubes, seared, never floured, and pressure-cooked. The sauce gets reduced with the beef lifted out. And the sour cream goes in with the heat off, when a probe says 72–75°C. Not "when it stops bubbling": a pot that's stopped bubbling is still about 95°C.

Traditional or modern? The judges called it straight. For a weeknight, a chuck braise is right. For the best plate, the old Russian way wins: tender beef cooked fast. That's the Next Level, with one twist. The steak is seared whole and pulled at 48–50°C, then sliced, so it's pink, not grey strips.

No smoked paprika, no soy, no flambé, no potato straws. Tomato paste stays at a tablespoon, or it starts turning into the Brazilian one, and that's getting its own recipe.

Some stuff about stroganoff that's actually true. We checked.

It's named after the Stroganovs, a Russian family with more money than God. Nobody can agree which count it was named for. There's a story that he'd lost his teeth so the beef had to be cut small. It's a great story. It's also made up.

The first printed recipe is in Elena Molokhovets' "A Gift to Young Housewives", in the 1871 edition: cubes of beef, mustard and a bit of sour cream. No mushrooms. No onion. Not even a noodle.

The onions, tomato and crispy potato straws came later, around 1909–1914, from a cookbook writer called Pelageya Aleksandrova-Ignatieva. A French chef in St Petersburg, Charles Brière, sent his version to a Paris food journal in 1891, and the French have been taking credit ever since.

In Australia it was Margaret Fulton who made it a dinner party showstopper in the sixties. That's the stroganoff your mum made when the boss came round.

It's been to space. The Soviets tinned it for their cosmonauts, and beef stroganoff with noodles is on the NASA menu.

And in America it's regulated. Sell something called beef stroganoff over there and the government says it has to be at least 45% beef. Someone sat in a meeting and decided that.

AI reviewed by Grok, Codex & Claude

Whole scotch fillet, seared hard, pink in the middle, sliced into a sauce made on roasted stock. This is the old Russian quick-cook done properly, and the judges reckon it's the better plate. Start the stock the day before, and salt the steak the night before or that morning.

The stock: roast 1.5 kg beef bones and a halved onion at 200°C for 40 minutes, then simmer about 5 hours with the mushroom stems. Strain, chill, lift the fat off and boil it down to 450 ml. No salt. It should set like jelly in the fridge. Short on time? Use the lowest-salt shop stock with 5 g powdered gelatine bloomed in it, and reduce it less. That gets the body, not the roasted flavour.

Buy 900 g MSA scotch fillet as two or three thick steaks, 3.5–4.5 cm. Salt with 9 g fine salt (6 g if you're on shop stock) and leave them uncovered in the fridge for 4–24 hours. Swap the mushrooms for 400 g Swiss brown plus 150 g king oyster, thick-cut, and the onions for 4 golden shallots. Keep the porcini, brandy (60–80 ml), tomato paste, sweet paprika, Worcestershire and Dijon. Use 250 g sour cream and 500 g fresh egg pappardelle.

One wide stainless or cast-iron pan, smoking. Brown the mushrooms in three batches, with a knob of butter at the end of each. Out. Pan smoking again. Steaks dry, peppered, seared hard and turned until they're crusted. Pull them at 48–50°C in the middle and rest them.

Same pan: 30 g butter, shallots, 6–8 minutes until golden. Garlic and porcini for 30 seconds, tomato paste for a minute, paprika for 15 seconds. Brandy in off the heat, then boiled almost dry. Stock, 100 ml porcini liquor, the Worcestershire and 2 tsp Dijon. Reduce to about 300 ml, until a finger line on the spoon holds. If it starts tasting salty, stop.

Mushrooms back in for a minute. Heat off. At 72–75°C, whisk 2 tsp Dijon into the sour cream, loosen it with a ladle of sauce, fold it back. No simmering from here. Slice the steak 1 cm across the grain and fold it and its juices through, off the heat, for 30 seconds. Simmering is how the pink goes. Salt and pepper now. Buttered pappardelle, cornichons, dill.

Beef Stroganoff

What you need

The beef

The mushrooms

The sauce

The finish

To serve

Twelve moves.

Porcini, Soak

Beef, Salt

Mushrooms, Brown

Beef, Sear

Onions, Golden

Brandy, Boil

Pot, Load

Pressure, Cook

Sauce, Reduce

Cream, Temper

Noodles, Serve

Slow Cooker, Instead

Whole-steak stroganoff on roasted stock

How to save it

From the same volume.